John 8:31-59

John 8:31-43     Problem of Taken-for-Granted Faith

31 So Jesus said to the Jews who believed in him, 

Jesus recognised the need to consolidate the hesitant and fragile faith of those who were beginning to be impressed by the influence he had on them.

Earlier in the discussion, the author had commented: A number of people in the crowd believed in him. They were saying, “When the Christ should come, would he do more signs than this one is doing?” [7:31]. Perhaps, the same motivation was shared by those to whom the author had just referred as the Jews who believed in him. They may not have been unlike the earlier ones of whom he had commented: … many trusted in what he said in light of the signs that he gave. But Jesus did not entrust himself to them [2:23-24]. In that case, they were people whose faith was still partial and superficial, motivated by signs. They were still captive to the assumptions and biases of the faith community to which they belonged, still under the powerful influence of the sin of the world.

The Jews who believed in him may not have been all that different from those believers who, in this contemporary context, see themselves as open-minded, well-intentioned and, perhaps, quietly self-satisfied and even self-congratulatory. They appreciate the importance of love, but fall short of accepting that the love that Jesus calls for is always and totally unconditional and non-selective, whatever the inevitable cost in a sin-scarred world..

The ensuing discourse would endeavour to explore what prevents people from accepting the clear message of Jesus in its stark realism. It would examine the power of unchallenged cultural mindsets and of generally accepted, and expected, behaviours to blind people to the obvious, and to dispose them, when expedience requires it, to violence for the sake of personal, family or national self-interest.


The Journey to Deeper Faith

The problem of Jesus’ contemporaries was the problem, also, of the believers in the author’s community. It is the problem of believers of all ages. Too easily, people’s faith can be simply the faith they have absorbed from the community to which they belong; it can be an unexamined faith, prone to the assumptions and biases of all human communities.

There is no substitute for personal and ever-deepening faith, the fruit of never-ending conversion. People grow and mature across life. Their faith needs to grow and to mature correspondingly. The eternal temptation of all believers is to assume that they already know the truth and need learn no more, or to rest complacent in the attitude that their religious community knows it for them. The problem confronting Jesus’ believing contemporaries, and that kept them from coming to deeper faith, was their over-reliance on their tradition.

Jesus sends his Spirit to the Church, precisely so that the Church can grow in its knowledge of the truth. Such growth is a never-ending process, conducted under the continuing guidance of the Spirit [16:13].


“If you persevere in my word, you will truly be disciples of mine.
32 Then you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”

In fashioning the dialogue as he did, the Beloved Disciple was writing for the sake of his beleaguered Christian community. They, too, were to be counted among the Jews who believed in Jesus. The Disciple wished to reassure them that, to the extent that they persevered (remained) in Jesus’ word, they would be true disciples; they would be in touch with the truth; and their life, in line with that truth, would be an experience of true freedom.


The Christian Community in a Secularised World

The influence of the surrounding culture is strong; and modern Christians cannot but feel its influence. To survive in such a world, Christians need to “persevere” in Jesus’ word. They need to spend time with him; they need to listen; they need to open themselves to the action of his Spirit deep within them. They need to “know the truth that makes them free”, not just theoretically, but existentially. However they do it, they need to pray.

To the extent that they do that, they experience a genuine personal closeness and intimacy with him; and become sensitised to recognise his presence and action both in their own lives and in the world around them. They truly become his disciples; they walk in his presence, under his gentle, life-giving influence. They develop a genuine openness to what is real. They move from the superficial and inconsequential to engage with genuine meaning. They come to “know the truth”.

Coming to freedom. As they engage with the deeper truth of themselves, they grow in awareness of their inner selves. They recognise their addictions and compulsions, their fears and their drives. Empowered by the compassionate and unconditional love of God, they come gently to own themselves as they are.  As they do so, they begin to find themselves growing in freedom to be and to become who they truly are. The truth makes them “free”; free to love.

Engaging the world. As community in process of transformation, they are enabled to make an impact on their world, similar to the one that Jesus had on his world. They challenge the world simply by their presence. Their love for each other and for their world becomes an empowering energy in its own right. Their practical action for justice and the environment is enriched and motivated, not by hostility or revenge, but by compassion and love.

Yet, as was the case with Jesus, a distracted world is not always receptive to the witness of the truly Christian community. And the community itself can fail to develop its potential or to respond faithfully to its mission.


Presuming Abraham as Father

33 They said to him, “We are descendants of Abraham,
and we have never been enslaved to anyone.  
How is it that you say,
‘You will become free’?”

Jesus’ comment had deeply challenged those Jews who believed in him. Instinctively, they took their descent from Abraham as setting them apart, and making them superior to the various cultures surrounding them. Comfortable in their sense of moral superiority, they found Jesus’ challenge confronting. They were surprised, and did not appreciate being challenged.

The problem was not exclusively theirs. It is the problem of all believers who feel proud of their faith tradition.

The dialogue continued with the issue of his hearers’ need to grow in freedom. Whatever about their past experiences of political slavery or their present political reality of foreign occupation, they seemed to be claiming that their spirits and consciences had never been enslaved.

As had been the picture so often during this discourse, the audience did not understand the freedom that Jesus offered. Their attention was arrested at the surface level of life and did not resonate with the deeper freedom from the sin at work in the world, to which Jesus referred.

Sensitivity to descent from Abraham had increased by the time that the Gospel came to be written. Jewish identity had become a burning issue throughout the Diaspora after the destruction of the nation as a political entity and of the temple in Jerusalem. Pharisees sought to reclaim the people’s identity by clinging to, and insisting on, the proud and familiar traditions from the past.

34 Jesus answered them, “Believe me,
all who commit sin are slaves to sin.
35 Slaves do not stay in the family home forever.  
It is the son who remains so forever.
36 So if the Son makes you free, you will be free. 

Freedom from the power of the world’s sin is a freedom constantly needing to be won by everyone. But it is a freedom found only in Jesus; only by continuing in his word. Only as people become sensitive to the truth of things do they see the world’s illusions for what they are.

37 I know that you are descendants of Abraham.
Yet you seek to kill me,
because my message has no place in you.

Jesus’ audience had been responsive to his signs, but they had still failed to listen carefully to what he sought to reveal. They were meshed in the dynamics of their world, subject to the influences of evil; they were unaware of the destructive forces active beneath the surface of their social interactions. Unmasked and unchecked, those forces were eventually murderous. Already, some of their sincerely religious and respected leaders had sought to kill Jesus [5:18]

The problem was that people were complacent in their ethnic and religious identity, descendants of Abraham, assuming that all was well, at least for them, and blind to the forces active in society.

38 I tell you what I have seen of my Father.  
You do what you have heard about your father.”
39 They said to him in reply, “Our father is Abraham.”

Jesus was referring to God, his Father, the source of his inspiration and, potentially, of theirs. But their minds were still caught in their proud focus on Abraham, their ancestral father.

Jesus said to them, “If you are children of Abraham,
do what Abraham did.
40 Right now you are seeking to kill me,
a man who has told you the truth he has heard from his Father.  
Abraham did not do that. 

Jesus needed to distinguish their undoubted physical relationship to Abraham from their moral and behavioural relationship to him. True children reproduce the behavioural standards of their fathers.  As Jesus had maintained earlier in the discourse regarding his own relationship to his God: ... of himself the son can do nothing except what he has seen his Father doing. Whatever he does, the son does similarly [5:19]. (Though the translation had applied the text directly to Jesus, Jesus may have been expressing a familiar proverb.)

Abraham had been a man who was not trapped in the here and now. He could hope; he could dream. He was a man in touch with the irrepressible human thirst for more and better.  Though his articulation of that hope was limited, he planted a seed that grew across the centuries, until it took definitive shape in the person and message of Jesus. True children of Abraham would know the same thirst and see its answer in Jesus.

Presuming God as Father

41 You do the deeds of your father.” 

By failing to live like Abraham, a man who dreamed and hoped for a blessed future, they were exhibiting their openness to another influence, another father. Jesus did not immediately identify the father he was referring to – but it was certainly not Abraham.

They said to him, “We were not born from fornication;
we have one Father, God.”

Feeling their orthodoxy somehow under attack, they instinctively fell back onto the defensive, and, resentful of the unsettling accusations of Jesus, proudly, and somewhat self-righteously, proclaimed their orthodox monotheism. 

42 Jesus said to them, “If God were your father,
you would love me,
for I have come from God and am present to him.  
Nor did I come of my own initiative,
but he sent me. 
43  Why do you not accept what I say?
Because you cannot hear my message.

Jesus’ problem was not so much what they claimed to believe, but what they in fact believed, and how they consequently chose to act. Not really knowing the God in whom they believed, and unwilling to open their minds to the reality revealed in Jesus, they were showing that the real power over their lives was not God but something else.


God as Father

Jesus’ hearers had all experienced paternity, being either fathers themselves or children of fathers. That human experience of fatherhood they projected onto God. The problem they confronted, as do all who call God Father, was that the fatherhood they knew was a tragically flawed fatherhood, a fatherhood distorted by the sin of the world. Fathers were men who were brothers before they ever became fathers. Their capacity to relate to children was already coloured and formed by their capacity to relate to others as brothers. Brotherhood, unfortunately, has been twisted by the inevitable competitiveness, rivalry and ultimate violence inherent in human relationships “from the beginning”. 

Given the distorted capacity for brotherhood, and, consequently, for fatherhood, inevitably people see the fatherhood of God through their own projections – a Father made in their image, caught up in arbitrary authority, conditional love and sanctions – partial, exclusive, dominating and even violent. Jesus would soon identify such fatherhood as the fatherhood of the Evil One, a “murderer ... liar and father of lying” [verse 44].

For Jesus, the recreation of the world would begin with his command to “love one another as I have loved you”. Such love is an unfamiliar love, almost inconceivable, and possible only through the empowerment made available in Jesus – a wholly new redefinition of true brotherhood. At the same time, Jesus would re-interpret the true nature of God. People can truly know God only by knowing Jesus, who is the perfect human revelation of God.


John 8:44-59     The Deeper Dynamic

44 You are from your father the devil
and you want to carry out the desires of your father.  
He was a murderer from the beginning.  
He did not stand firm in the truth,
because there was no truth in him.  
When he lies, he speaks in character,
because he is a liar and the father of lying.

It is important that readers realise that they are not being presented with an actual conversation. The text is a theological exploration of the mystery of human violence and blindness, seeking to address the question why Jesus was executed. Whatever about the venal attitudes of the high priesthood, Pharisees saw themselves as sincerely and religiously motivated leaders, and were respected as such by most Jews. What was it that blinded them to the mystery of Jesus? And what was the dynamic that led them, not simply to disagree with him, but, eventually, to murder him, a fellow Jew and an obviously sincere man?

The questions are pertinent not just to Jesus’ time. The Beloved Disciple saw them as significant for his own community.  They are equally relevant for modern readers.

The text attributed the source of the audience’s attitudes to the devil, the power behind the sin of the world, whom it identified as murderer and liar (one who confounds the truth).

Later in the narrative, Jesus would indicate his alternative to the problem of sin enslaving the world. Uncovering the dynamics of rivalry, competitiveness, envy, exclusion and violence, he would insist that they be substituted by love, empowered by him and leading to genuine brotherhood. He would call for a love like his own, unconditional, inclusive, strong yet gentle, and forgiving [13:34; 15:12].


Liar and Father of Lies

Over the centuries, the snake of the Genesis account of the Fall of our first parents had become identified as the devil. His subtle deception of Eve had eventuated in their losing access to the Tree of Life and so experiencing death. In this sense, he was regarded as both liar and murderer from the beginning.

In the ensuing story of Cain and Abel, the first descendants of Adam and Eve, Cain, driven by jealousy and rivalry, and under the influence of sin, killed his brother; and fratricide entered the world. 

Introduced by the lie told by the devil, human desire was enkindled, rivalry ensued, and murder quickly followed. The story went on to relate how Cain built the first town [Genesis 4:17]. According to the Genesis story of human beginnings, the first town, the original social construct, was founded by a man who murdered his brother.


45 Because I tell the truth, you do not believe me.
46 Who among you can accuse me of sin?  
If I speak the truth, why do you not believe me?
47 All who are of God hear the words of God.  
You do not hear them, from the reason that you are not of God.”

Both questions were the agonised questions of the Christian community. They were unable to comprehend why others did not see the integrity and sinlessness of Jesus, which had become so apparent to them. Their only conclusion was that it was due to ill-will on the part of their opponents.

Unrecognised Dishonesty and Violence

48 The Jews answered him and said,
“Are we not right when we say you are a Samaritan
and that you have a demon?” 

In calling Jesus a Samaritan, his hearers were labelling him a heretic and enemy. Though Samaritans regarded themselves as children of Abraham, their Jewish opponents would have nothing of it. 

Over the intervening years, the Christian community had come to be seen by their fiercest opponents as, like Samaritans, no longer faithful children of Abraham. (Some scholars believe that Samaritan converts were to be numbered among the members of the community of the Beloved Disciple.)

In accusing Jesus of having a demon, his critics passed him off as a raving lunatic. He had stepped out of line. Their immediate and instinctive response to his criticism was to discount violently his rationality, brand him as “not one of them” and to exclude him from their group. 

49 Jesus replied, “I do not have a demon;
rather I honour my Father,
while you dishonour him.
50 I am not looking for my own honour.  
There is one who seeks it
and who passes judgment.

Jesus’ replied to their accusation by noting that what was driving their response was their need to belong, to be accepted among their peers, and not to step out of line; the whole issue of honour from each other. Jesus, on the contrary, sourced his identity, his honour, from the Father, and from the Father’s love for him.

51 I assure you, if people keep my word,
they will not see eternal death.”

Death had been introduced into the world through the prompting of the devil’s lie. Those who would listen, instead, to the word of Jesus would be empowered to break free from the power of death. God has nothing to do with death.

52 The Jews said to him, “Now we know that you have a demon.  
Abraham died, as did the prophets,
and you say that all who keep your word
will never taste death forever.
53 Are you greater than our father, Abraham, who died?
And the prophets died.  
Who do you make yourself out to be?” 

Jesus’ opponents insisted on judging according to human standards [7:24; 8:15]. Jesus was speaking of eternal death. His opponents, who were unable to judge by other than human standards, understood him to be speaking of physical death. 

54 Jesus replied, “If I glorify myself, my glory is nothing.  
The one who glorifies me is my Father,
whom you say is your God,
55 and of whom you have no knowledge.  
I do know him.  f I were to say I did not know him,
I would be a liar like yourselves.  
But I know him and I treasure his word.

Their misunderstanding offered the opportunity for Jesus to reassert his unique relationship with the Father.

56 Your father Abraham rejoiced that he might see my day.  
He saw it and was happy.”

Jesus had not claimed that he had seen Abraham. What he had said was that Abraham had seen Jesus’ day. By saying yes to the future, by holding on to the promise made to him by God, Abraham had effectively seen the fulfilment of that promise, now realised in Jesus.

57 So the Jews then said to him, “You are not yet fifty,
and you have seen Abraham?”
58 Jesus said to them, “I assure you,
before Abraham was, I am.”

For a third time in the dialogue, Jesus clearly stated his identity as I am

From the point of view of the Christian community, what more could they do than resolutely maintain their claims about Jesus, and witness to his power by the quality of their own personal and community life?

The earlier controversy with the Jewish establishment (after Jesus’ healing of the crippled man) had concluded with a brief discussion of honour, followed by the claim that Moses wrote about Jesus [5:44-46]. Here, Jesus made the similar claim that the one who would appropriately make known the true identity of Jesus (that is, who would honour him) would be Jesus’ own Father, God. The Word of God (as the Prologue had stated) was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him [1:2-3]. The Beloved Disciple had no difficulty in having Jesus proclaim...before Abraham was, I am.

59 With that, they took up stones to throw at him.  
But Jesus hid from them and left the temple.

The whole episode concluded with an attempted lynch-murder of Jesus. The prolonged discussion, which had begun with Jesus’ questioning his audience about their desire to kill him [7:19], concluded with their actual attempt to do precisely that. 

Of particular concern was the fact that, in this case, it was those who initially believed in him [verse 31] who were responsible for the eventual step to murder him. Their response perfectly illustrated the human propensity to murder lurking in the hearts of otherwise good people; it clearly expressed the blinding power of the sin of the world, hidden in the internal dynamics of all social groups, and sourced from their unrecognised father, the devil: murderer, liar and father of lying.

Jesus’ hour, which had not yet come at the beginning of the episode [7:6], had clearly drawn closer by its end.

Somehow, Jesus managed to evade his would-be murderers. The narrative did not say how.

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