As He went along, He saw a man blind from birth.  His disciples asked him,  “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”  John 9:1, 2.

Jesus must have been amused by the disciples’ assumption about how this man could have sinned before he was born to be punished with blindness.  I’m missing something here, I know, because the context of John’s teaching wouldn’t be stated in such a way as to indicate a cultural understanding.  It could have been a general consensus that God punished people for the sin He knew they were about to commit in their lifetimes, or it could have been assumed the parents were to blame.  In any case, the disciples thought they were being spiritually wise in asking such a question, obviously, or they wouldn’t have posed it to Him in the first place.

As usual, Jesus’ answer complete baffles us in its profound simplicity.

“Neither this man nor his parents sinned,”  said Jesus,  “but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life.”

What?!!?

So this  guy was born blind just so God could display His own power?  That sounds heartless…create the problem so He can be the “solution” to it.  I mean wouldn’t it make you angry to be used this way?  And does this mean every sick, damaged or underprivileged person is an excuse for God to work in their lives?

Well, at least Jesus answered the question of guilt in a way.  We know it wasn’t any specific sin which caused the man’s blindness, so what caused it then?

Sin.  Not the activity of a person but the condition of the human race separated from their sustaining force, God.  We unplugged ourselves from our power source and paid the price of death, bringing all the different ways a body can die along with it.  As I’ve said before, God is the master chess player and uses all the circumstances to win the day.  This man was born underprivileged, outcast and considered unclean because of his condition—even if his parents were rich and affluent.  God saw his condition long before they happened and determined to use his situation to win the day.

Curing blindness brought on by life was one thing in the Jews’ thinking; curing a birth related condition turned their religious conclusions on their proverbial ears.  Jesus took the source of their “truth” and showed nothing was beyond redemption, no one beyond God’s mighty hand to rescue.  In the views of the day, a man or woman born blind were cursed by God and not allowed in the temple.  The reason for this stems from their misunderstanding of clean and unclean per the law.  The law forbids anyone who is lame from entering the temple proper, though they could be in the outer courts because they are unclean.   (See Leviticus 21:16-24.)  Plus, if we read Exodus 20 where God gives the 10 commandments, we see not far down the list a curse on anyone who disrespects their parents and another one on those who takes the name of God in vain (not as just a cuss word but misrepresents God’s name by wearing it falsely) to the third and fourth generations.

I need to pause here in order to troubleshoot something I believe is a misunderstanding on this subject of cursing.

Paul claims that Jesus became a curse for us (Galatians 3:13) so that we might be the righteousness of God.  Some people in the church of Christ believe, however, that generational curses take certain rituals in order to deliver a person from bondage.  If Christ became a curse for us, we don’t need any other formula.  I believe there are children who have been hurt by the sins of the parents as well as bondage to evil spirits, sickness and the like, but accepting Christ takes away the curse immediately.  The only thing that remains is submitting our lives and understandings to Him.  Going through big exorcisms and pronouncing Christian incantations are Satan’s way of combining mythic magic with Christian truth.

Those who get sidetracked by rituals have missed the point of the cross.  The cross, and Jesus’ subsequent resurrection, delivered us from the rituals of the law as well as that of the world’s various methods and placed all solutions for sin in one place and act.  Say, for instance, I find out my ancestors were into witchcraft, do I search my life to look for curses or turn to the Lord and reject my heritage?  Repentance is an easy thing, deliverance from certain sins might, however, take a lifetime of fasting and prayer.  Jesus told the disciples after the night on the Mount where He met Moses and Elijah that some people cannot be freed except by fasting and prayer…as in the case of the demon possessed boy they couldn’t cure (see Matthew 17, Luke 9).  But these interventions don’t take incantations or special rituals, instead it means time with God so that He supplants that which occupied that space with Himself.

Deliverance isn’t an issue of saying the right words as in magic formulas or powerful spells but surrendering those places we’ve held onto sin for such a long time to God.  Where the presence of God is sin can’t live and visa versa.  One replaces the other.  The curse of sin is death, the remedy is Christ who is our life.

 Jesus moves to touch the man no rabbi would for fear of becoming unclean by association.  Then He does something odd.

“I tell you the truth,”  Jesus answered,  “before Abraham was born, I am!”  John 8:58.

Did Jesus just say what I think He said?   Did He just declare His identity clearly and succinctly?  I think He so.  The significance of this cannot be lost on anyone who knows Jewish history or the Law, for it is the name God gave Himself:  “I Am”.  His reference couldn’t be lost on those listening for sure, because immediately they picked up stones to kill Him, yet somehow He pulled a Houdini and hid from them, walking away unscathed.

They had asked,  “Who are you?  Tell us plainly…” and when He did, they decided they didn’t like the answer and would stone Him instead.  To me this is the paradox of fallen human nature:  one moment we want a rescuer to save us from the bad guys, the next we decide we don’t like how our Knight in shining white armor plans to do it and go looking for someone else—or something else. 

Simply saying “I am” isn’t earth shattering in and of itself because we say this all the time in reply to questions about our daily lives.  You know “I am coming over…”  “I am ready” “I am…etc.” rolls off our tongues without a second thought.  Jesus’ use, however, is in the continuous present tense.  Even without knowing Greek we can see by the phrasing He was saying something quite profound (and for further proof just look at the reaction of the Jews again). 

“Before Abraham was born, I am!”

By stating He  is, not was, before Abraham was born, He declared Himself to exist in the eternal now where all times are the present for Him through the Father.  Though He gave up omnipresence and had no more power than humans have at their disposal, His connection to the Father shined through and affected everyone in His path.  I Am is the name God gave Himself.  The Eternal One; the only self-existent being in the universe and beyond.

Jesus, without question, establishes both His connection with the Father and identity.  His statement declared His mission; His mission declared God’s intent.

On the other hand, the Jews reaction declared both their hopes for themselves and intent.  By picking up stones to kill Jesus they displayed their hearts for all people then and throughout history to see.  They didn’t want a messiah like Jesus, for some reason…which is the same reason many don’t want Him now.

Jesus replied,  “If I glorify myself, my glory means nothing.  My Father, whom you claim as your God, is the one who glorifies me.  John 8:54.

In other words, narcissism is dangerously empty.

The first thought that occurred to me last night as I read this passage for the umpteenth time was the following:

When I’m the only one shouting out how wonderful I am, about my good deeds, declaring my own righteousness, power and honor before God and men, the only one who believes me is me.  And that belief could be based on a lie I keep telling myself to avoid the truth staring me in the face.  The word “glory” can be interpreted as the evidence of what one is and does displayed for all to see.

Say I begin telling everyone how great a painter I am though no one I tell has ever seen me paint.  What will be the results of my efforts?

Now say someone asks me if I can paint well because they want to hire me to do some for them and I say yes followed by giving them references to my performance with other people, what are the results then?

You see the difference.  The former is claims I make about myself without the actions or history with anyone to back it up; the latter is a collective claim based on the positive experiences of others as well as my own.  At this point it isn’t bragging but fact.

Jesus gives us the method by which to tell if people are authentic or not.  In this dialogue He cites His Father as the other witness; in a later dialogue He tells them to look at the miracles themselves if they won’t believe anything else (see John 10:38), though even these were not enough for them.  As for us, we can’t be personal witnesses to these past mighty acts of God through Jesus, so we have to rely on the testimony of others as to the validity of His claim.

Still we do have a method of gaining evidence in our own lives by which we may glorify God.  The glory given to us is our changed lives and attitudes by which we testify to His glory.  Jesus said,  “By their fruit you will know them.”  Matthew 7:16.  We many times think the word “fruit” points to mighty works of miraculous origin and missions, but these types of works are not the main evidence we are to look for in one who claims God as their Father and Jesus as their brother.  Galatians 5:22-26 leaves no room for us to waffle on the subject because Paul makes it clear the true fruit is good attitudes lived out in righteous actions.  Anything else is but a result of these inner workings.

Unfortunately, the church either gets bogged down in miracle-seeking or piety—neither of  which on their own prove God’s presence.  The evidence of God’s Spirit living and working through someone is not because they make heroic efforts to be like Jesus but comes from submission to His presence.  God becomes right where we disagree so we submit to His ideals, discarding our own agenda for His.

A person who doesn’t display humility, faith in or out of crisis, kindness, etc., in ever growing measure, is not authentic, for they use the gospel for personal glory and gain.  The way to tell whether a pound of fish is truly 1 pound or not is by measuring it against an agreed scale set to that weight.  Every scale made must conform to that scale or be false.  The same goes for our measurement of what it means to belong to Christ.  Every measurement of the validity of our claims to Christ are given in Scripture whatever does not conform to this scale is a lie.

The evidence for Jesus’ mission, status before God and man, and His identity all showed itself clearly in the work He did, what He taught as well as who He claimed to be.  It should have been enough.

Sorry, I didn’t realize they were streaming the concert live.  Bridge City calls their building “Bridge House” because it houses three distinct churches who all work together for the community.  As I said, I will update you on the produced finished product because they recorded it live but also multitracked the whole thing so they could remix it and put out a cd.

I’m playing a worship concert that will be broadcast on Facebook once it’s produced.  Here’s the link:  God Night  I will also put up the link to the video at that time for those who read this blog.

The Jews answered Him,  “Aren’t we right in saying that you are a Samaritan and demon-possessed?”  John 8:48.

This is an example of a failing in humans that comes out when they can’t think of anything more intelligent to say as a comeback.

To the Jew of Christ’s time calling another Jew a Samaritan was fighting words, claiming they were demon-possessed meant they were unclean and insane.  These men weren’t just objecting to Jesus’ words they being insulting and cruel—as cruel as they knew how to be.

Remember, though, just a few short days or weeks before they were enthusiastic followers.  What changed their minds was a little tidbit of information they considered too hard to swallow so they turned hardened enemies.  This means they never really gave themselves over to the teachings of Christ in the first place, since they didn’t even seek to understand.  If you recall, Jesus gave them a key to understanding His words by telling them what He said wasn’t physical cannibalism but a spiritual diet of God’s Word in the flesh come to save the world.  They refused this and ended up His strongest opponents.

A word to the wise:  those who turn against Jesus will use their knowledge, skills and resources to discredit, cast doubt, blur, muddy the waters, obscure and generally downplay the importance of the Savior.  They will be so convincing that even the very staunchest of disciples will be tempted to give it all up, if that were possible.

Why they don’t want Jesus has already been discussed, but it’s important to know whom we face as enemies of the cross.  These people will sound good, know the Word by memory a lot of times and be cordial or politic the whole time they are eviscerating Christ.  Their reasoning will sound solid, their rhetoric will be hard to argue by human standards.  Our battle, however, is not with them but the spiritual darkness and powers in high places who seek to dislodge our loyalty to Jesus.

The wisdom of the gospel is Jesus Christ crucified and raised to life.  Contrary to popular earth-bound logic in a universe actually ruled by the Judeo/Christian God this fact of the gospel is not only possible by probable as well.

They insulted Jesus because they couldn’t defeat the truth of His teaching.  After all they had experienced three years of His arguments in the form of miraculous signs which included healing, the dead coming back to life and feeding several thousand people—not just once but twice.  His argument for being the Messiah and God’s Son left them helpless with rage, which in human terms always means the last resort is to turn to violence.

It’s important to remember this vital lesson.  We are to be as unlike the world as Jesus was and is.  Our arguments are to be in the form of a demonstration of His power to change our lives and affect the world by our presence—much the same way salt flavors food by just being in it.  Our presence in the human mix, however, will not go unchallenged because if they did this type of stuff to our Master, they will do it to His servants.  And many of those we face will not only be people we know but brothers, sisters, best friends and fellow ministers who served with us at one time.

He (or she) who stands firm to the end, though, will receive a crown of life.

“If I am telling the truth, why don’t you believe me?  He who belongs to God hears what God says.  The reason you do not hear is that you do not belong to God.”  John 8:46b, 47.

I don’t know that I could stand hearing that kind of speech either.  I think it would torque my crank just a little too hard and I’d snap in self-defense.

Jesus has an uncanny knack of hitting the nail on the head.  His rhetoric couches truth in interlocking circles, revealing it in wave patterns.

The people arguing with Him were unable to hear what He said because they didn’t belong to God; Jesus said remained a mystery to them because their hearts were closed off to truth or the revelation of it.

“Why is my language not clear to you?  Because you are unable to hear what I say.”

And why were they unable to hear what Jesus said?  They didn’t belong to God, even though they called God their Father, but their actions of closing out Jesus’ words belied their claims and showed their hearts to be full of darkness.  Instead of fixing their eyes on the God they claimed to serve, they fixed their gaze on the forms, the customs, the identity, and their heritage, thinking (or hoping) all the while this is all God required of them.  They prided themselves in their history and proximity with God but not a relationship of any substance.

The language of Christ confused and irritated them because they were unwilling to see His words in the light of God’s presence.  The message remained unclear due to their refusal to accept what their own customs and history taught them about salvation, God and the Messiah.  This inability to hear the language of truth is inherent in all of us, for we prove our preferences over truth by constantly choosing traditional or rebellious views over the simple Word of God.

If  we were to submit to God completely, we would see clearly.  Not at first, of course, for spiritual insight is a matter of growth not miraculous happenstance, but our eyes would grow accustomed to light.  Learning to see truth is not so much a gradual thing as it is a matter of submission.  We who claim to know Christ have a responsibility to submit to His Word without holding back.  Our preferences, preconceptions and understanding all fall under the mighty hand of God.

Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight.  Proverbs 3:5, 6.

Total submission to Jesus alone allows us to see what reality is and is not.  The universe was made by Him therefore trying to understand the science or way of it is impossible without acknowledging Him as Creator.  Oh, we might grasp obvious facts about our world and the heavens, but a clear understanding will elude us, which means we will draw faulty conclusions.

Jesus told those who had believed in Him who He was the whole time they followed Him and after they quit.  The reason it never sunk in is their expectations were in the way.  They revealed their motivations when Jesus confronted them with what we all need to do in order to have life.  Jesus’ blood must wash us clean on the inside, which is why He instructed us to spiritually ingest Him.  Our spiritual diet is to consist of Christ’s body and blood.  Paul calls those who believe “the body of Christ” and the Spirit gives life to all who believe.  Unless we accept this and bring it into our innermost being, His words will remain a mystery.

The Jews leaned on their own understanding since they refused to even hear what Jesus had to say.  In the way of addition and subtraction:   Since they leaned on their own understanding, they showed they did not trust God nor acknowledge Him in all their ways.  For any of us to get our paths straight we must acknowledge, trust and lean on God for our understanding.

I believe with all my heart the reason most of us experience switchbacks in our walk is simply because we attempt time and again to combine the truth with our own desires.  In other words, being human we all try to get a little earthly joy in conjunction with spiritual realities.  Many doctrines of recent times such as “name it, claim it” or “by your words you will be commended or condemned” take these things as if they were spells we cast that God has to honor.  In the case of “name it, claim it” or the prosperity doctrine as it’s known in some circles, proponents of this “truth” ignore Paul’s warning in Philippians 4:12 where he demonstrates by his own experience what those who follow Christ will experience; namely plenty and want.  Jesus told us clearly that we will be rejected, lose our property and those who kill or persecute us will do so out of a false believe they are serving God.

So what is the prosperity we gain from knowing Christ and which the Scriptures promise so strongly?  Peace, contentment and a sense of oneness with God.  Until our hearts are given over to this, all other forms of wealth will only be a distraction and snare to us.  1 Timothy 6:10 says,  For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil.  Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.

What faith is Paul speaking of except that which is in Christ?  Our wealth is in God not possessions.  For godliness with contentment is great gain.  There’s no other way to interpret those who pervert this truth than that they are combining the search for earthly security with that of God’s.  The inner security of one who lives by faith in the Son of God holds no interest or power over them to the point that they create ways for them to ignore Scripture for the pleasure of toys now.  In this they have the cart before the horse, for God doesn’t begrudge us earthly wealth nor have a problem with stuff, since He made it all as well as every possibility for anything we might invent along the way.  The problem here is in the emphasis not the possession.

All this is to say, the Jews and we lean on our own understanding instead relying on God.  We see a promise that God will prosper us, as did the Jews, and we think by our performance of rites and ceremonies we gain prestige, wealth and security.  In Christ it’s the exact opposite for we must first lose all of our priorities for His.  In other words, we must lay on the alter our grasp of what it means to be wealthy, respected, honored and godly for the sake of His interpretation.  Otherwise we will be rejecting God just as the Jews did.

I am not harping on money here but a way of life.  Lust for earthly wealth can come in insidious forms.  For some of us it is prestige alone which fills our cup, for others it is a nice house, car, friends, etc.  In Christ, our way of life is to be bought by the one who paid the price for our sin.  It is our first step toward the kingdom.  Money is a means to an end, folks, not the end in itself.  Jesus made the heavens and the earth so He owns it all.  This being true, those who enter His rest will share in His wealth, but first He must know He can trust us not to worship the gift over the Giver.

God provides for us everything we will ever need.  The world was made complete before a human foot ever walked on it, therefore we conclude we made to be mere caretakers of His property not owners, for in essence we are property of a sorts as well.  This means we can follow the Master into earthly poverty because we know He owns it all and will provide for us as we need it.  This does not mean we won’t experience earthly insecurity or want, since the best way to teach us dependence on His provision is to place us in situations where our own efforts fall short.  God longs to prosper us in things as well, yet He cannot as long as we cling to things as vital to our well-being.  The only “thing” which matters is sitting at the feet of Jesus, which is the better part, Martha.

The Jews closed the truth out by hardening their hearts to the God of the universe.

The question confronting us now is:  Who is our Father?

“We are not illegitimate children,”  They protested.  “The only Father we have is God himself.”

Jesus said to them,  “If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God an now am here.”  John 8:41b, 42.

 Jesus set out to wake them from their stupor and found some pretty grouchy people, unwilling to wake from the dream they had of themselves.  They had witnessed the miracles, the teaching of God’s love and character, yet they wouldn’t submit to the price they needed to pay to continue in the light.  Here they are claiming God as their own Father without any real awareness of what it meant to be His son or daughter.  If being physical descendants of Abraham didn’t make them his children spiritually, then calling themselves the children of God wouldn’t make it so either.  Something was missing.

“Why is my language not clear to you?  Because you are unable to hear what I say.”

They clung to their interpretations of God’s Word so hard nothing could make them hear the truth.  It’s like they had stuck their fingers in their ears and began singing,  “La, la, la, la, I can’t hear you” as loud as they could to shut out His words.  To hear meant they would have to obey.  Jesus reveals the root problem of their spiritual deafness:

“You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desire.  He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him.  When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies.”

Ouch!  Ever hear of diplomacy, Jesus?  What are you trying to do, drive them to kill you?

Every time I read these passages it seems to me He’s actually pushing them to crucify Him.  His arguments push all their buttons without cushioning the blows.  Yet what other choice does He have?  He spent nearly three years being subtle, careful to demonstrate the power of God and rightly dividing the Scriptures so everyone who heard would see the light, and it got Him nowhere with these people.  They wouldn’t listen when He told them the hard truth of God then, to back off now would be foolish.

By calling the devil their “father” Jesus reveals their motives for not wanting to hear what He has to say.  They preferred their fantasy constructs to real truth.  The story of God held little interest to them, for what they wanted was the story in which they triumphed over every obstacle to gain personal glory and power.  Knowing truth made no difference if they weren’t going to be able to be the heroes of their own stories.  What they rejected from Christ’s teachings was the one little morsal of truth on which the rest of salvation hinged:  it wasn’t their heroic efforts or mighty deeds which impressed God but the humble realization they were powerless to do anything for themselves in this regard without Him.  Total dependence on Jesus is the only way possible for us to find salvation or freedom from death.

“Can any of  you prove me guilty of sin?”

These people who had believed in Him knew His character, work and words were above reproach…it’s why they followed in the first place.  What turned them off is their misunderstanding of the spiritual nature of ingesting the Son of God.  They couldn’t get past Jesus’ demand that they eat His flesh and drink His blood, nor did they grasp the spiritual nature of that command.  Their minds were so focused/consumed by the lies of spiritual grandeur they blinded themselves to their need for reconstruction.  Nothing will wake a person up to their condition if they continue to take the drug of pride.  It washes away the ability to see ourselves as lost to truth without intervention.

Not one of these men could prove Jesus guilty of sin.  Blasphemy was a convenient excuse to shut Him up.

Why were they so quick to pick up stones at the end of His speech to them?  They wanted to silence His voice so badly they would have used any excuse to kill Him.

In our walk with God do we shut out truths we find unpalitable?  Do we shut ourselves off from light because it hurts our eyes to look?  Are we willing to break the mirror of truth because it shows we are not the fairest in the land making a lie out of the fantasy we’ve built up about our own value?

Our value comes from the fact God loves us, sent His Son to save us; it has absolutely nothing to do with how cool we are.  The reality of those who find Christ and those who reject Him couldn’t be more different than total light and total darkness.  When we walk into the light through the power of Jesus, we see ourselves for who we really are without any airbrush tricks to soften the blow.  At this point we have two choices:  hide our eyes by running back to our dank, dark little caves or falling into the arms of the one who brings us out of such misery.  Make no mistake the end of all rejection of Christ results in misery. 

On the other hand taking our eyes off ourselves brings joy unlimited, if our focus is, of course, Jesus.  We can find no contentment with our spiritual eyes turned inward; no peace when we are worried about our own; no joy or love of life unless we turn our eyes to Jesus.  He is our peace.  He is our joy.

Even as He spoke, many put their faith in Him.

To the Jews who had believed Him, Jesus said,  “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples.  Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

I never noticed before who Jesus was addressing in this famous passage. 

The first sentence of our quote applies to those putting their faith in Him or who came to belief and trust in His message and person.  The first phrase in the second sentence, on the other hand, begins a discussion with those who had believed Him at one time.  The rest of chapter 8 is devoted to this discussion with Jesus on the offensive and these Jews defending their defection.

Remember the Apostate verse back in chapter 6:66?  I said then and I believe now it was no accidental numbering in John’s gospel or as a reference in Revelation.  The identity of the one who becomes the man of perdition, the antichrist and beast of the end times prophecy will be one who rejects Jesus as God incarnate come to save the world from sin.  Daniel claimed he would think to change times and laws.  To change times would probably indicate years, since Daniel used the word “time” to equal a year in his prophecy, that would make sense here.  So the apostate will change history to his liking and adjust times to fit his need.  Then changing laws would be easy because there would no longer be a sense of final ultimate authority in the Word of God.  Thus he could arrange truth to his preference.

Though prophecy is not our subject, it’s good to make sure we grasp who we are studying here.  Jesus was addressing the very crowd who deserted Him earlier, if I get the reference right, which means He was reaching out to them, trying to shake them awake.  But they refused to listen on the basis that their preconceptions were tried to the limit and they couldn’t (or wouldn’t) go beyond them.  I believe their very words were,  “This is a hard saying, who can accept it?”  Meaning themselves, of course.

Since they could not accept Jesus for who God sent Him to be, they became sons of perdition, relatives to the man of perdition.  Their father was no longer Abraham or God but Satan himself, for the Accuser set out to murder the Son of God from the very beginning, according to Jesus (see 8:44), and they were simply imitating his means of conquering the world.  They refused Jesus because He didn’t come in a form to their liking, grasp Scripture to their way of thinking or bring hope for their personal glorification.  In rejecting the Son of God, they inadvertently rejected God Himself, since the Father sent the Son on the mission to earth in the first place.  To reject the messenger by default rejects the Sender of that message.

What Satan hoped to accomplish or still hopes to win puzzles me because the created cannot win against the Creator; it’s a logical impossibility.  Sin in its basic form is simply rejection of God, and since God is the originator, Creator, Sustainer and essence in all things, denial of Him is plain insanity.  Therefore we can conclude that Satan drove himself to madness by wishing for the impossible.  There is no way for him to be Creator of the universe or of himself, so there is no way for him to be God.

The message contained in the passage above, however, is about truth in its purist form.  My concept of living is to be truthful with who I am and accept the truth about others willingly as well.  Yet, if I’m honest with everyone (including me), my perception, bias and preference of what the word “truth” actually signifies doesn’t match up to what Jesus meant in His declaration above.  Truth is more and less what I believe it to be.  It cannot save us, unless we know truth as a person in Jesus Christ.  It cannot set us free unless it is accepted through the Son of God.

Looking at the parts of the statement we get a word equation of sorts, which goes something like this:

Holding to Jesus’ teaching = being His disciples = knowing truth = freedom.

So, first we have to stick to His teachings to even be His disciples, then and only then can we know the truth which sets us free.  Said another way, only submitting to the discipline of the truth Jesus teaches can we be set free from being slaves to sin and become family again.  We who sin are slaves to sin; but if the Son sets us free to be family, we are guaranteed not only freedom but to belong forever to His family, which means eternity.

Those who had believed in Jesus might have been Abraham’s descendants genetically, but they weren’t his family in spirit or character.  They plotted to kill Jesus as a heretic, something Abraham would never have done.  Their own ancestor begged for the people of Sodom and Gomorrah to be spared with heavenly messengers even though he must have been aware of the sheer evil of the place, yet his heart was given over to love for them anyway—a characteristic he learned from his Master.  Those of his bloodline didn’t possess the heart Abraham displayed.  To them the Gentiles were a scourge and the scum of the earth.  Instead of reaching out to heal they resented, grew bitter and fought their rulers.  Abraham would have befriended and eventually influenced them in some way as he did Sodom and Gomorrah.

The Jews were to be witnesses of God’s power, justice, mercy, grace and love to the world.  They failed to do any of these things by worshiping the created instead of the Creator, only in Jesus Christ did God fulfill His command to the Hebrews.  Through Him the world found the perfect example of who God is.  Knowing Jesus means we have held on to His teaching.  Knowing truth means we must know Jesus.  Being free comes from being His disciple.

They did not understand that He was telling them about His Father.  So, Jesus said,  “When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am the one I claim to be, and that I do nothing on my own but speak just what the Father has taught me.  The one who sent me is with me; He has not left me alone, for I always do what pleases Him.  Even as He spoke, many put their faith in Him.  John 8:27-30.

The presence of God evidenced itself in Jesus’ life and actions.  The signs for knowing Him were all there for anyone to see if they wanted to, however, few really did.

Why?

The presence of sin.  Its influence and effect on the mind leaves us blind to its very presence so that people see what they want or have been conditioned to see.  What do we want to know for sure?  That we are valuable.  But that desire to be valued manifests itself in a variety of ways when sin enters the picture.  John wrote another letter in the NT which answers our question pretty well.  We find it in 1 John 2:15-17,  Do not love the world or anything in the world.  If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.  For everything in the world—the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does—comes not from the Father but from the world.  The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever.

Do you see the contrast given here?  The world and its desires pass away but those who do the will of God last forever.  If we let the desires of sinful man, which means we buy into a thing or a host of things not matching up to God’s desires, then our perception of truth will be altered and we will see God’s truth as a hinderance to our desires.  The lust John mentions is not merely indicating sexual desires but an overwhelming craving for whatever we see around us.  As for the boasting John points to, it subtracts God from its equation, which makes it godless in intent though not may be necessarily in content.  In other words, we can boast about seeing God’s great wonders as if they were a boost to our own greatness rather than praising God for creating them.  Since He created everything, everything we see is holy, but if we misuse it or extract Him from nature as its source, any boasting we do about it is godless.

A couple of verses before our key text above Jesus answered the question weighing on the minds of the Pharisees.  “Who are you?”  they asked.

“Just what I have been claiming all along,”  Jesus replied.  “I have much to say in judgment of you.  But He who sent me is reliable, and what I have heard from Him I tell the world.”

Jesus all but hit them over the head with His identity.  He rarely came out and said,  “I am the messiah” but He pointed to the prophecies, Law and His own works to reveal what they needed to know.  They refused to acknowledge Him as anything but a hindrance to their agenda, especially once they saw He wasn’t onboard with what they had in mind.  Jesus’ teaching didn’t focus on Himself as Messiah, but the whole of truth.  He wasn’t interested in self-glorification, for His mission was to save mankind and turn our hearts back to God.

Though Jesus could have spewed judgment out on His detractors, He restrained Himself for the sake of following the call of His Father.  Look at the text again and see the statement of “I have” in contrast to “But He who sent me is reliable” then recognize Jesus gave us a hint as to what God wanted Him to do.  These sentences contrast each other, for though Jesus had things to say in judgment, His Father gave Him a different agenda.  This fulfills what He said to Nicodemus a few chapters before where He claimed,  “For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him.”

Do you see?  Jesus is telling the Pharisees the very same truth.  His mission was one of salvation not condemnation.  He could have slapped them all down with guilt and judgment but trusted His Father instead to know what needed to be done.

If our God and Savior kept the goal in mind at all times, refusing to be led astray by seemingly important arguments or theological rabbit trails, what should His followers do?