5:38a
nor does His word abide in you: The Greek clause that Berean Standard Bible translates as nor does His word abide in you means “you do not believe God’s word.” The word abide means “stay” or “live.” The idea here is that they do not love God’s Word or consider it special. As a result, they did not give it a special place to live in their lives or hearts. The religious leaders studied God’s Word and said that they followed it, but Jesus said that they did not really follow it.
Here are other ways to translate this clause:
his word has found no home in you (Revised English Bible)
-or-
You do not keep his message in your hearts. (Good News Translation)
-or-
His teaching does not live in you (New Century Version)
His word: The phrase His word here means “the word/message from God.”
5:38b
because: The Greek conjunction that the Berean Standard Bible translates as because connects this clause with the previous clause. It introduces evidence that the Jewish leaders did not believe in God’s word. See the General Comment on 5:38a–b.
you do not believe the One He sent: The pronoun you is plural. The Jewish leaders did not want to believe Jesus, God’s messenger. Jesus did not say that they did not believe in him, but rather that they did not believe him. That means that they did not believe what he said. And that would also mean that they did not believe or trust in Jesus.
the One He sent: Jesus was referring to himself. It may be necessary to make this explicit. For example:
you do not believe me—the one he sent to you (New Living Translation (2004))
-or-
you do not believe me, his messenger
General Comment on 5:38a–b
5:38b gives the evidence that what Jesus said in 5:38a was true. Consider how you can translate this logical connection. For example:
38a Clearly you do not believe God’s message, 38b because you do not believe the one whom he sent.
-or-
38b Because you refuse to believe/accept the messenger God sent, 38a it is clear that you do not believe/accept his message.
© 2020 by SIL International®
Made available under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License (CC BY-SA) creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0.
All Scripture quotations in this publication, unless otherwise indicated, are from The Holy Bible, Berean Standard Bible.
BSB is produced in cooperation with Bible Hub, Discovery Bible, OpenBible.com, and the Berean Bible Translation Committee.