John Calvin Commentary John 7:16

"Jesus therefore answered them and said, My teaching is not mine, but his that sent me." — John 7:16 (ASV)

My doctrine is not mine. Christ shows that this circumstance, which was an offense to the Jews, was instead a ladder by which they should have risen higher to perceive the glory of God. It is as if He had said, “When you see a teacher not trained in human schools, know that I have been taught by God.”

For the reason the Heavenly Father determined that His Son should come from a mechanic’s workshop, rather than from the schools of the scribes, was so that the origin of the Gospel might be more evident, so that no one might think it had been fabricated on earth, or imagine that any human being was its author.

In the same way, Christ also chose ignorant and uneducated men to be His apostles and permitted them to remain for three years in profound ignorance. He did this so that, having instructed them in a single moment, He might bring them forward as new men, even as angels who had just come down from heaven.

But that of him who sent me. Meanwhile, Christ shows from where we should derive the authority of spiritual doctrine: from God alone. And when He asserts that His Father’s doctrine is not His own, He considers the capacity of His hearers, who had no higher opinion of Him than that He was a man.

By way of concession, therefore, He allows Himself to be regarded as distinct from His Father, but only so as to bring forward nothing but what the Father had commanded. The substance of what is stated is this: what He teaches in the name of His Father is not a human doctrine, nor did it originate from humans, and therefore it is not something that can be despised without punishment.

We see by what method He secures authority for His doctrine: by referring it to God as its Author. We also see on what ground, and for what reason, He demands that He should be heard: because the Father sent Him to teach. Both of these things should be possessed by anyone who takes upon himself the office of a teacher and wishes to be believed.