Sin's slaves, and Satan's children (8:31-59)

Sin-slaves and sons of Satan (8:31-59)

Last week’s section ended with Jesus telling the Pharisees, who were disputing His claim to be the Light of the world, that if they didn’t believe in Him they would die in their sins. Their assumption was that as children of Abraham, and ultra-righteous, they would automatically go straight to heaven Whereas if Jesus committed suicide, He would go to the lowest hell.

The Jewish view of sin was (and is) quite different to Jesus’s teaching, as we shall see.  To them:-

• Sin meant disobeying a commandment of God’s law

• Though born sinless, everyone has an inclination to do evil from their youth (Gen 8:21), and thus sinning is an inherent part of life. Sin which is purely against God is covered by the annual ‘Day of Atonement’; whereas sin against man is only covered by that ceremony if one has appeased one's fellow man.

• If one is completely righteous, one will enjoy both this life and the life of the world to come. Hopwever, many people suffer in this life, to make atonement for their sins. One can buy atonement in this life through sacrifices (korbanot), providing they are preceded by repentance, and restitution where applicable. Upon death, any un-atoned-for sins involve a stay in one of the lower levels of Gehenna (hell) until atonement has occurred. But everyone eventually reaches Paradise, except the completely evil. They are sent to the lowest Gehenna, from where they are made non-existent.

I emphasise that this is the Jewish view of sin, not a Christian view. However you will probably recognise its similarity to doctrines taught by some 'Christian' denominations. Some teach that all will be saved eventually, or that sin can be atoned for by buying 'indulgences', or by time in Purgatory.  Or that the worst that can happen is that you cease to exist (annihilation) rather than endless suffering in the Lake of Fire.  Others hope that God will look favourably on their good works and overlook their sins: or that judgement is more like passing an exam on the day, rather than continual assessment!  But Jesus says that eternal life is a pure gift of grace, given by Him to those who believe in Him and hold to His teaching.  We can never 'earn' a ticket into heaven; we must be born again and become children of God.

Having temporarily silenced His opponents, Jesus begins ‘follow-up’ teaching of those Judaeans who have apparently believed in Him (v31). There is no indication that these are other than genuine believers. But a few verses further on, we find Judaeans accusing Him of being demonised (vs 48,52): are these the same people? Some argue that there were believing and unbelieving Judaeans mingled together. My own conclusion is that many of the ‘believers’ had taken offence at what Jesus had taught them in verses 31-47, just as the Galileans had done in 6:60. Jesus knows that only a sustained holding to His teaching will bring about genuine discipleship (v31). “Blessed is he who does not take offense because of Me” (Matt 11:6).

So why was what Jesus said, so offensive to them?

1. They are slaves to sin (v32-36)

It starts with Jesus telling them that if they continue to hold to His teaching (His Logos) they will come to know the truth, and the truth will set them free. In olden days, we English used to sing, “Rule, Brittania; Brittania rules the waves. Britains never never never shall be slaves.” Jews, despite being under the Roman Empire’s rule, had similar nationalistic pride. Overlooking their captivity in Babylon and successive occupations by the Persian, Greek and Roman empires, they say, ‘We’ve never been in bondage to anyone, so how can you say we’ll be made free?’

Jesus’ reply makes them more uncomfortable. Sin isn’t something trivial that will be dealt with automatically next Day of Atonement. It actually enslaves you. You become addicted to it; in bondage. Your appetite to sin more, grows and grows. The defilement it causes gets deeper and deeper. The Holy Spirit strives against this (Jas 4:4-10), but eventually God gives us up to unbridled passions of all kinds (Rom 1:24-30).

Slaves have no security: they can be thrown out at a moment’s notice, as Abraham did with Hagar (Gen 21:9-10). Whereas a son will never be treated like that (v35). In other words, if you are enslaved by sin, you can have no assurance that you will remain a member of God’s household.

But if the Son of God sets you free, looses you from your bondage to sin, you will be truly free!

2. They are children of Satan, not Abraham or God (v37-47)

They had claimed that their freedom came from being Abraham’s descendants. The Greek word is actually ‘sperm’. Because God had promised Abraham that though they would spend four hundred years in slavery in Egypt but would then live free in a land God had cleared of other nations (Gen 15:13-21), they believed God had guaranteed their freedom.

Jesus acknowledges that they are indeed Abraham’s biological descendants, but their behaviour is so different to his that they must be someone else's children (v37,38). Abraham promptly accepted any uncomfortable truths God spoke to him, such as about his offsprings’ future enslavement in Egypt, or the judgement coming on Sodom. Whereas Jesus's teaching is like seed falling on rocky ground: it finds no soil to grow on, in their hearts, despite being related directly from the Presence of God. Their actions (in seeking to kill Him) show that their role model is someone completely different from Abraham's God.

[ It is interesting how often Jesus speaks of His word, singular. The Greek is logos! Jesus is the Word, the logos of God (1:1). He is God's revelation of Himself. He is God’s teaching, not just God’s teacher. He is God’s Torah, if you will.]

As yet, Jesus hasn’t said who He thinks is their true father. But they reply indignantly, ‘Abraham is our father’ (v39). Jesus replies that whilst they may be Abraham's biological descendants (Gk = sperm) they are not his children (Gk = tekna). Their plot to kill Him despite Him telling them truth, proves that they have some other father.

Increasingly offended at the idea of being spiritually illegitimate, they shift the goalposts. Hasn’t Yahweh God Himself acknowledged them as His sons, when He said to Pharaoh, “Israel is my firstborn son” (Ex 4:22)

Jesus’ reply to this changed paternity claim, revolves around His identity. He proceeded from the Father (v42). Whilst this word can simply refer to where something came from, it carries overtones of coming out of the heart of God, or emanating from Him. Just as the Father is continually begetting Him, He is eternally proceeding from the Father. He has come not on His own initiative, but because the Father sent Him. If they are genuinely God's children; if they loved the Father, they would also love His only-begotten Son, the exact image of His Person (Heb 1:3).

Jesus’s words increasingly seem like double-dutch to them (v43). Their inability to comprehend what He is saying, or to accept and obey it, is because their true father is Satan! (v44). Not only do individual sins create a bondage to further sin, their underlying tendency to sin comes from a sinful nature which is totally hostile to God.

Whereas God gives light and truth, the devil is a murderer and the root source of all lies (V45). Way back in the Garden of Eden, he lied to Eve that ‘You will not surely die’. That lie then led to Adam's sin, and death entered the world, infecting all future generations of mankind (Rom 5:12). Shortly afterwards, he motivated Cain to jealousy which ended in actual murder. When he lies, he is speaking his mother-tongue. He is so fluent in lying, so plausible, that he deceives the whole world.

They have become so used to lies that they can no longer discern truth when they hear it. Worse, it sounds so different to them that they do not believe it (v45). Whilst many have accused Jesus of breaking the sabbath etc, no-one has managed to prove any of their charges against Him. So there can be no grounds for their disbelief (v46).

Ultimately, if they were ‘of God’, they would be able to hear Him and understand. (He will later say, ‘My sheep hear My voice’ - 10:27). The fact that they can’t, proves that despite what God said about Israel being His firstborn son, they are not of God.

To sum up Jesus's arguments in verses 37-47, they cannot be true children of Abraham because:-

• Their behaviour doesn't match up with Abraham’s in that They are seeking to kill Him

• They are rejecting what He's said to them, despite its truth

Nor can they be children of God, because

• In wanting to kill Him they are evidencing their family likeness to the devil, a murderer

• They do not love the One who’s come from the Father’s heart, who reveals His nature

• The very fact He's telling them the truth, puts them off

• They cannot grasp what He is saying, because they are not ‘of God’

3. They stumble over His divine identity (v48-59)

Jesus’s statement that their real father is actually the devil, so incenses them that they accuse Jesus of being a Samaritan, and having a demon (v48). (There is some suggestion that the Samaritans attributed the Jews’ existence to Satan having seduced Eve.). Unlike when the Pharisees said Jesus was possessed by Beelzebub, when He warned them that blasphemy against the Holy Spirit was unforgiveable, here He just calmly refutes them. But He warns them that whilst His whole desire is to honour the Father and not Himself, their dishonouring of Him in this way pits them against God. God seeks those who will honour His Son, and judges those that won’t (v50).

Jesus returns to His gospel message: “Amen amen, anyone who keeps My word (logos) will never taste death” (v51). Whereas the devil is a murderer and loves death, Christ brings life.

Jesus wants disciples to have complete assurance about death, providing they hold to His word. Amen means ‘True.’ Just as we use it to signify our agreement with something that has just been said, Jesus also uses it. But the difference is that He puts it before the statement, rather than afterwards. God cannot lie, so He isn’t saying this to distinguish truths from lies: rather He is wanting to impress on us the seriousness of this truth. He repeats it over and over again (in John 5:24; 6:47; 11:25,26) culminating in His statement to Martha, “I am the Resurrection and the Life, he who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live. And whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die” (11:25,26. Death has lost its sting, and we can triumph over it in Him (1Cor 15:54-57)! We ‘fall asleep in Jesus’, and wake in His Presence. All because He, ‘by the grace of God, has tasted death for everyone’ (Heb 2:9).

What is the ‘taste’ of death? Death in Christ is sweet: death outside Christ is bitter. It is bitter for those suffering bereavement, or mourning fallen comrades (1Sam 15:32). It is also bitter for those faced with terminal illness (Isa 38:3). Hezekiah mourned that his life was to end prematurely, because of missing opportunities to see YAH, the LORD in the land of the living (Isa 38:10,11); the unbroken suffering of his illness (13,14); the lack of opportunities to worship once in Sheol (v18); and the loss of opportunity to make known God’s truth to his children (19). But facing the reality of our own mortality can safeguard our walk with God (Isa 38:15, Ps 90:10-12).

Jesus’s claim to bestow immortality on His followers provokes total incredulity (v52,53). Because they cannot understand His manner of speech and cannot conceive the spiritual truths He is teaching, they (rightly) see this claim as making Jesus far more eminent than Abraham or any of the prophets. That naturally leads them to conclude that this is outrageous boasting: “Who do you make yourself out to be?”

If that were true, Jesus replies, if He were honouring Himself it would count for nothing. But the truth is that the Father, Yahweh the God of Israel, is the One honouring Him (v54). The Jews are lying when they claim to know Him, but don’t. Jesus knows Him, and if He were to deny that, it would be just as big a lie. Knowing Almighty God means keeping His word: and Jesus never does anything except what He sees the Father doing.

Unlike the disbelief and dishonouring He is experiencing from His listeners, Jesus says, Abraham was overjoyed at the thought of seeing the Lamb of God. When by faith He said to His son Isaac, ‘God will provide Himself the Lamb’ (Gen 22:8), He was seeing into the future prophetically. Although he had been told, ‘In Isaac shall your seed be named’ (Gen 21:12) and he knew that the promise of the Land of Israel was made not to himself but to his seed (Gen 12:7), he had realised that Isaac was not the Lamb of God: there was Another still to come, who would offer Himself as the ransom-sacrifice for the sins of the world. And he knew that that sacrifice would take place on the very same mountain where he had tried to sacrifice his son: ‘On the mountain of the Lord it will be provided’ (Gen 22:14). As a result of his obedience, ‘In your seed shall all nations be blessed’ (Gen 22:18). That blessing is why you are now reading this blog: because ‘now in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham has come upon you Gentiles’ (Gal 3:14).

Once again, the blindness of their fallen natures prevents them grasping the implication of what He is saying; and they query how He and Abraham could ever have met, since He is under fifty, the retirement age of that period.

Just as Jesus bided His time before making it explicit that their true spiritual father is Satan, so here He has been biding His time to allow the implication of His earlier statements to sink in. If He can convey immortality, He must Himself be immortal. If Abraham saw Him, then He must have been in existence two thousand years before this conversation took place. Now He reveals the whole extent of the truth: “Before Abraham was born, I AM” (v58).

This is such a crystal-clear applying of the awesome Name of God to Himself, that the same Jews who had begun to believe in Him, now take up stones to kill Him for blasphemy (v50).

Abraham’s life had a beginning and an end. Jesus’s life has neither. He has come ‘in the likeness of Melchizedek’, whose priestly ministry was not the result of some earthly decree, but ‘through the power of an endless life’ (Heb 6:16). He is the Alpha and Omega. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” He is the great ‘I AM’, the ever-present One, the eternally-Living God. He will never go deaf or blind with old age, or fail to see our needs or hear our cries. He will never lose His power to save. He has been, and will be, our dwelling place in all generations: from everlasting to everlasting, He is God (Ps 90:1,2).

If you want this truth to sink deeper into your heart, I suggest you read Isaiah chapters 40-55 with a highlighter pen. Mark every occasion you see the word ‘LORD’ in capital letters: each of these translates the Hebrew name of God which is ‘Yahweh’, ‘I AM’. Now go through it again with a different colour highlighter, marking all the times you see the word ‘I’: each of the occurrences tells you something about the activity of God in past, present and future. Your bible will now look like an Impressionist artwork! We are called to experience this living Presence of God in the everyday fabric of our lives.

Before we leave this chapter, note that Jesus left the Temple: though the Synoptic gospels record Jesus teaching in the Temple just before His crucifixion, this is the last occasion John records. There is a sense that as with the Tabernacle at Shiloh, ‘the glory has departed’. The true temple (2:20,21), the true dwelling place of God’s glory, has left.

Applications:

We can read this passage superficially and assume it only applies to the Jews of Jesus’ day, or perhaps to Jews in general. But if so, what value has it to us? These same truths apply as much to us, as to them. Unless we realise what we have been saved from, and how radical that salvation is, we will never stay the course.

Jesus is not interested in having an army of disciples who think that following Him is merely a lifestyle choice.

Having pushed the issue of who they think He is (John 7), He now addresses who they think they themselves are.

Remember that He is here speaking to those who have believed in Him!

Firstly, their response is one of entitlement. ‘We are special’, ‘We are God’s chosen people', ‘We are under His blessing like no-one else is’. ‘We are Children of Abraham’ -  we have a free pass to enter heaven without having to pass through Gehenna or purgatory. There is a spiritual elitism, an arrogance, a sense of entitlement. Does that ring any bells, about the attitudes prevalent amongst your fellow Christians, or indeed your own heart?  It is the opposite of believing in God's grace as your only hope of salvation.

Secondly, they are unaware of their own bondage to sin. They see sin as something everyone does, which can’t be too serious and anyway will be dealt with next Day of Atonement. They have no idea of its power to enslave - that in sinning, they are obeying Satan and thereby becoming his slaves (Rom 6:15-19). Whether through gross sin, or ‘respectable sins’ such as refusal to forgive, we give the enemy a beach-head in our hearts, into which he will pour his demonic spirits (Eph 4:25-27).

Deliverance ministry is important, but ultimately it is only ‘abiding in His word’ which will undo the enemy’s lies and reveal ‘the sinfulness of sin’ to us. It is only this ‘prolonged obedience in the same direction’ that will ultimately set us free. But that is Jesus’s intent and desire: He came to preach liberty to the captives (Lk 4:18).

Are there any areas you are conscious of, in which you repeatedly experience failure and sin? Be encouraged - He came to set you free. And His word is, ‘If you continue in My word, you will come to know the truth, and the truth will set you free.’ Keep confessing, keep coming to the Cross, keep claiming and proclaiming the blood of Jesus, keep giving testimony (Rev 12:11).

Thirdly, they have no idea how corrupted their inner nature is. Individual episodes of sinning are certainly not trivial - but our underlying heart’s desires are those of Satan himself! His defining characteristics manifest in our hearts and drive our actions. His murderousness drives our anger and road rage, drives the niggling resentments in our marriages, keeps us from forgiving others and letting go of vendettas. His nature as the father of lies expresses itself in our pretentious respectability, our hypocritical judging of others, our self-deception and ‘white lies’.

As I get nearer my appearing before the judgement seat of Christ, I become more and more aware of these heart attitudes within myself. Unlike individual sins, I cannot reassure myself that I will try harder to avoid entering into temptation next time, because this is who I am, without Christ. Only as I learn to die to myself and let Christ indwell me, let Him take the driving seat of my life, can I hope for change.

Fourthly, they do not realise they are deaf to the voice of God. They have believed so many lies of the enemy, each one adding an extra brick to their mental ‘strongholds’ against God’s word (2Cor 10:3-5), that they cannot understand Jesus’s way of speaking. Later, He will say, ‘My sheep hear My voice’ (10:27). He is not referring to the dead hearing His voice at the last day, but the living: us. It is your right as a child of God to hear the Good Shepherd's voice. The devil may tell you that that is only for prophets and mystics; but that is a lie. His voice is ‘as the sound of many waters’: He has many channels of speech, and huge bandwidth, sufficient for every believer to hear His specific word to them at the same time.