Charles Ellicott Commentary John 5:38

"And ye have not his word abiding in you: for whom he sent, him ye believe not." — John 5:38 (ASV)

Abiding in you.—This striking thought of the word taking up its dwelling in the mind, and forming the mind in which it dwells, is found only in John. (1 John 2:14; 1 John 2:24; 1 John 3:9; 1 John 3:17; and Note on John 6:36.) They had, indeed, the word of God, but they did not have it as an ever-living power within them.

They locked it up with sacred care in ark and synagogue, but it found no home in their innermost life and had no real power over their practice. They could take it up and put it down. It was something outside themselves.

Had it been in them, it would have produced in them a moral consciousness, which would have accepted, as being of the same nature as itself, every fuller revelation from God. Their own spirits, molded by the word of God dwelling in them, would have received the Word of God now among them. (Compare Excursus A: Doctrine of the Word.) The fact that they did not believe Him whom God sent (not “has sent”) was itself the proof that they did not have the abiding word.