《Lange’s Commentary on the Holy Scriptures – John (Ch. 4~Ch. 8》(Johann P. Lange) 04 Chapter 4

EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL

[The last discourse had made an impression on many, and brought them to the door of a superficial discipleship ( John 8:30), while yet their heart was full of prejudice. These half converts the Lord now addresses and warns them not to be satisfied with a passing excitement of feeling, but to become true and steady disciples. Then they would know the truth, and the truth would give them true freedom from the degrading bondage of sin and error. Knowledge appears here as the fruit of faith, and freedom as the fruit of knowledge. This earnest exhortation brings out the latent hatred of the Jews, whereupon the Lord, with fearful severity, exposes the diabolical nature of their opposition to Him, while He at the same time reveals His divine nature as the destroyer of death and the One who was before Abraham was born. This address, in the lively form of dialogue, unites the character of a testimony concerning Himself and a judgment of the Jews, and rises to the summit of moral force.—P. S.]

John 8:31. If ye continue in my word.—That Isaiah, here, not merely: continue to believe, but believe according to the spirit of the word, and in obedience to the word, which He spoke. Working towards an exposure of their misapprehension of His words—Ye are my disciples indeed.—This, therefore, must first appear. [There is a latent antithesis between πεπιστευκότας and μαθηταί. It was one thing to believe in Jesus, quite another to be disciples, learners. Tue one could be a momentary impulse; the other required constant study and obedience?] True discipleship is the condition and guaranty of their knowing the truth; and then this knowledge carries the blessing, that the truth should make them free. Freedom is the very thing they were bent upon all along; but a political, theocratic freedom, as pictured by a chiliastic mind. Christ opens to them the prospect of a higher freedom which, if they should be true disciples, they would owe to the liberating effect of the truth, the living knowledge of God; He opens the prospect of freedom from sin.

John 8:32. Ye shall know the truth more and more. [Hengstenberg: “A difference of degree of knowledge is put in the form of knowledge itself as opposed to ignorance, because in comparison with future attainments of knowledge in the path of fidelity, the present knowledge would be quite insignificant. The truth is not merely something thought; it has taken flesh and blood in Christ, who says, I am the truth. By a deeper and deeper knowing of Christ they would know also the truth, after which, as after freedom, every man who is not utterly lost has a deep constitutional longing, and this living truth would make them free from the bondage of sin and error; while the truth considered merely as a thought of the mind would be utterly powerless. The same liberating effect which is here ascribed to the truth, is in John 8:36 ascribed to Christ.”—E. D. Y.]

[The truth will make you free, ἡἀλήθειαἐλευθερώσειὑμᾶς. Comp. John 8:36 : “If the Son make you free, ye will be free indeed,” ὄντωςἐλεύθεροι. Christ associates liberty always with the truth, which He is Himself, and presents the truth as the cause, and liberty as the effect. So also Paul speaks of liberty always in this positive, highest and noblest sense, liberty in Christ, the glorious liberty of the children of God, liberty from the bondage of sin and error, comp. Romans 8:21; 2 Corinthians 3:17; Galatians 2:4; Galatians 5:1; Galatians 5:13; James 1:25; 1 Peter 2:12. Man is truly free when he is released from abnormal foreign restraints and moves in harmony with the mind and will of God as his proper element. “Deo service vera libertas est.”—P. S.]

John 8:33. They answered him, We are Abraham’s seed (or, offspring).—Here comes the turning-point. Christ has openly told them that He would redeem them spiritually from sin by the truth, and in this sense make them free; and now they see their misapprehension of His former words. But in bitter vexation they plunge into a new mistake, supposing that Christ had their political bondage in view, and would require them to console themselves under their political oppression with the enjoyment of spiritual truth. Hence, instead of explaining: Thou shouldst free us from the domination of the Romans, they explain with insulted pride, that they are already free; they have never been any man’s slaves. This answer contains (1) an unbelieving denial of their spiritual servitude; for they studiously avoid the spiritual meaning of the words of Jesus; (2) a revolutionary, chiliastic protest against the idea that they acknowledged the dominion of the Romans, or that they could, as the words of Jesus implied, console themselves under it with spiritual elevation. This breaks again the scarcely formed union with Christ. This sharp contrast in the same Jews between a great demonstration of submission to Jesus and a hostility ready to stone Him,—this reaction of sentiment, coming the moment they were undeceived concerning their chiliastic expectations, appears repeatedly in the Gospel of John in significant gradations. It has already come distinctly to view John 6:30 (comp. John 8:15); and in John 10:31 (comp. John 8:24) it is still more glaring than here.

If these historical points are not duly considered, it must seem strange that the same Jews who had just believed in a mass, should so soon relapse into the bitterest unbelief. Hence many have supposed that here other Jews of the mass, quite distinct from those believing ones, now come forward and take up the conversation (Augustine, Calovius, etc., Lücke et al.). Tholuck: “It is far more likely that the same adversaries who have hitherto been in view, the Ἰουδαῖοι, are the subject of ἀπεκρίθησαν. Before the believing hearers speak, some of the rulers interpose, to repel the supposed slander upon the whole people.” This would imply an inaccuracy of expression. On the contrary, according to the narrative of the evangelist, they are manifestly the same to whom Jesus had spoken, and ἀπεκρίθησεν cannot be translated: it was answered. Justly, therefore, Chrysostom, Maldonatus, Bengel, and others, have taken them to be the same. Chrysostom gave the sufficient interpretation: Κατέπεσεν εὐθέως αὐτῶν ἡ διάνοια• τοῦτο δὲ γέγονεν ἀπὸ τοῦ πρὸς τὰ κοσμικὰ ἐπτοῆσθαι . [“Their belief immediately gave way; and that because of their eagerness after worldly things.”] It seems transparent (1) that Jesus in His reply, John 8:34, to those who speak in John 8:33, simply pursues the discourse He had begun in John 8:31-32; and (2) that His suggestion of the need of being made free, John 8:32, was intended to test the sincerity, or provoke the latent insincerity, of the faith of the persons of John 8:30-31. Contrary to Dr. Tholuck’s remark above, the evangelist has here very accurately designated the interlocutors, John 8:31, as Jesus and those Jews who believed on Him. Meyer suggests that “the πολλοί, John 8:30, are many among the hearers in general; among these ‘many’ were some hierarchical Jews, and to these Jesus speaks in John 8:31.” There probably was this difference among the believing many; but it is hardly in John’s view here. Hengstenberg, who agrees on this point with Tholuck, thinks “John was quite too much intent upon reality than to ascribe faith to such murderous enemies of Christ as these, on the ground of a mere fleeting emotion.” But this very consideration might work the other way: the Evangelist would take even a transient and impure faith for what it is worth as faith for the time. This great relapse from a flash of faith into deepened darkness of unbelief may be just the “reality” on which John is intent. [Of recent expositors Olshausen, Meyer, Stier, Alford, Ellicott (“Life of Christ”), J. J. Owen, and others, take the same view with Dr. Lange.—E. D. Y.]

Ibid. We are Abraham’s seed.—These words are put as the foundation of what follows: And were never in bondage (never yielded ourselves as bond-servants). Because they were Abraham’s seed (on the strength of many Old Testament passages like Genesis 22:17; Genesis 17:16), they claimed, according to Jewish theology, not only freedom, but even dominion over the nations. As πώποτε includes the whole past, these words can only mean: Often as we have been under oppression (under Egyptians, Babylonians, Syrians), we have never acknowledged any oppressor as master, but have always submitted only from necessity, reserving our right to freedom, and striving after it. This reservation carried the spirit and design of revolution, and afterwards, in the Jewish war, acted it out in the Zealots and Sicarii (Joseph. De bello Jud., VII:8, 6).

This extremely simple state of the case many interpreters have lost sight of, failing to distinguish between a bondage de facto and a bondage de jure; hence a list of mistaken explanations (specified by Tholuck, p250). Tholuck, referring to my Leben Jesu, II:2, John 968: “They were as far from acknowledging subjection to Rome, as modern Rome is from acknowledging secular relations which contradict its hierarchical consciousness.” “Only as a domination de facto, and not de jure, does even Josephus represent to them the Roman domination, on the prudential principle of yielding to superior force (De bello Jud. V:9, 3). And to this day it stands among the fifteen benedictions which should be said every morning: ‘Blessed art Thou, that Thou hast not made me a slave.’ Schülchan Aruch. tr. Orach Chajim, fol10, John 3. The meanest laborer who is of the seed of Abraham, is like a king, says the Talmud.”^[FN62]

John 8:34. Whosoever committeth sin [πᾶς ὁ ποιῶν τὴν ἁμαρτίαν, living in the practice of sin], is a slave of sin.—A solemn declaration, enforced with: Verily, verily. In these words Jesus utterly expels the political question from His scope. He states first the principle, then the application. The committing of sin is to be taken with emphasis; He whose tendency and habit is to commit sin;^[FN63] which may be applied in a wide sense to every man born of the flesh ( Romans 7:14), in the narrower sense to the evil propension of the earthly-minded ( John 3:20; 1 John 3:8). He is the servant, the slave, of sin; fallen into the worst conceivable bondage, or rather the only real bondage; the man being even at heart a slave, whereas in other sorts of servitude the man may himself be free within, though in outward bonds. And the application was obvious. Jesus implied that they, not only for being born of the flesh, but for being carnally-minded and practically hostile to the truth, committed sin. The hint that they were therefore in the hardest slavery, and in the utmost need of liberation by the truth which they despised, the Lord in the sequel turns gradually into a decided opinion. Comp. Romans 6:17; Romans 7:14, if. “Analogous instances from the classics see in Wetstein; from Philo, in Lösner, p149.” Meyer. [“The mere moral sentiment of which this is the moral expression, was common among the Greek and Roman philosophers.” Alford.—P. S.]

John 8:35. And the bondman abideth not in the house for ever.—The thought takes its turn from the legal relations of civil life

The bond-servant is not an organic member of the household, has no inheritance, and can be expelled or sold, Genesis 21:10; Galatians 4:30. According to the law of Moses the Hebrew servant must be set free in the seventh year, if he desire; but even if he wishes to remain servant of the house, he does not thereby become a member of the family, Exodus 21:1 ff. To this legal status of the servant, however, as not a permanent member of the household, Jesus gives an allegorical meaning. And in so doing He goes upon a presumption, where expositors readily incline to see a jump. He who is the servant of sin, Isaiah, under the dispensation of the law, an involuntary subject of the law; therefore a slave of the letter; and he who is such a slave of the letter, is a slave of sin. Paul also goes on this presumption in Galatians 3:10. The slave of the letter, therefore, being a slave of sin, abides not in the house of God, the theocracy. The application is obvious: In the kingdom of God there have been hitherto children and servants ( Galatians 3:22; Galatians 4:1); the servants at this time are the unbelieving Jews; they are one day driven out ( Matthew 8:12; Romans 9:31; Galatians 4:30). Not all Israel, but only the unbelieving portion; of these, who treat the law as a mere statute, a slavery to the letter, which corresponds with the bondage of sin, it is declared that they hold no relation of affinity and sonship to the master of the house. The reference of the servant to Moses, propounded by Chrysostom and Euthymius, belongs to a different train of thought and a different aspect of the servant, Hebrews 3:5.^[FN64] The house; typically denoting the royal family of the Lord, the household of God, Psalm 23:6; Psalm 27:4.

The son abideth forever [viz., in the house.]—He is by blood one with the house and heir of the house. This point of law is also a similitude, expressing the perpetual dwelling and ruling of Christ in the kingdom of God. As the son is spoken of in the singular, the word cannot be taken to imply a class of men who are morally and religiously free. And in fact the children of the house themselves, under the Old Testament economy, not having attained their maturity, are put under the same law with the proper alien slaves.^[FN65]

[The contrast is here between bondage to sin and a freedom to which even the children of the house of God could attain only in a new stage, a manhood, of spiritual life; and into this new stage of full-grown sonship they, and much more those who had let themselves down into servitude, could come only in Christ, the Son of God. There were no sons, whose position would afford, except prospectively, a general maxim of the kind here before us. Even the children differed not yet from servants, though they were not servants of sin. While, therefore, the word son not directly denoting Christ, but being used generically, might properly be printed both here and in the verse following without a capital, Dr. J. J. Owen’s remark upon it in this verse is unwarrantable, and in the next inconsistent: “The word son improperly commences with a capital in our common version, as though it referred to the Son of God. It stands here opposed to servant, and is generically put for all those born to a state of freedom, and consequently heirs to the paternal inheritance and privileges. In the next verse the word Son is properly capitalized.”—E. D. Y.].

John 8:36. If then the Son make yon free.^[FN66]—A new legal principle is here again presupposed by this expression. The son can give servants their freedom; and he can receive them to membership in the house, as adopted brothers, and to participation in his inheritance. The spiritual application which Jesus makes of this principle stops with the first point. The house of God has its son; and this son must make the servants in the house of God free, before any true freedom can be spoken of among you.

Note, that He speaks primarily only of the son of the house, not of the Son of God, and that He does not designate Himself as the son (comp. John 5). But His meaning, that He is the son of the house, and as such the Son of God, the only one who is spiritually free and can give spiritual freedom, stands out clearly enough. The sentence is so framed, that it may be taken as containing at once the condition of the true freedom for Israel, a prophecy concerning the believing portion of Israel, and a warning and threatening for the unbelieving portion.

Ye will be free indeed [ὅντωςἐλεύθεροι].—As opposed to their visionary, fanatical effort after external, political freedom in their spiritual bondage. Without the real freedom they could neither attain, nor maintain, nor enjoy the outward; while the inward freedom must ultimately bring about the outward. The fact that the son appears as the liberator, instead of the lord of the house himself, agrees with the figure; all depends in this case on what he is willing to do in regard to his hereditary right in the servants. Comp. John 10:26-27.

John 8:37. I know that ye are Abraham’s seed; but ye seek to kill me.—The acknowledgment of their claim to natural descent from Abraham serves only to strengthen the reproof that follows. What a contrast: Abraham’s seed, murderers of Christ! Christ can charge them with seeking to kill Him: (1) because they are already turned into an apostasy from Him, which cannot stop short of deadly enmity; (2) because they are impelled by the chiliastic idea of Christ, which leads in the end to the crucifixion of Christ; (3) because they go back to the hierarchical opposition, which has already determined His death.

Because my word maketh no progress in you.—Χωρεὶν: to make way, go through, encompass. Metaphorically: to come to something, to succeed, to make progress. The last meaning is the most probable here. These adversaries are the persons in view; hence ἐν ὑμῖν cannot mean among you (does not take effect: Luther; has no success: Lücke). In you: (a) Finds no room, gains no ground in you. Origen, Chrysostom, Beza, et al. Meyer says, it cannot mean this; Tholuck favors this meaning; and Origen and Chrysostom ought to have known the admissible use of the word. Yet this thought must then be reduced to: (b) Finds no entrance into you (Nonnus, Grotius, Luthardt, Tholuck). But then the accusative [or εἰς ὑμᾶς] would be expected. Better, therefore, De Dieu and Meyer: It makes no progress in you. It does not thrive in you. This, in fact, Christ has just had experience of with them. They have first misunderstood His word, then loose hold of it again. This then turns into an opposition, which by the strength of its spirit and its reaction (“he that is not with Me,” &c.) must pass into deadly enmity.

John 8:38. I speak what I have seen with the (my) Father.—The contrast between Him and them is threefold: 1. My Father, your father (though the verbal antithesis here is critically doubtful; see the Text. and Gram. Notes.) 2. He acts according to what He has clearly seen with His Father; they act according to what they have indistinctly heard from their father (and a further antithesis between the perfect ἑώρακα and the aorist ἠκούσατε.) Yet to limit ἐώρακα, with Meyer, to the pre-existent state of Christ, is partial.^[FN67] 3. His way towards them is to speak openly (λαλῶ) what He has known to be the will and decree of the Father; they, on the contrary, true to the manner of their father, even in moral concerns, go right on to malicious dealing. (“In οὖν there is a sad irony.”—Meyer.) It is the contrast, therefore, of a moral parentage, a moral instruction, a moral way, which in Christ issues in a purely spiritual witness-bearing, and one which in the Jews issues in a fanatical, murderous falling upon Christ. He speaks God’s judgment respecting them; they put Him on Satanic trial for death. The other result of Christ’s seeing: His doing what He sees His Father do, does not here come into view. His doing is all a doing good, and for this a susceptibility is prerequisite. But to His adversaries He says how it stands with them before the law and judgment of God. Who His Father Isaiah, and who is theirs, they must for the present forebode. Meyer: “He means, however, the devil, whose children in the ethical view they are, whereas He is in the metaphysical view and in reality the Son of God.” But the ethical view is also included. On the one hand, clear impression, free compliance, calm declaration; on the other, dark, sullen impulse, forced obedience, malignant practice. “Ποιεῖτε: constant conduct; including the seeking to kill, but not exclusively denoting that.” Meyer.

John 8:39. Abraham is our father.—The distinction between true children of Abraham and spurious children who therefore, as to their moral nature, must have another father, Christ has introduced by the foregoing sentence. They suspect the stinging point of His distinction; hence their proud assertion, which calls forth the Lord’s denial: If ye were Abraham’s children. In the spiritual sense [children in moral character and habits, as distinct from seed or mere natural descent, John 8:37.—P. S.] Ye would do the works of Abraham, works of faith, above all the work of faith. [τέκνα and ἔργα are correlative.] Abraham had a longing for the coming of Christ, John 8:56. “Just as Paul does in Romans 9:8, Jesus here distinguishes the ethical posterity as τέκνα from the physical as σπέρμα.” Tholuck. [So also Meyer and Alford.—P. S.] Επέρμα, seed, is rather used to designate Abraham’s posterity as a unit, Galatians 3:16.

John 8:40. But now ye seek to kill me.—The very opposite of Abraham’s spirit. The Lord does not yet characterize their murderous plot as a killing of the Christ; this alone condemns them, that they wished to kill in Him a Prayer of Manasseh, and a man who had spoken to them the truth, who did nothing more but told the truth which He had heard from God, and therefore stood as a prophet.^[FN68] The counterpart is Abraham with his benevolent spirit in general, with his homage for Melohizedek, and with his sparing of Isaac when God interposed.

[A Prayer of Manasseh, ἄνθρωπον, with reference to παρὰ τοῦ θεοῦ. This self-designation of Christ as a Prayer of Manasseh, a human being, implies all that is essential to our nature. It occurs nowhere else, but instead of it the frequent title the Son of Prayer of Manasseh, with the definite article, which at the same time elevates Him above the ordinary level of humanity, λελάληκα, the first person, according to Greek rule, see Buttmann, N. T. Gr. p241. This did not Abraham. Litotes, ἐποίησε, fecit (not fecisset), a statement of fact all the more stinging. A reference to Abraham’s treatment of the Angel of Jehovah, Genesis 18 (Lampe, Hengstenberg), is not clear.—P. S.]

John 8:41. Ye do the works of your father.—Thus much is now perfectly manifest: They have, in respect to moral character, some other father than Abraham, who is exactly the opposite of them in spirit. The deeds of that father they do; that Isaiah, they do according to his deeds, and they do according to his bidding; they do his deeds in his service.

We were not born of fornication.—They seem to suspect the spiritual intent of Christ’s words, yet they avoid it by at first standing upon the literal interpretation of them, that they may then immediately save themselves by a bold spring to the spiritual. In the first instance, therefore, they say: We are not bastards fathered upon Abraham, but genuine offspring of Abraham (bastards were excluded from the congregation, Deuteronomy 23:2). But they intend thereby at the same time to say; We are not idolaters (Grotius, Lampe, Lücke); as is evident from their next words: We have one Father, God.—Their genuine descent from Abraham, is supposed to involve their having God for their Father, in the spiritual sense; and when they speak of Him as the one Father, the ἕνα is also emphatic.

Accordingly they intend to say: We (ἡμεῖς, with proud emphasis) are not like the heathen, who are born of whoredom, in apostasy from God ( Hosea 2:4; [ Ezekiel 20:30; Isaiah 57:3]), and have many gods for their spiritual fathers (as they charged especially the Samaritans); bodily and spiritually we are free from the reproach of adulterous birth.^[FN69] Children of Abraham, children of God, Deuteronomy 32:6; Isaiah 63:16; Malachi 2:10; Romans 4:16; Galatians 4:23. The position: God is our father, is therefore in no opposition to the paternity of Abraham. The reference of Euthymius Zigabenus to the contrast of Isaac and Ishmael is unwarrantable. [For the Jews would not call Abraham’s connection with Hagar one of πορνεία, which implies several fathers, but one mother.] It is obvious that with their appeal to the fatherhood of God they wish to crowd Jesus from His position; whether they at the same time intended an allusion to the birth of Jesus (Wetstein and others) is doubtful. In their monotheistic pride they could boast of being the children of God, even while the accusations of the prophets, that Israel was of Gentile whoredom ( Ezekiel 16:3; see Tholuck, p254), were in their mind; and we already know how little the Jewish fanaticism felt bound by the Scriptures.

John 8:42. If God were your father, ye would love me.—Emphatic: Ye would have (long ago) learned to love Me;^[FN70] that Isaiah, being kindred in spirit and life. Luthardt: This would be the ethical test. From the fact, therefore, that they do not love Him [the Son of God, the Beloved of the Father], He can infer with certainty their ungodly mind and nature. Proof: For I (ἐγώ) proceeded forth and am come from God.—His consciousness is the clear mirror, the true standard. He is certain (1) that He proceeded forth in His essence and in His personality from God, ontologically and ethically; (2) that also, in His appearance and mission among them, in His coming like a prophet to them, He came from God.^[FN71] But again, He is certain of this because He came not of Himself, i. e. because He knew Himself to be pure from all egotistic motives (love of pleasure, love of honor, love of power; see the history of the temptation, Matthew 4); and because He was conscious of being sent by God, i.e. of being actuated by divine motives. Nothing but this alternative was conceivable: from Himself, or from God, ( John 7:18; John 7:28); no third origin (Meyer) is supposable.

John 8:43. Why do ye not understand my speech?—Λαλιά, in distinction from λογος; the personal language, the mode of speech, the familiar tone and sound of the words, in distinction from their meaning [ John 12:48 : ὁ λόγος ὅν ἐλάλησα; comp. Philippians 1:14; Hebrews 13:7]. From its original idea of talk, babble, λαλιά^[FN72] here preserves the element of vividness, warmth, familiarity. It is the φωνή, the tone of spirituality and tone of love in the shepherd-voice of Christ.^[FN73] They are so far from recognizing this “loving tone,” that they are incapable of even listening to the substance of His words with a pure, undistracted, spiritual ear. Fanaticism is characterized by “false hearing and words;” primarily by false hearing. Our Lord means unprejudiced, kindly-disposed hearing and attention; something more therefore, even here, than the general power to understand, which is expressed by γινώσκετε, and, in the first instance, something less than the willing hearing which is the beginning of faith itself. To take λαλιά and λόγος as equivalent, and to lay stress on ἀκούειν, and make it the condition precedent to γινώσκειν (as Origen and others do), in the first place ignores the distinction of the two meanings of λέγειν and λαλεῖν, which distinctly runs through this Gospel, and in the second place it overlooks the language: οὐ δύνασθε ἀκούειν. The point here is an ability to hear the λόγος, to which the recognition of the λαλιά is the condition precedent. We therefore, with Calvin, take the ὅτι as inferential, equivalent to ὥστε, not with Luther as meaning for. Manifestly δύνασθε is to be understood ethically, not, with Hilgenfeld, in a Gnostic, fatalistic sense (see Tholuck). The lively emotion in the painful interrogatory utterance of these words introduced the solemn declaration following.

John 8:44. Ye are of the father who is the devil.—[Of the (spiritual or moral) fatherhood or paternity of the devil, ἐκτοῦπατρὸςτοῦδιαβόλου. This is the most important doctrinal statement of Christ concerning the devil, teaching soberly and solemnly without figure of speech: (1) the objective personality of the devil; (2) his agency in the fall of the human race, and his connection with the whole history of sin as the father of murder and falsehood; (3) his own apostasy from a previous normal state in which he was created; (4) the connection of bad men with the devil.—ὑμεῖς with great emphasis, ye who boastfully claim to be lineal children of Abraham and spiritual children of God, are children of His great adversary, the devil. τοῦ διαβόλου is in apposition to πατρός.—P. S.] Not: Of the father of devils (plural τῶν διαβόλων: Grotius); nor the Gnostic absurdity: “of the father of the devil” [the demiurge], that is the God of the Jews [Hilgenfeld, Volkmar]; also not: “of your father, the devil” (Lücke, [De Wette, E. V, Alford^[FN74], Wordsworth]); but: “of a father who is the devil” (Meyer). The idea is clearly confined to ethical fatherhood by the placing of father first; so that John could not have written simply ἐκ τοῦ διαβόλου. And the lusts [τὰςἐπιθυμίαςτοῦπατρόςὑμῶνθέλετεποιεῖν]—Plural; primarily meaning not merely thirst for blood [but this is included]. According to Matthew 4, these are of three main classes [love of pleasure, love of honor, love of power.—P. S.]. These lusts of the devil are the main springs of the life of his like-minded children, who, with their captive propensity, desire (θέλετε) to do them.^[FN75]