The Children of Abraham
31 To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. 32 Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
33 They answered him, “We are Abraham’s descendants[a] and have never been slaves of anyone. How can you say that we shall be set free?”
34 Jesus replied, “I tell you the truth, everyone who sins is a slave to sin. 35 Now a slave has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs to it forever. 36 So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. 37 I know you are Abraham’s descendants. Yet you are ready to kill me, because you have no room for my word. 38 I am telling you what I have seen in the Father’s presence, and you do what you have heard from your father.[b]”
39 “Abraham is our father,” they answered.
“If you were Abraham’s children,” said Jesus, “then you would[c] do the things Abraham did. 40 As it is, you are determined to kill me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God. Abraham did not do such things. 41 You are doing the things your own father does.”
“We are not illegitimate children,” they protested. “The only Father we have is God himself.”
The Children of the Devil
42 Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God and now am here. I have not come on my own; but he sent me. 43 Why is my language not clear to you? Because you are unable to hear what I say. 44 You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desire. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies. 45 Yet because I tell the truth, you do not believe me! 46 Can any of you prove me guilty of sin? If I am telling the truth, why don’t you believe me? 47 He who belongs to God hears what God says. The reason you do not hear is that you do not belong to God.”Apparently, according to a message by John Piper that I was just reading, there are quite a few people who feel that the gospel of John misquotes or outright makes up things that Jesus said (or allegedly said). These people feel that John (or perhaps some other author, since they can't even agree that it was John who wrote this) was stirring up further problems between the Jews and the Christians with the things he has Jesus saying in this passage. Basically, they say that the passage is anti-Semitic. I don't see it that way. There are things in the passage directed primarily at the Jewish people, it's true, insofar as they are talking in part of the passage about being Abraham's children. However, the portion that talks about being the children of the devil is applicable to Jews and Gentiles alike, so I'm not sure why scholars are so adamant that this passage is directed at the Jewish people, therefore Jesus wouldn't have said it, therefore John (or someone else) made it up. Perhaps they have nothing better to contemplate. Anyway, a small portion of the message by John Piper says this:
Paul teaches plainly that all unbelievers are in the sway of the devil: "The god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers" (2 Corinthians 4:4). And all unbelievers—including all of us before we were rescued by pure grace—are "children of wrath" and "dead in our trespasses and sins" (Ephesians 2:3–4). The New Testament as a whole, not just John's Gospel, sees in the ongoing resistance to Jesus, whether in Jew or Gentile, the deadness and blindness of sin and the accompanying work of Satan. John 8 is not unique. We need to see that this criticism of John's Gospel is far more radical than it may seem. It is a deep opposition, not to one imbalanced writer, but to the pervasive diagnosis of the human problem in the New Testament. The Gospel of John is not an imbalanced distortion of Jesus. What is said of Jews in John 8 is true of me and you and all people apart from sovereign grace.
So, yes, Jewish leaders are called sons of the devil in John 8. But woe to us Gentiles if we read this and do not see the tragedy of unbelief rather than the bitterness of anti-Semitism. Jesus is not addressing a Jewish problem, but a human problem. Woe to us if we do not see the Son of God at work like a doctor, diagnosing and exposing the horrific nature of ourdisease and our enemy—and offering himself as the one cure in the world, even to those whom he knows will kill him. Verse 36: "If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed." (emphasis mine)
Happy Thursday!
Tomorrow's scripture focus: John 8:48-59.
1 comment:
It's exposing our sin for what it is, and God's grace for how amazing it is. Great thoughts here.
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