The Gospel of John - Outline Part 23 - A Question of Parentage

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John 8:31-59 – A Question of Parentage

EXPLANATION

Jesus’s conversation with the Jews continues.  Immediately, we are confronted by an enigma.  The last verse of the previous section, verse 30, proclaimed that “many believed” in Jesus.  Then, in the next verse, John clarifies that Jesus is still speaking to this same group “who had believed” in Him.  The Greek verb root behind both of these is “pisteuo”, to believe.  It is often used of those who have truly believed by placing their faith and trust in Christ (e.g. Peter’s confession of faith in 6:69).  However, that presents a problem of interpretation here.  The reason is that the clear contextual implication from the remainder of this chapter is that these Jews were definitely not true believers. 

As will become apparent momentarily, when Jesus pressed them to cast aside their cultural and religious baggage and accept His extreme message, the Jews as a group refused to listen to Him.  And, in fact, they attempted to kill Him.  The theological straw that broke the camel’s back for these people was Jesus’s insistence that He, in His messiahship, was God.  This the Jews could not tolerate.  Yet, clearly from the OT the Messiah is identified as God.  Therefore, the Jews were refusing to believe the witness of their own Scriptures that urged them to accept this man from Galilee as their promised Messiah.  And in rejecting the full revelation of the Messiah they were incapable of being redeemed by Him.  The only logical conclusion from these facts is that this group of people, in spite of their description as “believing”, clearly were not exhibiting authentic saving faith in their Savior.

It could be that theirs was a superficial belief, Jesus knew that, and therefore He decided to double down on His rhetoric so as to expose their unbelieving hearts.  Never one to pull His doctrinal punches, Christ accomplished this by calling into question the parentage of the Jews.  To use a modern expression, He called their momma names.  Only in this case, it was their papa that came under fire.

This back and forth arguing is clear in the text.  Jesus accused them of being slaves to sin.  The Jews responded by calling upon their Abrahamic heritage.  Jesus acknowledged their biological descent from Abraham, but then turned around and pointed out that, ancestry or no ancestry, they were not acting like Abraham, because he did not reject the truth of God as these Jews were.  Obstinately digging in their heels, the people then appealed to God as their Father.  Jesus refused to give them even that satisfaction.  He identified their real father as the devil rather than God.

This was too much for the Jews to take.  We can almost see the blood rising in their veins as they began to resort to ad hominen attacks against Jesus’s character.  They called Him a Samaritan (a terrible epithet for the Jews of that day) as well as demon possessed.  The Lord did not back down.  He continued to press His attack, almost as if He was deliberately pushing the Jews to the brink of an explosion.  He offered eternal life to anyone who would accept His teaching.

And, finally, we come to the point of no return.  Throughout this entire debate, Jesus has hinted, suggested, and alluded to His own parentage as well as the Jews.  However, He did not come right out and stake His claim of deity.  Until now, that is.  He told His opponents that Abraham looked forward joyously to Jesus’s day.  The Jews fired back that He was not even fifty years old, so how could He claim that Abraham had seen Him.  Jesus’s response sent them over the edge.  He said that before Abraham even existed, He existed as God.  Having heard what was blasphemy to their unbelieving ears, the Jews prepared to stone Jesus.  But, He avoided them and left the temple.

APPLICATION

There is simply no way around the deity of Jesus that is presented in this passage.  There have been people throughout church history who have denied the historic confession of faith that holds to the deity of Christ.  They have offered various intelligent sounding and supposedly exegetical arguments to deny this basic tenet of the Christian religion.  Yet, all of that withers and dies in the face of Jesus’s insistent and dogmatic claim to deity.  This passage wonderfully illustrates the Lord’s absolute refusal to back down.  He just kept stirring the pot, round and round, pressing the Jews back on their heels, never allowing them to catch their breath and mount a serious counter-attack to His message.  All of this climaxed in verse 58 with Christ’s self-identification as the self-existent I AM of Exodus 3:14. Jesus did not use the past, but rather the present tense of the Greek state of being verb.  This was a clear allusion to God’s self-identification to Moses at the burning bush.  Jesus’s meaning was clear to His audience.  They knew exactly what He was saying.  This is apparent from their reaction.  They picked up stones with which to stone Him to death.  This was the prescribed punishment in the Law for blasphemy, which is what the Jews interpreted Jesus’s words as being.

As Christians, it is important to know why we believe what we believe.  It may be enough to simply have a “child-like faith” when times are peaceful, life is easy, and one is surrounded by like-minded friends and family members.  But when opposition comes, difficulties arise, and we are alone facing down the enemies of God we had better have a strong spiritual backbone behind our faith.  A passage such as this one is critical to nail down those fundamentals of our system of belief.  We need to know it and have it prepared and ready for use in circumstances where our faith is tested and we are confronted with the question of whether we really believe what we profess.