John 8

In the previous chapter of John’s gospel, at the Feast of Tabernacles, that feast that celebrates God dwelling with His people, our Savior cried out in the temple in Jerusalem, that whoever would believe in Him, out of his heart would flow rivers of living water. It is from the heavenly temple of God that a river of life flows. Jesus is the Temple of the Holy Spirit, and He has promised that in Him we shall truly be the temple of the Holy Spirit, of which He is the Cornerstone. Here in John 8, Jesus says, “I am the Light of the world.” He also says that His being the Light of the world will mean something to those who are united to Him. We will walk in light, and have the light of life through our union with Him. In saying these things, Jesus identifies Himself publicly as much more than a teacher, or even a prophet. He is instructing anyone with ears to hear, that they should be spiritually united with Him, in order to share in the benefits of intimate connection with the One who is not only fully man, but is also fully God.

When the Son of God came to save, He came to a world that was not universally willing to receive Him. As His claims concerning His identity became clearer to people, the antagonism of those who would not believe also became more obvious. At root, Jesus claimed to be true, and especially that He was true to the Father in the fullest meaning of those words. Those who rejected Him insisted that He was just plain false. He claimed that what He was saying was precisely what the Father would say, because these two are one. Their agreement was not a compromise by two differing parties, but the perfect eternal determination of the one voice of God. The mind of Jesus is the heavenly mind, the divine mind. He told those who were disturbed by His words, “Unless you believe that I-AM, you will die in your sins.” He also spoke of His being “lifted up,” without saying what those words meant on this occasion, though we learn exactly what they mean in John 12:32. What is clear here is that Jesus is definitively asserting that He always does the things that are pleasing to the Father. It is this sinless Son of God who would be lifted up on the cross to die for our sins.

There were some, we are told, who believed in Him as He was saying these things. His instruction to them was clear and wonderfully simple. “Abide in my Word, and you are truly my disciples.” Many people may be interested in the Word of this Man who makes such great claims of connection with the Father, but some stay with that Word, and live in that Word, they settle their lives upon that Word, and they are called disciples, learners, followers of Jesus Christ. To them, Christ made a great promise. “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” We were created to be free, but sin has made us slaves, and foolish slaves at that. Foolish slaves of sin think that they have reached the height of freedom when they are perfectly autonomous, free to choose what they want. Yet when they choose sin, they are not free at all. Real freedom comes through finding our place as servants of God, and even sons of God, through Jesus Christ our Lord, and then in pursuing the fullest obedience to God’s commandments from a heart that has been freed by God to willingly and eagerly do what we were created to do. The agent of such a change of life in a human being can been none other that God Himself, but He indicates here that He does this work through people coming to know the truth as they hear and even abide in the Word of Christ.

It is very plain that Jesus was insisting that God was His Father. Those who rejected this Word, made two claims about themselves. They first claimed that Abraham was their Father, and then insisted that God was their Father. Both of these claims were part of a larger effort to deny the claim of Jesus, that through His Word they could become free. Their response was very direct. As children of Abraham, and even children of God, they did not need this Jesus to make them free. They already were free.

The problem with this claim of freedom is that our sin is a plain fact, and the one who sins is not free, he is living a life against the will of the Father, because He is sinning against the Father. We can call that freedom, but it leads only to God’s judgment, and to be eternally judged by God is not to be free. By this understanding of freedom, there is only one Man who is free in Himself, and that Man is Jesus Christ, because Jesus did not sin. This free Man became the Servant of the Lord to win our true freedom. He died for sin that was not His own. But in that death, He won for us freedom in Him, just as we are the temple of God because He is the Temple of God, and we are the light of the world because He is the Light of the world.

If the enemies of Christ were really sons and followers of Abraham, and sons of followers of God, then they would have done what Abraham did. They would have heard the Word of God and believed. They showed themselves to be sons and followers of the devil, who rebelled against the Word of God. They needed the Son of God, the only One who was so radically free of sin, to become a sin offering for them, to atone for their sins, in order that they might truly be free, but they would not hear Him and believe. They could not bear to hear His Word.

Abraham did not hate the Messiah to come. Abraham did not resent Melchizedek, this mysterious Christ-like figure, the King of Righteousness, and the King of Peace who seemed to come out of nowhere. Abraham did not reject the Voice of God when God provided a Messiah-like ram in the thicket as a substitute for His Son Isaac. Abraham rejoiced to see the day of Jesus, because He knew that the Messiah was greater than Him. He believed and it was counted to Him as righteousness. When our Lord said to those against Him that day, “Before Abraham was, I-AM,” He stood on the truth that He not only knew Abraham, and that He knew God His Father, but that He was and is God forever. They knew He was saying this, so they picked up stones to stone Him as a blasphemer. We hear His Word, and we rejoice with Abraham. We are content to be united with Jesus Christ and to honor Him forever. Because He is the Son of God, we are sons of God through Him, for He was lifted up on the cross for our transgressions, and He was raised for our justification.