John 8:21-29

Dispute Over Who Jesus Is

21 Once more Jesus said to them, "I am going away, and you will look for me, and you will die in your sin. Where I go, you cannot come."

22 This made the Jews ask, "Will he kill himself? Is that why he says, 'Where I go, you cannot come'?"

23 But he continued, "You are from below; I am from above. You are of this world; I am not of this world. 24 I told you that you would die in your sins; if you do not believe that I am he, you will indeed die in your sins."

25 "Who are you?" they asked.

"Just what I have been telling you from the beginning," Jesus replied. 26 "I have much to say in judgment of you. But he who sent me is trustworthy, and what I have heard from him I tell the world."

27 They did not understand that he was telling them about his Father. 28 So Jesus said, "When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am he and that I do nothing on my own but speak just what the Father has taught me. 29 The one who sent me is with me; he has not left me alone, for I always do what pleases him."



Dig Deeper

An interesting thing happened this morning as I sat down to begin working on this section. I got up fairly early in the morning while most everyone else was still sleeping and I wanted to begin working. The only problem was my laptop computer’s battery was almost run all the way down and I didn’t know where the power cord was. I began to look for it but I already knew that it wasn’t plugged into the socket behind our Christmas tree because I would never plug it in there (it’s a couple of weeks before Christmas as I write this). With that location safely excluded, I began to quietly look around the house for the power cord but I simply could not find it. I looked in the computer bag and everywhere else that it might be but I simply could not find it. This was beginning to get frustrating as I realized that perhaps I had left it at church and would not be able to get the work done this morning that I wanted to get done. It wasn’t until my wife realized what I was doing, got up and found the cord immediately that I could relax. The cord was in the one place that I knew it wasn’t and had already excluded. It was behind the Christmas tree, precisely the place I did not look because I knew that it wouldn’t be there. Apparently my wife had plugged it in there the night before, but I had just assumed that it wouldn’t be there without actually looking there. Once I had excluded it as a possibility, I was simply not going to find the cord.

This seems like it is something of the case with the Pharisees and the Jewish leaders of Jesus’ day. They were waiting for the Messiah to deliver them but they had already, in their own minds, excluded Jesus as a possibility. This left them in somewhat of a quandary. No matter what Jesus said or did, he wasn’t going to convince them that he was the Messiah. They simply were not going to come to faith in him because, although they had yet to find the true Messiah, they knew he wasn’t it. That’s the great danger in making assumptions and excluding one possibility without fully considering it. It might be the one place where the thing you are looking for is actually at, but if you never look there, you will never find it.

To truly understand what Jesus is telling his critics in this passage, we must remember the Jewish concept of the King. As is demonstrated by the account of David, the anointed King of Israel, and Goliath, the fighting champion of the Philistines, what was true of the King was true of His people. If David won, the whole nation won. This is what led Paul, in Romans 6, to argue that those who had died to themselves and entered into the life of Christ, will share in all that he has received from the Father, including resurrection and the resurrection life. It is to this truth that Jesus alludes and appeals here.

He came from the presence of God and he will soon return there. He was the Word that has become flesh. He was the only human being who had truly done the full will of God (even David failed miserably in doing God’s will throughout his life), and he would be the only one to receive resurrection and the life of the age to come. Anyone who would trust in their own life and remain in their own life will receive their just reward and be judged according to their own sinful life. Those in Christ, however, will share the fate of Christ, who, following his death, will return to the presence of the Father. That is where he is going. He is going into death and out the other side, something that no human being can do on their own. He is, he is telling them, about to enter into the new creation, the life of the age to come. But they have already excluded the possibility that he is from the Father. They simply cannot abide the thought that he is the living water, the light of the world. They are looking everywhere else, but he cannot be it. That is why they will die in their sin and could not come where he was going. It was not that Jesus was barring them from coming to salvation or saying that there was a certain line or point of no return that they were about to cross. The problem was that they had rejected him as the way, and once you have rejected the only way as a possibility, you simply will not find it. He is going into the age to come, and they will not be able to follow because they are looking for every other way possible to enter in except his life. As John 1:4 has already stated, "In him was life, and that life was the light of all people." Those questioning Jesus had become the embodiment of John 3:19-20: "Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. All those who do evil hate the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed."

The Jewish leaders apparently mock Jesus in response to his statement that they cannot come where he is going. Is he going to kill himself? Surely if that’s the kind of death he is talking about, then they have no interest in following him. Suicide was reviled in the Jewish culture. Jewish people were horrified at the thought of committing suicide and assumed that those who were guilty of such a crime, except in extreme circumstances of heroism of some type, would be punished to the lowest pits of Hades. They would leave the corpse of a suicide case unburied until sunset and there was no public mourning for the person. It was a foregone conclusion, in their minds, that those who committed suicide would be excluded from God’s age to come. In this mocking accusation, though, the Jewish leaders again demonstrate that their minds are set on earthly things. Jesus has, in somewhat veiled terms, been discussing his own death. These leaders, no doubt, are well aware that discussions have taken place and a plot is in the works to kill him, but Jesus should know nothing of this. If he is going about teaching that his death will somehow be central to his mission and the sustenance that he will provide for the whole world, then he must be planning to kill himself. That’s the only way that someone could know the time and circumstances of their own death and plan for it. He must, they mock, be planning something repulsive like that to make some grand statement, and if that’s the case, in their own way of thought, then they have no interest in following this worst of law-breaking suicidal fools.

Jesus doesn’t respond directly to the slights of his questioners but reiterates the differences between he and them. They are from below, their minds are set on earthly things and they are stuck doing their own will. He, on the other hand, is from above, his mind is set on the things of God and doing God’s will. They are of the present world that is stuck in their own sin, separated from God but he is the only one that is not in that condition. In verse 24, Jesus says plainly what he hinted at in verse 21. It’s not that they have been barred from finding salvation. No, but they will die in their sins if they do not believe that he is the one. He is the Messiah, the servant of God (Isa. 40-55) who had come to earth to do the perfect will of God and be what Israel never could. But Jesus knows that they will not believe in him. They have already rejected him as a a possibility and so they will indeed die in their sins. He came to his own but his own did not receive him (1:11).

If Jesus is making such bold claims to be "he," to be the one, then they demand that he tell them who he is. The problem is that he has been telling them from the beginning who he is, but they have rejected that as a a possibility. How can they solve the problem of two plus two if they have already declared that the answer cannot be four. Their rejection of Jesus will bring about their own judgment, and Jesus confirms that he has much more to say about that. Yet, what Jesus is telling them is not his own words. He is only telling them what he has heard from the Father. He bears the words of the Father, so when they reject him as a possibility, they reject the very thing they claim to be looking for.

Because they have already rejected the possibility of Jesus being the Messiah or being sent directly by the Father, they simply could not understand what he was saying. Jesus boldly informs them that they will indeed lift him up, there will be no suicide. The word that Jesus uses that is translated "lift up" is an unusual word for crucifixion and usually means something like "to exalt." Perhaps, that is Jesus’ whole point. When they life him up on the Cross, thinking that they are laying the most shameful of covenantal curses on him (Deut. 21:23), that is actually the moment when he will come into his full glory. They will be doing what pleases them, but he will be doing what pleases the Father. So, when the world thinks that they have passed and executed judgment on the Son of Man, they will actually be bringing down the judgment of the one sent by the Father on themselves and bringing him to the fullest expression of the glory of God for mankind.



Devotional Thought

Part of our human nature is to generally attempt to avoid uncomfortable situations. We don’t like to have to endure hard times or persecution. Yet, Jesus alludes here to the fact that just when it might look like he was being persecuted the most, he was actually being exalted and was perfectly doing the Father’s will. It was through the most difficult of circumstances that Jesus was obedient to God’s will and brought about the greatest good. Sometimes, the fact is, that when we go through the most difficult of times, God will use those circumstances for the greatest good. Rather than automatically trying to avoid trials, spend some time praying and considering if the path God’s will might be right down the middle of that impending trial.