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About Jesus - Steve Sweetman Previous Section - Chapter 8:42 - 47 Next Section - Chapter 9:1 - 12
The
Claims Of Jesus About Himself (ch.8:48 -58) The
Jews are furious at this point. In
verse 48 they ask Jesus, "aren’t we right in saying that you are
a Samaritan and demon-possessed?"
The Jews are wrong on both counts.
Jesus was not a Samaritan. The
Jews hated Samaritans more than they hated Romans because Samaritans
were once Jews who married into Gentile families. This would be just as
much of an insult as calling Jesus demon-possessed.
You can see by their question that the Jews lumped the Samaritans
in with demons. They hated
Samaritans that bad. Jesus
called the Jews the children of the devil, not the children of Abraham.
I see there question here in verse 48 as a reaction to this. Jesus
associates them with the devil so the Jews associate Jesus with demons.
Basically, they are saying, "you're the demonic one, not
us." In
verses 49 and 50 Jesus responds by saying that He is not
demon-possessed, and that He gives honour to God His Father, and His
Father wants to give glory to Him. We
see something in the relationship between the Father and Jesus that we
should see in our own relationships here on earth, and that is, that we
should be more interested in honouring one another than ourselves.
This does not come natural to human nature.
Submission to Jesus should begin to allow this to happen in our
lives. If we understand what
it means to honour Jesus, we will have a good understanding what it
means to honour one another. Again,
as we have been seeing throughout the book of John, John is majoring on
events that show us the deity of Christ.
That is to say, Jesus is God in human flesh, something false
teachers were denying when John wrote his account.
In
verse 50 Jesus says that God is the judge.
Ultimately, God is the ultimate universal judge. As seen in 1
Corinthians 15, after Jesus defeats every last enemy, including death,
He will give back the authority God has given Him.
In
verse 51 Jesus makes it clear again when He says, "If anyone keeps
my word, he will never see death."
When speaking of keeping Jesus’ word, Jesus is not only
speaking of obeying Him but guarding His words.
The picture that the Greek text portrays is a guarding on the
basis of trust and obedience. That
is to say, we trust what Jesus says, and we obey it.
Once obeying His word, we don’t tamper with it, or let anyone
else tamper with it. With
this in mind, we will have eternal life.
If we tamper with God’s word or lay aside our trust in it, we
will eventually loose eternal life.
Hosea 4:6 states that God's people are destroyed for lack of
knowledge. This is a real
important message for the Evangelical church today.
In
verses 52 and 53 the Jewish response to this was simply, "Who do
you think you are, offering eternal life?"
They ask if Jesus is greater than Abraham and the prophets who
have died. How could Jesus
be greater than these great heroes of In
verse 54 Jesus repeats Himself again. He says that He does not try to
get glory for Himself. Whatever
He does is not for self gratification, but to gratify His Father.
Again, modern day church leaders need to hear this truth. When
speaking of Jesus being glorified I believe that His ultimate
glorification came when He returned to Heaven to be with His Father.
The definition of the word "glory" can be seen in John
17:1 when Jesus asked His Father to glorify Him with the glory that they
once had when prior to being incarnated here on earth.
In
verse 55 Jesus gets very bold. He
says that He knows His Father and the Jews don’t, even though they
claim to know God through Abraham. Then
Jesus says that if He claimed not to know God, He’d be a liar like
them. He is calling these
Jewish leaders liars. These
are the words of the Son of God. Many
people today would have a hard time believing that Jesus would actually
say such words. We
need to understand that if Jesus was calling these people are liar; that
is a judgment call that He is making.
Now, a number of times Jesus has said that God is the judge, not
Him. How do we reconcile
that thought with the point that here Jesus made a judgment call.
God is the ultimate judge. He
will judge humanity in what has been called the White Throne Judgment as
we see in Revelation 20. Judging
in that sense of the word is different than making a judgment call as
Jesus made here. In
verse 56 Jesus says an interesting thing.
He says, "Abraham rejoiced to see my day, and saw it and was
glad." How did Abraham
see the days that Jesus lived on earth? I
believe he saw it through the eyes of faith.
He knew what God had promised Him, and since God made him a
promise, he was convinced that it would come true.
Though Abraham did not physically see the days of Jesus, those
days were as good as being in His life time because God had promised
that these days would come. If
God says something will happen, though it hasn’t happened yet, you
might as well count on it as if it has happened, because it will. If God
says something will be done, it is as good as done. Verse
57 is the Jewish response to these words.
They questioned the words of Jesus because they could not
understand how Jesus could have seen Abraham, not being more than 50
years old Himself. Once again, they think Jesus is insane or
demon-possessed. Verse
58 is very important and many sermons have been spoken from this text.
Jesus says, "Before Abraham was born, I am."
Normally someone would say, "Before he was, I was."
For example, a father would say, "Before my son was born I
was," as in, "was in existence."
But, Jesus doesn’t say, "Before Abraham was, I was."
He says, "Before Abraham was, I am."
He is mixing time and space with eternity in one sentence.
Abraham was born into time and space.
Jesus is always in the eternal present.
By saying "I am" and not "I was", tells us
that the past in human terms is just as real as the present.
There is no past, present, or future in eternity.
Even as Jesus lived His earthly life, He was an eternal being,
without having a past, present, or future.
Jesus is telling the Jews that He always existed.
He was never born or created, as God Himself is. He was in
existence before Abraham was even born. When
Jesus used the words "I am", the Jewish leaders knew exactly
what He was saying. These
words would have reminded them of Exodus 3:14 when God said, "I AM
that I AM." Jesus
was simply saying, "I AM God in human flesh." No wonder the
Jews were so angry.
At
this point the Jews had only one thing to do and that was to stone Jesus
for blasphemy, that is, making Himself equal with God, for that was the
penalty for blasphemy. Next Section - Chapter 9:1 - 12 Previous Section - Chapter 8:42 - 47
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