Theology

Ontology 101: A New Sermon Series

/ davidsschrock / 3 Comments

ontology1920x1080-1“It depends on what the meaning of ‘is’ is.” Those infamous words, uttered by Bill Clinton under oath in 1998, should have told us that the world and everything in it was already succumbing to the deconstructive forces of postmodernism. Postmodernism claims that meaning is no longer found in what a human author intends or what the Author of life declares. Rather, meaning is decided by individuals or groups interpreting, or in most cases reinterpreting, the words others.

In college after college, postmodern ideas have sprung to life since the 1960s, and by 1998 such epistemic redefinitions and verbal deconstructions were emerging in the public square. Bill Clinton’s elusive response to a question about his relations with Monica Lewinsky was not abnormal for a culture celebrating transgression (think: the Hippies of the 1960s), raised on MTV (think: the teens of the 1980s), or enslaved to self-expression instead of submission to the truth (every generation since WWII).

Fast forward 25 years, add two decades of social media, a handful of contested elections, one global pandemic, and endless woke crusades in public schools and city streets, and it is not just language that has come under assault, it is everything that God upholds by the word of his power. To be certain, Christ the Lord reigns in heaven. But on earth, all is not well. And in our day, our cultural elites can’t even figure out what a man is, why women’s sports should only include women, or why children should not be exposed to drag queens at the public library.

In a word, the world has gone mad. And its insanity began when words could mean anything, or nothing, or something at one time and not another. Continue reading →

What Is the Mission of the Church in a Racialized World?

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Gospel,+Race,+&+the+ChurchLast year, I joined Nicholas Piotrowski, Charles Ware, and Gus Pritchard for an event in Indianapolis called “Gospel, Race, and the Church.” Through six short messages and six panel discussions, plus a Q & A we worked through many subjects related to contemporary discussions on race and justice in the church. While this subject is fraught with landmines, the overall tenor of the event was positive, biblical, and prayerfully helpful.

To encourage candidness in the moment, the audios were not made public, so I can’t link to those. But what follows is an updated version of my second message. You can find the manuscript of the first message (Is Racial Justice a Gospel Issue?) here.

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Here is the thesis that I want to argue: Your race is more important than your ethnicity.

When defined biblically and not sociologically, one’s race is more important for identity formation than one’s ethnicity. And by extension, the mission of the church is to help you make that statement true. Which raises the question. What is race? And do you know what your race is?

As insulting as that question may sound at first, I am going to suggest it is an easy question to mistake—especially if we have fused biblical ideas with worldly ideologies. At the same time, if we can answer this question from the Bible and the Bible alone, then we have hope for knowing and growing the mission of the church. This is the point that I will argue here, and here is how I will proceed.

  1. I will show why the concept of racialization in America is popular and pervasive, but ultimately unhelpful—if not harmful.
  2. I will attempt to draw the lines of race and ethnicity according to the Bible.
  3. With those lines in place, I will demonstrate that the mission of the church helps men and women, who hold PhD’s in ethnic Partiality, ethnic Hostility, ethnic Discrimination, grow up into Christ, who is the head of a new chosen race, redeemed from nation (ethnē).

So that’s we are going. Continue reading →

Salvation from Judgment: A Survey of John’s “Good News”

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eskay-lim-nhPSp2wB5do-unsplashA number of years ago, a church I know purchased something like 100,000 copies of the Gospel of John. Why? So that they could share the message of salvation with everyone in their Chicago suburb. That is to say, by putting a copy of John’s Gospel in everyone’s mailbox, they hoped to share the good news of salvation with all their neighbors.

I don’t know the fruit of that endeavor, but I know it was motivated by a commitment to the Word, a passion to sow the seeds of the gospel, and a prayerful desire to see their neighbors know God and find salvation in the Son. And the use of John makes sense. As John tells us, the Evangelist wrote his book so that his audience would believe in Christ. As John 20:30–31 reads,

Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.

“Life in his name” is another way of saying salvation (John 3:16) or entrance into the kingdom of God (John 3:3–5). And so, John’s Gospel is rightly associated with the theme of salvation. And more, it is usually not associated with judgment. Jesus even says as much. “For I did not come to judge the world but to save the world” (John 12:47).

Case closed. Jesus has come to save, not to judge, and so let’s print up the Gospel of John and send it to everyone who needs salvation. So good, so far. Except, we haven’t answered the question: Saved from what? Saved from death? From sorrow? From sin? From what? Well, that’s what brings us back to judgment—a theme ignored or despised by many who offer Christ today.

The answer to the question about salvation in John’s Gospel is inextricably related to Jesus’s testimony regarding his judgment and the role of the Spirit who brings to completion the judgment of Christ reigning in glory (cf. Psalm 110). To show this, and to better appreciate what salvation is, I will show from John’s Gospel how the theme of judgment develops. And in its development, it may be surprising how prominent judgment is and how important it is for John’s message of salvation. Continue reading →

For the Kids Nobody Wants: Why Be Fruitful and Multiply Needs a New Social Imaginary

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What follows is part one of a longform essay published at Christ Over All. You can read both parts here and here.

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Past the grove of cypress trees Walter—he had been playing king of the mountain—saw the white truck, and he knew it for what it was. He thought, That’s the abortion truck. Come to take some kid in for a postpartum down at the abortion place.

And he thought, Maybe my folks called it. For me.

He ran and hid among the blackberries, feeling the scratching of the thorns but thinking, It’s better than having the air sucked out of your lungs. That’s how they do it; they perform all the P. P.s [post-partum abortions] on all the kids there at the same time. They have a big room for it. For the kids that nobody wants.[1]

1. Philip K. Dick, “The Pre-Persons” (1974). Available in The Eye of the Sibyl and Other Classic Stories. (New York: Citadel Press, 1987), 275-296.

In 1973, the Roe v Wade decision inspired Philip K. Dick to envision a world where children were unwanted and adults were free to alleviate their unwanted burdens with the help of the “County Facility.” In his short story, “The Pre-Persons,” Dick tells the story of Walter, the twelve-year-old boy who is traumatized by the thought that his parents did not want him. All around him, he knows children by name who have been taken, kicking and screaming, by the van. Fully legal, these children have the life sucked out of them, all because the parents did not want them.

Through the use of dystopian satire, Dick shows what happens when children are unwanted.

To date, white vans are not circling cul-de-sacs looking to pick up “the kids nobody wants,” but that doesn’t mean children are any more safe. Planned Parenthood “targets minority neighborhoods” to offer up their unwanted children. Walgreens and CVS just decided to stock its pharmacies with the abortion-inducing pill, mifepristone, so that unwanted pregnancies can end by a pill in the privacy of one’s own home. The Supreme Court of South Carolina just defended abortion by ruling that abortion is protected by the right to privacy. And in 2021, Senate Democrats blocked the passage of the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, while this year 210 voted against a similar bill, which would protect children who have already been born.

Is our world much different than Walter’s for unwanted children? It doesn’t appear to be. And yet, it’s not just these direct assaults that endanger children, it is the social imaginary behind them.[2] A social imaginary is like a worldview, only with less thought and more feeling. And today, a predominant social imaginary is one that envisions a world unencumbered by children. That is to say, our culture’s images of human flourishing are those without kids. To give one example where childlessness is presented as a blessing, consider the ad campaign by Hilton’s Home 2 Suites.

2. A “social imaginary” is a term coined by Charles Taylor in his heavily-cited A Secular Age. Following Taylor, Kevin Vanhoozer, Hearers and Doers, 8, defines it this way: “The social imaginary is that nest of background assumptions, often implicit, that lead people to feel things as right or wrong, correct or incorrect.”
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Continue reading →

Jesus is God: Four Ways to See Jesus’s Divinity in John’s Gospel

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marcos-paulo-prado-xec7srO4U5c-unsplashThis month our church returns to the Gospel of John, and specifically we have started to look at the Upper Room Discourse (John 13–17), picking up in John 14. For those familiar with John 14–16, as well as the whole book of John, you know how often trinitarian themes, doctrines, and verses emerge. As John recounts the way Jesus speaks of his Father, the promise of sending the Spirit, and the relationship between Father, Son, and Spirit, we have perhaps the richest vein in Scripture for mining trinitarian gold.

To help our church, and those reading along here, I am going to begin posting some short pieces on the doctrine of the trinity and the key ideas related our God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Today, I will begin with a note from Scott Swain, author of many works on the Trinity, including Crossway’s Short Studies in Systematic Theology volume, The Trinity: An Introduction.

In his blogpost, “How John Says Jesus is ‘God’,” he offers four ways to think about Christ’s deity in John, and he concludes with this fourfold textual proof of Jesus’s divinity from John. All told, Swain actually offers seven ways to think of Jesus as God. And what I include here is the four point, with four proofs. Take time to consider each, and then as you read John, keep your eye out for the ways that John presents Jesus as God.

1. Jesus shares the divine name(s).

According to the Fourth Gospel, Jesus shares his Father’s holy “name” (Jn 17:11; cf. 12:41). Throughout the Gospel, Jesus is not only acclaimed as “God” (Jn 1:1; 20:28), he is also identified by God’s proper name YHWH, “the linguistic token of God’s uniqueness par excellence,” along with the “corona of connotation” established by various OT ways of expounding God’s proper name (Kendall Soulen). The monogenēs is called “the one who is” in John 1:18 (echoing Exod 3:14 LXX). Jesus is called “the Lord” in John 1:23 (citing the Tetragrammaton from Isa 40:3) and John 20:28 (echoing Ps 35:23 [34:23 LXX], which calls YHWH “my Elohim and my Adonai”). Perhaps most significantly, Jesus identifies himself as the one true God by means of a series of absolute (Jn 4:26; 6:20; 8:24, 28, 58; 13:19; 18:5, 6, 8) and predicate (Jn 6:35, 41, 48; 8:12; 10:7, 9, 11, 14; 11:25; 14:6; 15:1) “I am” statements, which echo YHWH’s own self-identification in the Old Testament (Deut 32:39; Isa 41:4; 43:10, 13, 25; 46:4; 48:12; 51:12; 52:6).

2. Jesus possesses divine attributes.

He shares God’s eternal and unchangeable being, in contrast to temporal and changeable creatures (Jn 1:1-3; 8:35, 58). He manifests YHWH’s unique “glory” (Jn 12:41, alluding to Isaiah 6), abounding in “grace and truth” (Jn 1:14, which alludes to Exod 34:6). He has “life in himself,” just “as the Father has life in himself” (Jn 5:26). Jesus is a divine king (Jn 18:36) who holds all divine authority in his hands (Jn 3:35; 13:3).

3. Jesus performs divine works.

As the Word who created all things (Jn 1:3-5), Jesus also proclaims the divine name to creatures (Jn 1:14, 18; 17:6, 26). Because he holds all divine authority in his hands, he executes divine judgment, raises the dead, and grants eternal life to whomever he will (Jn 5:21-22, 25, 27; 10:18; 17:2). Jesus predicts the future, revealing that “I am he” (Jn 13:19). Whatever the Father does, the Son does likewise (Jn 5:19), completing the divine work of salvation that the Father gave him to do on the cross (Jn 13:1; 19:3). For all the aforementioned reasons and others,

4. Jesus is worthy of divine honor.

The Father “has given all judgment to the Son, that all might honor the Son, just as they honor the Father” (Jn 5:22-23). Jesus is worthy of the same faith that is due God (Jn 14:1; cf. 3:14-15; 8:24; 20:31), and also the same love (Jn 14:15). As one who shares the divine name, he is “lifted up” and “glorified” as “I am” (Jn 8:28; 12:32, 41). After Jesus’ resurrection, Thomas exclaims, “my Lord and my God” (Jn 20:28), a scriptural expression of covenant devotion (Ps 35:23). Though personally distinct from the Father as his Word and monogenēs, Jesus, according to John, is “one” God with the Father in every way (Jn 10:30).

From these four points and others, we have every reason to see that the Bible is unequivocal in calling Jesus ‘God.’ And thus, we should worship him not only as a good and great man, but as our God—Creator, Redeemer, Lord, and Second Person of the Trinity. Indeed, let us come to the Father, through the Son, by the Spirit, bringing him all the praise he deserves.

Soli Deo Gloria, ds

Photo by Marcos Paulo Prado on Unsplash

Engaging Tim Keller’s Politically-Subtle, Seeker Sensitive Movement

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coin telescope in a viewing deck

In November, Christ Over All published a series of article on evangelicalism and its history over the last century. If you didn’t see those articles, I would encourage you to check them out. They will give you a solid introduction to the key doctrines, debate, and debaters over the last one hundred years. This month, in an encore piece, we have just published a two-part consideration of Tim Keller and his impact on evangelicalism.

In many ways, I am thankful for Keller’s ministry, his heart for evangelism, and his faithfulness to the Lord. On occasion I have cited his works on this cite, and I recommended this evergreen article on church size dynamics to some men today. At the same time, Keller’s method of ministry bears careful observation. And in these two pieces, you get a sense of how Keller’s Third Way-ism has negatively impacted evangelicals. In what follows, I offer the concluding paragraphs of Mark DeVine’s analysis. Take a look and then go back and read his full argument here and here.

A Politically-Subtle, Seeker Sensitive Movement 

Between 1994 and 2006 Reformed theologian David Wells published four volumes that track and analyze how church growth movements, despite their formal assent to orthodox, evangelical doctrinal statements, have nevertheless compromised the faith. Unfortunately, Keller’s Third Way, despite its stated determination not to do so, has often done just this, producing terrible ethical fruit.

What most distinguishes the Keller-led Reformed resurgence from the other major church growth movements among evangelicals over the last half century? Is it theology, or something else? The “seeker,” “church growth,” and “purpose-driven life” movements targeted predominantly white suburban communities. Comparatively, the Keller movement aimed to reach the more ethnically diverse blue communities located in urban centers. Each movement labored to remove as many stumbling blocks to the gospel in order the reach their respective targeted communities.

Measured in buildings, bucks, and bodies, each movement was successful, at least for a time. Yet, looking over the last twenty years, it becomes clear that Keller-movement Evangelicals built platforms, brands, and messages in order to be found winsome by the blue communities they sought to reach. As with the old-line liberalism of Friedrich Schleiermacher, exquisite sensitivity to target audiences will shape the message delivered far more than its deliverers intended. Only in this case, winsomeness has elicited complaints and thoughtful retractions from Reformed evangelicals who once flew the Keller flag. All of this suggests that once again, the gospel once has suffered distortion in the otherwise laudable quest to avoid unnecessary violation of unbelievers’ sensibilities.

Such a result of Keller’s Third Way is disheartening, but not surprising. The message of the cross is foolishness to the world, and yet it is the wisdom of God (1 Cor. 1:18–25). Doctrinally sound evangelicals have too often been enticed to package the product of the gospel in cellophane for the consumer, yet wisdom, or its opposite, is proven by her children. Over the last decade, many children of Tim Keller’s Third Way have imagined that formal adherence to an orthodox confession is sufficient to protect the gospel message from distortion. But it’s not.

As the seeker-senstive and purpose-driven movements of the 1980s taught us, branding and ongoing messaging exert powerful influence on how that confession is received. And now the same is being seen with Keller’s politically-subtle, blue-community-sensitive seeker model. In each of these iterations, the fruit of these sincere efforts to advance the gospel have found themselves making friends with the world at the expense of the intrinsically offensive gospel that the world so desperately needs.

May the Lord help us to see this clearly, and to walk in his light accordingly.

Soli Deo Gloria, ds

Photo by Ramil Ugot on Pexels.com

Unmasking Prosopological Exegesis: Defining a New (and Improved?) Way to Read Scripture

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rosary and face mask on top of a bible

Prosopological exegesis.

Have you heard of it? If not, that’s alright, I suspect this technique for reading Scripture will run its course in the next decade and be replaced by another interpretive fad in the 2030s. In the mean time, however, this way of (mis)reading Scripture will find its way into articles, book, commentaries, and pulpits. And for that reason, students of the Word and especially teachers who rely on the scholarship of others (read: all of us), should be( a)ware of this approach to reading the Bible Christologically. 

To those who have been stuck in hermeneutical circles that deny typology and the need to read Scripture canonically, prosopological exegesis (PE) may sound like a great gain, as the voices of God are “unmasked” in certain parts of the Old Testament. But as Peter Gentry, Jim Hamilton, and Jim Dernell have each argued, this ostensibly Christ-centered approach to the Old Testament misreads God’s Word. Instead of following OT texts and types until they come to their full revelation in the New Testament, as God the Father, Son, and Spirit are revealed as the one God in three persons, PE takes a shortcut to the persons of the Trinity. For this reason, it is a “naughty” way to read Scripture, as Michael Carlino argues in his new piece at Christ Over All: “Give Diamonds, Not Coal: Why Prosopological Exegesis is Not the Gift You Are Looking For.”

Tomorrow, I will share my own concerns with prosopological exegesis. But today, I will offer an explanation of what PE is. What follows, then, is part of my Southern Baptist Journal of Theological article, “Reading the Psalms with the Church: A Critical Evaluation of Prosopological Exegesis in Light of Church History.” You can find this SBJT article here, along with another article that gives a constructive proposal for reading the Psalms. In both articles, I show why PE is not a reliable method to reading Scripture, and what follows is the start of that argument—namely, defining what prosopological exegesis is.

Continue reading →

Christ Over All: A New Website and a Personal Update

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COA-black-square

If you have followed by blog for any length of time you know that my posting is somewhat irregular. As a pastor first, not a journalist, my  priority is preaching and teaching at my local church. After that, a couple times a year, I go and teach theology at Indianapolis Theological Seminary. And then after that I do some writing for various ministries, journals, and book publishers. Long story short, my blog is the overflow of the work I’m doing elsewhere, and I hope that it blesses and builds up those who read it.

I do not say it enough, but I am deeply thankful for the folks who have through the years reached out and interacted with things I’ve written. And Lord willing, I will continue to post biblical, theological, and culture-engaging content for the sake of the church, things that will bless you when you come and read them.

That said, over the last month or so I have not posted very much. And the reason for that is because I, with a handful of other pastors and theologians, have begun a new project called Christ Over All. Some of you may know about it, but for the others who do not, I’m pointing to it today. If you go to the homepage of Christ Over All, this is what you will find:

Christ Over All is a fellowship of pastor-theologians dedicated to helping the church see Christ as Lord and everything else under his feet.

Indeed, this is our vision and our prayer. Over the last year, our team of eight and then nine brothers in Christ talked, and prayed, and strategized for ways we could serve the church with a website that engaged many of the challenges of our current culture, but that did so by slower meditations on Scripture and longer articles applying biblical theology to our complex world. Over the last month, we have outlined this vision. And you can read some of the posts here. You can also listen to our new podcast.

Next month, we begin in earnest to bring solid content to the internet, as we dust off the book by Francis Schaeffer called A Christian Manifesto. Over the course of October, we will engage each chapter and also hit some key features of Schaeffer’s life and writing. I say all that to say, come spend a month with Christ Over All learning from Francis Schaeffer and his engagement with culture, government, and other public spaces. In the months after that, we will hit other relevant subjects that, Lord willing, builds up the church.

Additionally, if you want to stay in touch with Christ Over All, go sign up for our newsletter. If you have appreciated the content of Via Emmaus, I think you will enjoy the work of Christ Over All even more.

For me personally, I will keep writing in both spaces. I will probably let most of my biblical reflections take up residence here. And I will publish more of my cultural engagement pieces at Christ Over All. I’m sure there will be some crossover too, but this is how I will aim my writing.

All in all, I share this brief update to encourage you to check out the new website and to stay tuned here as I will be picking up a rhythm of writing again soon. Additionally, stay tuned for a renewal of the Via Emmaus podcast, which will read many of the articles and also have some new content too.

Again, I give thanks to God for the many friends who have read my blog. Your feedback and questions are always encouraging. I pray that it will continue to use my writing to build up your faith, as we see Christ from all the Scriptures in order to make disciples of all the nations.

Soli Deo Gloria, ds

A Theological Appraisal of Marxism

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maximilian-scheffler-59dcHbr9N9I-unsplash“Marxism retains all the major structural and emotional factors of biblical religion in a secularized form. Marx, like Moses, is the prophet who leads the new Chosen People, the proletariat, out of the slavery of capitalism into the Promised Land of communism across the Red Sea of bloody worldwide revolution and through the wilderness of temporary, dedicated suffering for the party, the new priesthood.”
— Peter Kreeft —

In 1967, student activist and avowed communist, Rudi Dutschke, made an impassioned speech for revolution by way of a “long march through the institutions.” Influenced by Frankfurt School theorist Antonio Gramsci, Dutschke offered an approach to societal and political change (read: revolution) that has come to see its greatest victories in the presidencies of Barack Obama and Joseph Biden—the former a disciple of Saul Alinsky and the latter a life-long liberal politician who is proving to be the most progressive US President in history.

If you are wondering what has happened to the United States in the last decade and why gender is queer, marriage is antiquated, the nuclear family is White European, chastity is oppressive, and Christianity is harmful, then you must come to grips with many of the ideas put forward during the 1960s. Dutschke was not alone in his student activism, but his notion of a long march through the institutions is illuminating for what came after the 1960s. In fact, it was the playbook endorsed by none other than cultural Marxist, Herbert Marcuse, who wrote in 1972:

To extend the base of the student movement, Rudi Dutschke has proposed the strategy of the long march through the institutions: working against the established institutions while working within them, but not simply by ‘boring from within’, rather by ‘doing the job’, learning (how to program and read computers, how to teach at all levels of education, how to use the mass media, how to organize production, how to recognize and eschew planned obsolescence, how to design, et cetera), and at the same time preserving one’s own consciousness in working with others.

The long march includes the concerted effort to build up counterinstitutions. They have long been an aim of the movement, but the lack of funds was greatly responsible for their weakness and their inferior quality. They must be made competitive. This is especially important for the development of radical, “free” media. The fact that the radical Left has no equal access to the great chains of information and indoctrination is largely responsible for its isolation. (Herbert Marcuse, Counterrevolution and Revolt, 55–56)

So, even though a rise in conservative policies came about between the presidencies of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, there remained a rising tide of radicals who were marching through the institutions. And today, these are the ones who are currently in charge (along a new generation of radicals taught in the institutions of higher education). These are the ones concocting bills defending post-term abortion, instantiating SOGI policies, celebrating transgenderism, implementing reparations, and threatening the right to exercise religious liberty. Continue reading →

The Crack in the Cosmos: Letting the Light of John 8:12–59 Expose the Divide in Humanity

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brown and green grass field during sunset

31 So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him,
“If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples,
32 and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
— John 8:31–32 —

 I don’t know about you, but when I read lengthy dialogues in Scripture, especially in the Gospels, I find them hard to follow until I have a sense of structure of the argument. In John 8, this has been especially true. After Jesus announces that he is the light of the world (v. 12), his opponents (Pharisees in v. 13 and Jews in vv. 22, 31, 48, 52, 57) object, question, and reject his statements. Yet, this massive disputation is a jumble of back and forth, until you begin to see the order of the court.

As many commentators have observed, John’s Gospel has many elements of a trial in it. And if the whole book is a court case written to show that Jesus is the Son of God (John 20:31), it should not surprise us to find witnesses, evidence, and other elements of a law court. Indeed, that is how I take John 8:12–59, and in the outline included here, I offer a court case in two parallel parts.

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From this outline, let’s consider a couple things.

The Legal Brief in John 8

First, there is, in John 8:12–30, two arguments that run in parallel. This parallel is found in the order of the speech and the shape of the argumentation. Compare verses 12–19 and 20–27. In these two sections, we find Jesus making an opening statement in each. Remarkably these statements should be read together, and give us a sense of what the first trial is addressing. In verse 12, Jesus announces that he is the light coming into the world, and in verse 20 he says that he (the Light of the World) will be departing. Commiserate with so much in John, this trial is about Jesus and the light he brings.

Importantly, Jesus’s statement are met with hostile unbelief, expressed in two objections—one long, one short. This is how the trial proceeds until, in verses 28–30, Jesus points to his coming cross, when he will be lifted up. As verse 30 indicates, many believed in him, even though moments earlier (v. 27), they didn’t understand. So clearly, this faith lacks understanding, which Jesus will proceed to show as false.

Stopping here in the middle of the chapter, notice how this response of faith is the turning point of the chapter. Quite possibly, the faith of his hearers is based upon the hope that Jesus “lifting up” would be an exaltation to glory, which they might enjoy too. What Jesus has in mind with respect to his lifting up, however, is his coming crucifixion. But these disciples do not understand that (v. 27), they simply believe in Jesus for other purposes. This is a warning to us today and to any who believe in Jesus for their own reasons, not his.

In the context of John, we will see that the people of Israel were seekers of glory, and it seems Jesus’s words of lifting up could have invited such a misplaced faith. Accordingly, this is where the next section begins, as it moves to reveal the darkness of Jesus questioners. Like before, the second section has another mirrored debate, a legal dispute in two parts.

Verses 31–32 begins with another opening statement, but this time Jesus’s statement covers the two parts of the trial. As to the content of his statement, Jesus tells his would-be followers how they prove themselves them true. If they remain in his word, they will have life eternal, but if they refuse him and his words, they are false, darkened, and spiritually dead. Tragically, this is what the chapter proves.

Let’s following the argument in order. First, in vv. 31–47, the Jews ask three questions, to which Jesus responds three times. And in that legal debate, Jesus splits the difference between biological seeds of Abraham (which these Jews are) from spiritual heirs of Abraham (which these Jews are not). The result of this distinction is Jesus’s famous and forceful declaration that these “believers” are actually children of the devil. “You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires” (v. 44a).

Next, these devilish sons of Abraham accuse Jesus of demonic activity and Samaritan origins (v. 48), even as they reject his self-identification with Abraham. Again, this legal debate turns on three questions, followed by three responses from Jesus. Ironically, once identified with the devil, these interlocuters do the work of the accuser, questioning Jesus, his identity, and his eternity (i.e., his ancient knowledge of Abraham). But in context, all they do by questioning Jesus is to show their own spiritual ignorance and lifeless religion.

Consequently, when they pick up stones to throw at Jesus, a symbol that the trial has moved from deliberation to execution, John reveals that these accusers of Jesus are the ones who stand condemned by God. They do not know God and this is evident in the fact that they cannot recognize God’s Son. Accordingly, the chapter closes not with a guilty verdict for Jesus, but a guilty verdict for his legal opponents.

All in all, John uses a tight literary structure to lead the reader to see what he is doing. And more, he reveals who Jesus is by contrasting him with those who accuse him. Jesus is the light of the world who will be extinguished on the cross, so that in the light of his resurrection, all who truly believe in him will be saved. Yet, such faith does not come from the selfish will of men who want to glorify themselves by Jesus. Saving faith comes to those who are truly heirs of Abraham, sheep who hear Jesus voice, and children born of God.

John 8 and the Crack in the Cosmos

The division between biological seeds and spiritual heirs is a division, a crack in the cosmos, that ranges across the whole of humanity. And in John, this spiritual division between two kinds of people is seen by paying attention to the trial. In questioning and condemning Jesus, the Jewish leaders show themselves to be men of darkness. By contrast, those who abide in the words of Christ will walk in the light, as he is in the light, because God gives light to those who are children of light.

Again, this spiritual division is what we face in every conflict—whether familial, ecclesial, societal, legal, or political. As Jesus teaches, there are two kinds of people in the world. And as John 8, the sides are determined by God and detected by how one responds to the Son. Ultimately, John 8 reveals much about who Jesus is, but it also reveals much about who we are.

With that realization in mind, let us seek God’s mercy and pray for his light to lead us to Christ. Jesus is the light of the world, and if you rejoice in his light, he will reveal to you his truth, and his truth alone will set you free. Just as he says in John 8:31–32.

Soli Deo Gloria, ds

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