Father Stephen De Young:

Now, it was the Feast of Dedication in Jerusalem, and it was winter.

So now, even though we’re in the middle of chapter 10, we’ve jumped forward because remember, we were at the Feast of Tabernacles. Now we’re at the Feast of Dedication, also known as Hanukkah. That’s what this is. That’s why it notes that it’s winter.

Interlocutor So we we’ve just skipped some months there.

Fr. Stephen: Yes, we have skipped several months here because remember, the Feast of Tabernacles took place, as we discussed, around harvest time. So we’re talking about the fall, the autumn. Now, we’ve moved a few months ahead. Now we’re in winter. It’s the Feast of Dedication. Remember, this is the feast from the Maccabean revolt when Judas Maccabeus and his brothers, they overthrew the Greeks, and that gave them the ability to rebuild and rededicate the temple. And so, the menorah from Hanukkah represents the candlestand in the temple that was relit. And the oil was supposed to last for one day, and instead it lasted for seven. So there were miracles attending to it.

Our Protestant friends who don’t accept First Maccabees as part of the Bible, it’s always interesting when we get to this part of St. John’s Gospel, and Jesus goes to attend a feast that they think isn’t biblical, but Jesus here goes to celebrate this feast.

And Jesus walked in the temple, in Solomon’s porch.

This has been discovered, archaeologically. It does not actually date back to Solomon, of course, because Solomon’s Temple was destroyed by the Babylonians in 586. But portico is probably a better translation. It’s sort of a series of arches and awnings. They have uncovered where this was.

Then the Jews surrounded Him and said to Him, “How long do You keep us in doubt? If You are the Christ, tell us plainly.”

Interlocutor He told them already?

Fr. Stephen: Well, he hasn’t come straight out and said it. Jesus has never stood up and said, “Hello, I am the Messiah.” And so that’s what they want from him.

Interlocutor But then they get to decide whether that’s right or not.

Fr. Stephen: Well, I think added to just this isn’t just a request for clarification. They’ve been arguing. We’ve seen several times they’ve been arguing, “Is he the Messiah? Isn’t he the messiah? I think he is. I think he isn’t.” Back and forth. So it’s partially clarification, but it’s also, “Declare yourself to be the Messiah publicly,” meaning, “Hey, let’s kick off this revolution,” because remember what they’re in Jerusalem celebrating.

Interlocutor Ah, revolution.

Fr. Stephen Right. The Greek oppressors Antiochus Epiphanes had desecrated the temple was oppressing the people. Judas Maccabeus and his brothers rose up and threw them off. So Judas Maccabeus is one of the popular notions in the first century of what the Messiah is going to be like, right? He’s going to be a king-like this who’s going to rise up and overthrow the Romans.

So part of this is sort of the further of, “Come on, let’s do this. Yeah, right. We got a big crowd here for the feast, right? Let’s rise up and let’s do this, if you’re the Messiah, let’s stop messing around here.”

Jesus answered them, “I told you, and you do not believe.”

So he starts by saying, “I’ve already told you, it’s not that I’ve been unclear. It’s that you’re not coming on board.”

“The works that I do in My Father’s name, they bear witness of Me.”

Remember we talked about how St. John always doesn’t talk about miracles; he talks about signs. He uses the word “sign”, because these things that Jesus does are supposed to be a sign to the people that the Messiah has come, this messianic age is beginning. And what they’re to do is to then fall in line and follow Him and believe in Him. We talked about believing, being trust, loyalty. Wanting him to be the kind of Messiah they want him to be is not trust and is not loyalty. That’s why they use him as the figurehead for their revolt. And so Jesus is saying, “Look, you’ve seen all these things that I’ve done that should tell you who I am. And if you believe that and accept that that’s who I am, then you should be following me rather than trying to get this revolution started and use me to do it.” They’re trying to use him rather than follow him.

“But you do not believe, because you are not of My sheep, as I said to you.”

Now, notice the causal relationship. “You do not believe because you are not of my sheep,” right? Not, “You’re not my sheep because you don’t believe.” As if they’re sitting there making a choice, right? So Jesus’ point is, “You’re people who are far from God, far from the things of God, far from understanding the things of God, far from God’s righteousness. That’s why you don’t trust me. That’s why you don’t have any loyalty for me. That’s why you’re not willing to follow me. If you were, then you would.”

“My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me.  And I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; neither shall anyone snatch them out of My hand. My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all; and no one is able to snatch them out of My Father’s hand. I and My Father are one.”

That last part is where we’re going to get into trouble here. So he reiterates, right? He goes back to this metaphor he had been using before he says, “My sheep hear my voice and they follow me.” Again, they’re not wanting to follow him. They’re wanting to basically lead him. They’re wanting to get him to do what they want him to do. And he says, “They’re the ones who receive eternal life and will never perish. Neither will anyone snatch them out of my hand.” Now, what is this talking about? Well, this is expanding upon what he said about himself. Remember, what he said about himself was, “No one takes my life, but I lay it down, you can’t harm me, he’s saying, in the same way you can’t harm them. Why? Because I’m going to give them eternal life so none of them will perish.”

And from this comes the idea that we see in the fathers who will say that no one can harm a righteous man. You look at that at first and you say, “Well, I can go to Acts and see St. Stephen. He was a righteous man and they stoned him to death.” And the fathers’ response is, “Yes, but did they harm St. Stephen by martyring him, by sending him to eternal life, by gaining him a crown in heaven for his martyrdom?” They killed St. George. Did they harm St. George? Jesus was crucified. Was Jesus harmed?

Interlocutor So, harm here is not getting him hurt or suffering. It’s not about cutting something of his body, right?

Interlocutor Right. You can cause someone trouble for a short period of time, but if they’re going to enjoy eternal life with God in the world to come, whatever you do to them now is nothing. And so this is expanding on what Jesus said about himself. It’s also expanding on that imagery of the sheepfold, where they’re safe and protected and saved. And he’s making this point to them now because this is what they’re giving up by not following him. This is what they’re giving up by choosing not to follow him. You want your political revolution, you want to overthrow the Romans. Well, look how that worked out for Judas Maccabeus, because if you go back and read First Maccabees, one of the first things that Judas Maccabeus and his brothers did once they made an independent Judea, they were worried that the Greeks would come back, that the Seleucids would come back. And so, they made a couple of treaties. They made a treaty with Sparta and then they made a treaty with Rome, and that treaty with Rome is how the Romans ended up in Judea the first place, who they now needed to be delivered from.

And so, Jesus is trying to tell them, “Look, you’re trying to trade the most valuable thing any person could possess: safety, salvation, eternal life. You’re wanting to trade that for paying taxes to a Judaean instead of a Roman.” That’s the point he’s trying to make to them. “When you reject me. And when you walk away, this is what you’re actually giving up. This is what you’re turning your back on. This is what you’re sacrificing.” This is not, once again, as Jesus has said several times, this is not about Jesus’ ego. Jesus would have the right to have an ego being God, but he doesn’t. This is not about that. It’s not that they’re hurting his feelings by not becoming his disciples. This is what Jesus has come to offer them. And by rejecting Him, they’re rejecting it also.

And then he talks about how his sheep, these people, have been given to him by his Father. Because remember, what was the response that these people who he’s been talking to on these trips to Jerusalem said to him when they started talking about fatherhood? They said, “We know who our Father is. God is our father.” First they said, Abraham. Then they said, “God is our father.” Jesus is saying, the people of God, the people of God, his Father, have been given to Him and are now his people. And so what he’s getting at and what he’s going to continue to clarify is you can’t be the people of God and not follow him. That’s the same group of people. And that’s because ultimately here, he and his Father are one. He and his Father are united in love.

Then the Jews took up stones again to stone Him.

They understand what he said. And as I said before, to be fair, if what he says here isn’t true, it would be blasphemy, right? If he’s lying, it’s blasphemy. If he’s telling the truth, then it’s the truth. So we have to be a little fair to them, that they don’t believe it, and since they don’t believe it, that makes it blasphemy. And so they pick up stones to stone him.

Jesus answered them, “Many good works I have shown you from My Father. For which of those works do you stone Me?”

So Jesus says, “I understand you don’t believe what I just said. I understand you don’t accept it. But what wrong have I ever done to you? Who have I wronged? Who have I harmed? What sin have I committed against you that you would stone me to death?”

The Jews answered Him, saying, “For a good work we do not stone You, but for blasphemy, and because You, being a Man, make Yourself God.”

So this is pretty clearly…. “We’re not stoning you because of anything you’ve done. You’re right. You haven’t done anything to us. But blasphemy is a sin against God. You’re a man. You’ve claimed you’ve claimed your God, essentially. claiming that you and the Father are one, and that’s blasphemy.”

Jesus answered them, “Is it not written in your law, ‘I said, “You are gods”’?

Now, there are a couple of interesting things here, because he says, “Is it not written in your law, is it not written in the Torah, ‘You are gods’?” And this is actually a quote from the Psalms. It’s not a quote from the Torah, but the word here that’s used in Greek, that’s translated “Law” in English, usually, almost always is a Greek word, nomos. And nomos does not… it includes laws, but it does not really mean law. What happened was St. Jerome, when he translated the Bible into Latin, translated the word nomos as lex, and lexin Latin means law. So we kind of got the English translation through that. But nomos, for example, the first century in Greek philosophy, there was a big debate among the Stoics about what things were according to nomos and what things were according to physis or nature. So they would say, for example, the law against murder is according to nature. Murder is just wrong in and of itself, right? Killing another human being is wrong, whereas the speed limit, going above a certain speed is also illegal. But that’s not wrong. That’s wrong because we’ve made a rule, because we have a custom we have.

Interlocutor This is the source of words like normative.

Fr. Stephen It’s related, yeah. And so nomos included a nation’s laws, its culture, its way of life. And so this is why that word was chosen in Greek to translate Torah, because Torah doesn’t really mean law either. Torah means teaching, properly speaking. And so they use nomos because nomos refers to a whole culture, a whole way of life. And if you read the Torah,, you’ll see it’s not just laws, but it includes diet, how you eat, what clothes you wear, how you live, how you farm, the feasts, the sacrifices, all those things are included in the nomos. And so when Jesus says, “Is it not written in your nomos?” He’s really saying, “Is this not part of your scriptures? Is this not part of your way of looking at the world, part of your part of your way of life?” So he’s basically saying, “You’re aware of this Psalm?” And it’s Psalm 82. This passage begins, “You are gods and sons of the Most High, but you will die like men.” And before that, preceding that, it begins with God standing… in the original, it’s God standing in the council of the gods. And so it was this picture you have to remember in the ancient Near East where the songs were written in the Old Testament, the King was viewed as being divine. So the picture that set up in Psalm 82 in the original was that God, the real God, Yahweh is standing in the midst of these kings, of these other nations who call themselves gods and the children of their gods. And he’s saying to them, you are called gods, and sons of most high. You’ve lauded yourself up to this position, but you’re going to die like men at the end of your life. I.e.  between the actual God and these so called gods, there’s no comparison. So that’s what’s going on in the original.

So Jesus refers to them, that “I said you are gods.”

If He called them gods, to whom the word of God came (and the Scripture cannot be broken),

He throws that in for them because again, this is one of the Pharisees’  big things. Remember, you can’t violate the Scriptures, right? You can’t say the Scriptures are wrong. And he’s saying, well, look at this passage. These people who are human beings, right? Human beings who are under God’s authority, are referred to as gods, right? And you can’t say the scripture is wrong.

do you say of Him whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world, ‘You are blaspheming’, because I said, ‘I am the Son of God’?

So this is a particular type of rabbinic Jewish argument where they argue from the lesser to the greater. Jesus uses this a lot. If this is true over in this case, then how much more is it true over here? So as a real clear example, remember when he says in the Synoptic Gospels, he says, “Which of you, if your son asks you for a loaf of bread, you give him a stone, or he asks for an egg and so you give him a cobra?” If your kid asks you for something to eat, you give him something to eat and he says, well, if you being wicked, give good gifts to your children. How much more will your Father, who is in heaven, gives you gifts? So he uses this little example to say, well, look at this big case. Or he’ll say, look at the lilies. They’re here today, tomorrow they wither and die. But look how beautiful they are. Do you really think God isn’t going to care for you?

This is that same kind of argument. So if these people back then, these pagan kings who are under God’s authority, if they can be called gods, then how much more can Jesus, who is the one who the Father sent into the world, how are you going to say that him calling himself the Son of God is blaspheming? Were the scriptures blaspheming when they call those people gods? Well, if the scriptures can call those people gods in some sense, then how much more could Jesus rightly be said to be God and the Son of God?

If I do not do the works of My Father, do not believe Me;

Once again, the signs that he does, this testimony, he says, look at the things I’ve done when I’ve been around you. He just said, for what good work do you do right? So they’re aware you’ve seen these things I do. If these are the works of God, then don’t believe me, don’t trust me, don’t follow me.

but if I do, though you do not believe Me, believe the works, that you may know and believe that the Father is in Me, and I in Him.”

So if the things I’m doing are the works of God, then even if you don’t want to believe the words that are coming out of my mouth, at least believe what I’m doing that you’ve seen for yourself, right? And what that will tell you, what that will tell you is that the Father must be in me and I must be in him. Otherwise I wouldn’t be able to do these things. And remember, this is the argument that a lot of the people, the people who have been following Jesus, this is the argument they’ve been using, just a few verses ago. Remember, these are not the words of one who has a demon. Can a demon open the eyes of a blind man? Look at what he’s doing. This should tell you he’s from God.

Interlocutor: And that’s what the man who used to be blind told him as well. He said, “I don’t know him, but he opened my eyes.”

Fr. Stephen: I don’t think a sinner could do this, right?

Interlocutor: Yes. From those actions. You know them. That’s what it is.

Fr. Stephen: And so Jesus is saying, “Even if you’re not going to believe me based on what I’m saying to you now, at least follow through this argument, right? Look at the things I’m doing. You should be able to follow that through to the conclusion that and then if the Father is in Jesus and if Jesus is in the Father, if you come to that conclusion, then you have to believe whatever it is he’s teaching you, no matter how hard to believe it may be like that. He and the Father are one, right? If God is with him, then that must be true, as hard as it is for you to accept.”

Therefore they sought again to seize Him, but He escaped out of their hand.

Remember? They tried to kill him again, but Jesus just walks away because they cannot kill him until the time comes for him to lay down his life.

And He went away again beyond the Jordan to the place where John was baptizing at first, and there He stayed.  Then many came to Him and said, “John performed no sign, but all the things that John spoke about this Man were true.”  And many believed in Him there.

So this is again showing a contrast. These are people who came to St. John the Forerunner to be baptized. They believed what St. John was preaching. Even though St. John wasn’t doing any miracles. Jesus was saying, “Well, look, if you won’t believe me, you should at least believe the evidence of your own eyes, the things you’ve seen me do.” But even having seen those things, and they admit they’ve seen those things, they say, “We’re not stoning you for the good works you did”. They’re aware of these things. They still don’t believe. But these other people over here, even though St. John didn’t do any miracles, didn’t do any of these things, they believed. And they believed what John had to say about Jesus and so become Jesus’ followers. So this is the contrast again, there’s two types of people in the world. And so this is part of the imagery in St. Matthew’s Gospel where we’re told about the Last Judgment. And the Last Judgment is where Jesus is the shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, right? He doesn’t declare some of them to be sheep and some of them to be goats, right? There’s sheep and there’s goats. Right now, they’re all mingled together. Jesus separates them.

And this is also related to one of the passages that a lot of people don’t like nowadays, because it’s not the kinder, gentler Jesus, where Jesus says he came not to bring peace, but a sword and to bring division. He would be a cause of division. This is what he means. Because what’s happening is before his coming, I remember what he said in the Pharisees, if I had not come, you wouldn’t have sinned because you wouldn’t have outright rejected me. But now, because I’m here and you reject me, you have sinned. By Jesus coming… there have been all these people. Some of them are godly and some of them are wicked. And so there’s a sort of judgment that takes place just by Jesus coming into their midst, where these people start to separate out. The people who are righteous and the people who are following God believe and become followers of Jesus. And these other people who are wicked are rejecting Him. And so these two are separating. And they’re not the people who you might have picked the day before Jesus arrived, in terms of who’s actually righteous and who’s actually wicked. They don’t line up the way most people would have suspected. But this separation is happening. And the reason this is important, and I’m emphasizing it, is that in the prophets in the Old Testament, there is when they lay out sort of what’s going to happen in the future, from their perspective, it’s that God’s going to visit his people and there’s going to be a judgment, and then there’s also going to be a final judgment. And it’s set up where there’s going to be this judgment that’s going to come first for God’s people, for the people of Israel, and then later on, the whole world is going to be judged after this period of time. And so the Gospel writer St. John very much understands that first part is being fulfilled in Jesus. That judgment comes upon Israel through the person of Jesus when he comes in that the separation happens. And so there’s this group in Israel that ends up being cut off because when Jesus comes, they reject him. And there’s this remnant. That’s the way it’s always talked about in the prophets of the Old Testament. There will be a remnant that will be purified and holy to God and move on.

And St Paul is really going to pick up on this language in Romans. He’s going to talk about this sort of root. There’s this root, it’s sort of like a big bush or a tree. There’s this root of Israel and then there’s this group within Israel that he describes people as branches and they don’t believe, they don’t accept Christ when he comes. And so they’re cut off from the bush and there are these wild olive shoots that are the Gentiles that come and are grafted in because of their belief and their acceptance and their loyalty to Christ. And so there’s this separation that happens. And that separation happens on the basis of belief.

And we need to keep that in mind when we get to St Paul, because this is going to help explain what St Paul means when he talks about being saved by faith. That belief and unbelief in Christ once he comes is what creates this separation. And that separation anticipates the final judgment. And so he could talk about us being already justified by faith, because by virtue of our faith, our belief, our loyalty, our following Christ, we are already in that group, that remnant, which is going to be vindicated in the final judgment. But St John is already laying that out here in how he shows people responding to Jesus. And the reason I make that point here and get into St Paul here is especially today, if you pick up a book about the New Testament, it’s become very popular to try to sort of subdivide. “Well, there’s Paul’s theology over here and there’s John’s theology over here, and there’s the Synoptic Gospels over here.” Like they all are saying these very different things that don’t relate to each other at all, but in their understanding, particularly of the Old Testament and how the Old Testament prophecy is fulfilled in Christ, there’s actually this undergirded connection where they use different terminology and different things. Like St. John is never here going to talk about justification by faith in those terms, right? And St Paul actually talks about justification by faith a lot less than our Protestant friends would like us to believe; it’s only in two epistles and only in a couple of places in those epistles. And he never talks about it again, but he’s not going to use those words. But the idea is here as we see the people being separated out based on faith, based on belief and unbelief. So that when St. Paul talks about it in different terms, he’s not saying something different than what St John is saying, he’s just explaining it differently in a different context to a different group of people. But these ideas are connected.

Interlocutor: This also reinforces why St. John uses the term “signs”. All the miracles are signs that tell you who Jesus is, who Jesus is, and what is happening in your mind. And that leads to the separation. So we see here in when Jesus says, “Look what I, what I’ve done,” he’s saying, “Look, these are the signs that show you.”

Fr. Stephen: Right. In the same way that that language is used originally back in the Pentateuch. In Exodus, the, the word that’s used like, for what we call the ten plagues on Egypt are “signs”. They’re signs and wonders, what is it a sign of? Well, it should be assigned to the Egyptians and to the Israelites that Yahweh is the true god and the Egyptian gods and Pharaoh are not. And so in the same way, these things that Jesus is doing are not just neat tricks, right? They’re a sign of who he is and what he is doing. And so in the same way that there was through those plagues, there was a judgment on Egypt. And if you read the text closely, it was not on ethnic lines. There’s a whole bunch of Egyptians who leave Egypt with the Israelites and who become part of Israel, and it’s at least strongly implied that there are a bunch of disobedient Israelites who don’t go. So it’s not strictly in fact, if you read really closely, Caleb, who is one of the great heroes of the Pentateuch, along with Joshua, Caleb was an Amalekite. He was a pagan. Technically, when he first shows up and then at the time of his death, he’s a member of the tribe of Judah. Just as there’s this judgment by what happens, they’re an exodus where there are people who accept what is being said by these signs that Yahweh is the true God and come to follow and worship him. There are people who, despite those signs, still harden their hearts and reject it, and end up cut off. So that’s part of this dynamic, that sign idea.