Fr. Stephen De Young: Okay. And when we get started here in just a minute, we’re going to be starting in chapter eight, verse twelve of the Gospel according to St. John. And I’ll reiterate once again why it’s important that we say that. We tend to just call the gospels Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, but the actual title, the actual Greek title, is kata to… Ioannis or “according to,” because there’s only one Gospel. There’s one Gospel, and it’s the story of Christ’s life and what he said and what he did. But we have that story, that Gospel story, according to four different witnesses. We have four different sets of testimony to it. So it’s important to remember that each of these is the Gospel according to the author.

Q1: Mark was the first gospel?

Fr. Stephen: Yeah, St. Mark’s gospel was written first. Traditionally in the late 60s AD, in 68 or 69.

Q2: The last one is John?

Fr. Stephen: And St. John’s is the last. St. Mark wrote his… St. Mark was with St. Peter in Rome, and we know that from St. Peter’s epistles, where he mentions him. According to Church history, after St. Peter was martyred, who was executed by Nero in 64, St. Mark went to Alexandria, where he helped found the church there. And he was ultimately martyred there also, but before that he wrote down what St. Peter had told him, and that’s sort of the source of his gospel. And the reason a lot of folks will make a big deal out of this 30-, 35-year gap or so between when Christ rose from the dead and the gospels started being written—as if 35 years, you know, like there’s no way we could find out about the Vietnam War now, because, like, it’s 40 years later; there’s no way of knowing… [Laughter] But aside from it not being that long, the reason the gospels started being written was because the eyewitnesses started to die. St. Peter wasn’t there any more to give his testimony, and so St. Mark needed to write that testimony down to preserve it.

Q2: He wasn’t one of the disciples.

Fr. Stephen: No, St. Luke was a companion of St. Paul, and on several of his missionary journeys. So he tells us at the beginning of his gospel that he talked to—he went and talked to eyewitnesses. He tells us he did research. He went out and found eyewitnesses; he found people who knew, and he compiled it into his… And he writes—St. Luke’s gospel, his style is very reminiscent of Greek historians from periods before that, especially Thucydides. If you read the introduction to Thucydides’ accounts of the Peloponnesian War, it sounds almost identical to the introduction to St. Luke’s gospel. It’s deliberate…

Q3: So he went around and interviewed…

Fr. Stephen: So you can see that influence, that St. Luke is setting out to write—he’s saying, “I’m going to write history! I’m going to go out and do the research and write the history of what happened with Jesus.” And that’s also why, in St. Luke’s gospel, he’s always giving historical markers, like when he comes to Jesus’ birth, he says, “This is when Quirinius was governor of Syria,” and he goes and lists all the… to give you dates, because he’s trying to set out a historical account. And St. Matthew was a disciple, and probably wrote second. And then of course St. John was a disciple; he wrote around probably the early 90s AD. We know he wrote the book of Revelation. St. Justin Martyr in the second century tells us that he wrote his gospel around the end of the Roman emperor Dometian’s reign, which means it was in 95 or 96, and Revelation was the last thing he wrote, so his gospel was probably in the early 90s, when he was an elderly man. He was very young at the time he was one of Jesus’ disciples. That’s why in iconography you’ll see he doesn’t have a beard. They’re trying to portray how… that he was younger than the other disciples, and that’s why he lived to such a ripe old age, ultimately, and was still around that late.

But the important thing there is the fact that the eyewitnesses are passing away is what then triggers the writing of the gospels. St. Paul’s epistles were written before the gospels were written, because he’s writing about situations that are going on in the churches that he helped found. But when it comes to the testimony of Jesus, while the Church had apostles and eyewitnesses there, preaching to them, telling them what they witnessed and telling them about Jesus, they didn’t really need the gospels. But once those people start passing away, we need to get this written to preserve it and pass it down to subsequent generations.

And we mentioned especially with the Gospel according to St. John that we’re working through now, that the fact that it was written last… part of what brings that out is that he tends to fill in a lot of the blanks from the other three. The other three already existed, and so he’s able to sort of tell us things that maybe the other three didn’t focus on, fill in, and sometimes even explain things that, you know, if you’re just reading St. Mark’s gospel, and you think, “Now why is that?” and when you read St. John’s, you’re like: “Oh! Okay.” He gives you the little extra piece: “It was because of this.” And so we’ll see more of that as we go along.

Q2: What time are the letters written? These are the same time?

Fr. Stephen: They were earlier. Probably the first thing—most people consider the first thing written out of the New Testament was St. Paul’s letter to the Galatians, which was written around 45. So it was written about twelve years after Jesus rose from the dead, and then the rest of his epistles go from there. For example, 1 and 2 Corinthians are usually dated in the early 50s. 1 Thessalonians at least is dated in the late 40s; that’s one of his early ones. They sort of go from there. But they’re dealing with—and when we get into them, we’ll see… I mean, they’re written to a church, about things that are going on in that church at that time, the issues that need to be resolved or things that people need to understand. They’re not sort of general, the way the gospels are, where the gospels are telling the story of Jesus; they’re not directed at some particular situation and some particular place, the way St. Paul’s epistles are.

So last time, when we finished up, we had just read what, as I said last time, is know by the fancy term the pericope adultery, this story of the adulterous woman, and we talked about how that particular story is not found in the earliest copies we have of the gospel of John. In fact, the earliest times we find that story, it’s actually in the gospel of Luke, and it’s in two different places in the gospel of Luke. So we talked about how the way that happens. The way that happens is that this was a story that was in the lectionary, that the Bible didn’t circulate— We think, because of the printing press, that the Bible circulated like this in the first and second and third centuries. It didn’t. It was like in our church service: there was a book of the gospels, and it was divided into readings for the days of the year, and there was a book of epistles that was divided into readings for the days of the year. So sometimes there was a reading—and I gave a couple examples: one is called the long ending of Mark, and one of them is this story, where they’re readings where people weren’t sure, where, when you printed a Bible like this—people just printed Luke, John—where exactly it was supposed to go. And so when they did that, they would put it wherever it fell in the lectionary. So if the reading before and the reading after were in Luke, they’d put it in there in Luke. If the reading before and the reading after were John, they’d put it there in John.

But so this is a story that’s preserved for us. It’s preserved for us in the lectionaries. And so whether or not it was originally in this particular spot in the gospel of St. John, it’s still a piece of Scripture that’s read authoritatively in the Church. It has authority, and that’s why we read it and we study it and we comment on it. The reason I’m bringing that up again is that when we start the verse that we’re on tonight, it says, “Then Jesus spoke to them again.” Well, who’s the “them”? [Laughter]

Q1: Ah, that’s right!

Fr. Stephen: Because at the end of the story with the adulterous woman, everybody went home! [Laughter] So who’s the “them”? Well, the “them” is actually going back to the “them” from before, who is the “them” whom he was speaking to in Jerusalem, when they, again, the religious authorities became incited, incited against him.

Q3: So this follows after this argument with the Pharisees?

Fr. Stephen: Right, and we’re going to see, when he speaks to them again, the Pharisees are going to respond.

Q3: Aha, okay.

Fr. Stephen: So we have to, in terms of the context of this… While the story we just read is important, we’re really sort of leap-frogging back.

Q3: [Inaudible]

Fr. Stephen: Right, right, because it’s sort of a free-floating piece of Scripture. And there are some of those in the Old Testament, too, like the Prayer of Manasseh. Any Greek copy of the Old Testament that you find, any ancient manuscript, has the Prayer of Manasseh in it, and we read it during Lent at a couple of points. It’s kind of a paragraph; it’s a longish paragraph. Well, it doesn’t actually belong to any book of the Old Testament per se, so you’ll find it in the manuscripts, and you’ll find it in the manuscripts in different places: here’s the Prayer of Manasseh. It’s been handed down to us, but it’s not… It’s sort of free-floating. So this is the same kind of thing in the New Testament.

So, beginning here in chapter eight, verse twelve: “Then Jesus spoke to them again, saying, ‘I am the light of the world. He who follows me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.’ ” So he’s talking again to the Pharisees, who have been arguing back and forth, arguing back and forth with him previously. And remember how we mentioned how important it is that he was continuing to talk to them. Even though they’ve decided to kill him, Jesus doesn’t say, “Okay, forget you, then. You’re my enemies. Bye!” and condemn them. He continues to come to them and try and reason with them. Now we’re going to see it’s kind of tough love—he’s not going to be overly polite and diplomatic with them at this point, but he is going to continue to talk to them. And since the more diplomatic ways haven’t worked to get them to come around, he’s going to try less diplomatic ways to confront them and get them to come around.

He uses another analogy we’ve already seen. Remember, after the feeding of the 5,000, he uses the analogy that he’s the bread who came down from heaven. This is another: “I am the light of the world. He who walks in me shall not walk in darkness but shall have the light of life.” Now, the most immediate reference in terms of how the Pharisees would have understood this: remember Israel, part of Israel’s call in the Old Testament was to be a light to the nations. The idea was that God didn’t just choose Israel because he liked them better than everybody else, but he chose them and called them for this purpose, and this purpose was that they would live in this world in a different way and worship him in a different way, and the other nations would see that. And the other nations would see that, and they would come also to worship Israel’s God.

Q3: And St. Simeon’s prayer.

Fr. Stephen: Right: “A light to lighten the Gentiles.” And so that was Israel’s purpose, and that was a purpose at which they failed. That’s why when you read the prophets, and the prophets come to condemn Israel, they say over and over again, “You’ve become just like the other nations. And if you’re just like them, how can they learn from you? How can they be transformed by seeing you if you’re just like them and doing the same things?”

So Jesus now saying that he’s the light of the world, he’s making a claim that he’s now going to succeed where Israel failed, and rather than following Israel—or, from the Pharisees’ perspective, rather than trying to follow their interpretation of the Law in order to become righteous—people should follow him. “The one who follows me shall not walk in darkness, but have the light of life.” So Jesus is putting himself in the place of Israel, and, from the Pharisees’ perspective, putting himself in the place of the Law, that rather than trying the list of commandments, they should be trying to follow Christ. So one can expect they’re not going to react well to this. [Laughter]

“The Pharisees therefore said to him, ‘You bear witness to yourself. Your witness is not true.’ ” Now this is referring back to a conversation they’d already had. Remember, when Jesus talked about the fact that, yes, it is a principle in the Law… Remember, to establish the truth, you have to have two witnesses, and you don’t count. If I come to you and make some claim, I don’t count as one of the witnesses. I need two witnesses who are going to back me up, to prevail in court, and if I can’t find two witnesses who will testify that I am telling the truth, then just [my] making a claim doesn’t count for anything. So Jesus makes this claim, they come in and say, “Well, you’re just justifying for yourself. You’re just… That’s just you talking. Whom do you have to back you up on this? Whom do you have to testify that what you’re saying is true?”

“Jesus answered and said to them, ‘Even if I bear witness of myself, my witness is true. For I know where I came from and where I am going, but you do not know where I come from and where I am going.’ ” Now this is a theme we’ve already seen a little bit in St. John’s gospel, and we’re going to see it a lot as we go forward, that… We saw from the very beginning that St. John portrays Jesus as having existed from eternity past, before he became incarnate. So he came from somewhere, specifically the Father, and also here he refers to that as where he’s returning. So for St. John, Jesus comes, has this mission, and returns, and when he returns, as we talked about last time, he leaves the Holy Spirit. But so Jesus’ first answer to them is: “Even if it was just me talking, what I’m saying is true because I know where I came from and where I’m going, and you don’t. So it’s your testimony that doesn’t count, because you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“ ‘You judge according to the flesh; I judge no one. And yet, if I do judge, my judgment is true, for I am not alone, but I am with the Father who sent me.’ ”

Q3: That’s a very confusing…

Fr. Stephen: Right! We say, “You judge according to the flesh,” this is the flesh as opposed to the spirit, meaning they don’t know God, so they’re not qualified to judge whether what Jesus is saying is true or not. They’re not qualified.

Q3: This is part of their not knowing where he came from and where he’s been, where he’s going.

Fr. Stephen: Right, so Jesus makes this statement, and the Pharisees are not equipped to judge whether it’s true or not.

Q4: Is that because of their actions, their corruption?

Fr. Stephen: Right, because they’re so spiritually sick.

Q4: Well, wouldn’t it also be true of any of us, that if Jesus—we’re not the Church, we’re just people, and Jesus comes and says this, it would be equally true that I don’t know where he came from, I don’t know where he’s going. And no human could understand where he’s coming from.

Fr. Stephen: That’s a very important premise here, and it’s a problem with the way the Gospel is presented a lot of times by our brothers and sisters in Christ, because it’s presented in a way in which— I’m going to make arguments and try and convince you that Jesus is God or that Christianity is true or that God exists, and who does that make the judge of the truth of Christianity?

Q4: The hearer.

Fr. Stephen: The person that we’re talking to. And none of us is equipped to make those judgments. None of those… It’s a legacy of our American culture coming, especially out of the Second Great Awakening in the 19th century, where we believe ourselves as part of our democratic thought. “I am the judge of what is true and what is not true—politically, religiously, and everything else. And so it’s what you can convince me of. And if you can’t, you can’t.” And the reality is, and what Jesus is saying here is that regardless of what we think, Christ is the truth, and the Holy Trinity is the God who created the universe. We’re free to believe that or not believe that, but we’re not really capable of judging for ourselves whether it’s true and what truth is. So he’s going to continue here to talk about testimony.

Biblically here the question is not how clever I am and how clever you are, trying to convince me; the question is whose testimony and whose authority do I accept and whose testimony and whose authority do I reject, and why?

Q3: Just for a qualifying point, the Apostle Paul still used arguments in order to convince his hearers.

Fr. Stephen: Oh sure, he did. He did everything he could to try to bring people to Christ.

Q3: Everything to get them.

Fr. Stephen: Yeah, but we need to be careful there, especially ourselves, that we in our pride don’t think… And it effects our attitude when we read the Scripture, other spiritual literature, when we read the Church Fathers and stuff, it’s not a question of: Well, do I really buy that? We tend to think very critically and very skeptically, rather than, again, a question of authority. If this is a person who knows Christ, and he’s talking to me about Christ, then I need to accept on his authority that it’s true—especially in the case of Jesus. If Jesus is going to tell me about God the Father, he’s more equipped than anyone else. So it’s a question of authority, and authority, like I said, in our Western culture, is difficult for us to accept. We have the bumper stickers, “Question Authority,” all the time.

And he says that he judges no one, and this is going back to St. John’s earlier comment, that Christ did not come to condemn the world. He says to the Pharisees, “You’re judging me. You’re judging me; you’re calling me a liar, basically. You’re judging me. I’m not judging you. I’m still trying to speak to you. I’m still trying to…”

Q3: Why would he go on and say, “Yet if I do judge?”

Fr. Stephen: Well, because the time is going to come when he is going to judge. The time is going to come… He didn’t come to condemn the world; he came in order to save the world. But that doesn’t mean there is never any condemnation in the future. If the Pharisees remain hardened, then there will come a time when they will be judged. So he’s seguing here when he says, “My judgment is true,” because he’s not alone. He’s not alone.

He says, verse 17, “It is also written in your law that the testimony of two men is true. I am one who bears witness to myself, and the Father who sent me bears witness of me.” So he says, again, as he’s done before in talking to the Pharisees, there’s no space between Christ and the Father. You can’t reject Christ and accept the Father, and vice-versa. You either accept both or you reject both. So this has something to say about what we hear once in a while that we hear that Jews, Christians, and Muslims worship the same God. Well… [Laughter] Not according to Jesus! Not according to Jesus.

Q2: When he calls Father, they know he’s the son of Mary.

Fr. Stephen: And so if you reject Jesus, you’re rejecting the Father also, because, as Jesus says here, the Father testifies as to who he is.

Q4: But this is the part of what’s going on between Jesus and the Pharisees, because the Pharisees believe that they know and understand and have detailed knowledge of God the Creator, which is who Jesus means when he speaks of the Father. And they’re saying, “There’s no way that you and he can be the same.”

Fr. Stephen: Right. They’re trying to reject him and claim that they still know God, yeah.

“And then they said to him, ‘Where is your father?’ ” Now, that’s not just being precious, because he just said… Remember, they came and accused him: “Well, you’re just talking about yourself. Who is there who can testify…” And he says, “Well, my Father bears witness to who I am.” And they say, “Okay, well, where is he so we can ask him? If he’s going to tell us that you’re telling the truth.”

“Jesus answered, ‘You know neither me nor my Father. If you had known me, you would have known my Father also.’ ”

Q4: So they’re interpreting this as his literal sire, so to speak, his biological father, or are they…

Fr. Stephen: No, I think they know he means God, but they’re making the point… When he says, “Oh, well, God testifies as to who I am,” they’re like, “I… haven’t heard that.”

Q4: Okay, that makes more sense.

Fr. Stephen: And so Jesus responds and says, “You don’t know my Father. That’s why you don’t hear his testimony. If you knew him, you would have recognized me.”

“These words Jesus spoke in the treasury, as he taught in the Temple, and no one laid hands on him, for his hour had not yet come.” We’ve already seen that before, that it’s not that they don’t want to kill him… Remember, Jesus, as we talked about the last time this happened, St. John is very clear: Jesus can’t be killed. Remember, Jesus is going to say later, “No one takes my life from me. I am able to lay it down, and I am able to take it back up again.” So for St. John, Jesus chooses to die, for the life of the world and for its salvation. He isn’t murdered; he isn’t killed. And so, since the time has not come for him to lay down his life, as much as they want to kill him, they can’t.

Q5: I think that verse right there speaks so much about the tenseness that happened in all the previous verses. I imagine he probably said it, said these things with a little bit of passion.

Fr. Stephen: [Laughter] Oh yeah! Well, we saw… We saw when he began this teaching in the Temple, he yelled out in a loud voice. And this is during a feast, remember, so there’s a huge crowd there, moving around. So this is… Yeah, this is a very public confrontation between him and them.

But this is important, remember, that Jesus lays down his… It’s very important for St. John’s theology, that this is why Jesus is able to die on behalf of others. We talked about this before. Every human being who has sinned dies because of their sin—the wages of sin is death—but Jesus has not sinned. There is no sin attached to Jesus, and so he does not have to die. He dies purely voluntarily. He lays his life down as a sacrifice.

“Then Jesus said to them again, ‘I am going away, and you will seek me and will die in your sin. Where I go, you cannot come.’ ” Now, the word there for “seek” is a word that is… It’s not just “look for” like hide and seek: You’re going to look for me and you’re not going to be able to figure out where I am. It’s a word that’s often used for persecution. So once again, and this is another theme we’ve seen in St. John’s gospel, Jesus always knows not just what’s going on, but what people are thinking around him and things like that, so he knows they want to kill him. So he’s saying that he’s going away; they’re going to come after him to kill him, but they won’t be able to get to him, because he’s going to be somewhere where they can’t come, which is going to be back with his father. So because of that, because they’re still trying to persecute him while he’s gone, they’re going to die in their sins, and that means not receive forgiveness.

And we talked before about how this theme gets picked up by St. John in Revelation, this idea that when he depicts the birth of Jesus from the woman, the dragon comes and tries to devour him, and God takes him away, and since the dragon can’t get to him, he goes after Jesus’ followers. So that’s the imagery here, that the persecution that’s directed at Jesus, since they can’t get to Jesus once he ascends into heaven, will go to the ones who follow him. This is also what’s behind, as we’ll see at the beginning of the book of Acts, when St. Paul is called to become an apostle. Remember, Jesus says to him, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” He doesn’t say, “Why are you persecuting my followers?”; he says, “Why are you persecuting me?” because those, they’re really after Jesus, and since they can’t get to him, they’ll go after those who love and follow him.

“So the Jews said, ‘Will he kill himself, because he says, “Where I go, you cannot come”? ’ ” So once again… Remember, before he said, “I’m going to go away and you won’t be able to find me,” so they say, “What, is he going to go preach to the Greeks?” because they don’t get it. So they’re showing us once again how spiritually blind they are, that they don’t understand at all what Jesus is saying.

Q5: Well, they seem to understand something other than “I’ve got a hiding place that you won’t find.”

Fr. Stephen: Right, so they’re a little closer than the Greeks! [Laughter] They get that he’s not going to Greece, but, yeah, the idea that he was going to kill himself doesn’t make a whole lot of sense either.

“And he said to them, ‘You are from beneath; I am from above. You are of this world; I am not of this world. Therefore I said to you that you will die in your sins, for if you do not believe that I am he, you will die in your sins.’ ” Now, notice, first of all, the “he” there is in italics.

Q4: That means it wasn’t really there.

Fr. Stephen: That means it’s not there. So what it literally says in the Greek is: “If you do not believe that I am, you will die in your sins.”

Q4: Aha, and “I am” means God.

Fr. Stephen: So he’s making a reference to the name of God. So this is pretty serious blasphemy, from a Jewish perspective—if he’s not telling the truth.

Q4: So really it would be more powerful if we hadn’t put the “he” in.

Fr. Stephen: If we hadn’t put the “he” in there. Now, they kind of understand it that way, as we’ll see in a minute! But all it says is, “If you do not believe that I am, you will die in your sins.”

Now, what does it mean that “you are of this world”? When St. John talks about “the world”—and this is true in the gospel and in the epistles and in Revelation… When St. John talks about the world, he’s talking about sort of the present age, and the present age, as he says at the end of 1 John, “the whole world lies under the power of the devil, lies under the power of the evil one.” And we’re going to see later on in St. John’s gospel, Jesus is going to refer to Satan as the prince of this world. So he’s talking about the present evil age, which is under the control of dark spiritual powers, whom Christ is going to defeat, because when he refers to Satan, Jesus is going to say right before his crucifixion, “Now is the prince of this world judged.” So there’s sort of this spiritual battle going on.

But so this world, and those who are in power in it, are going to perish to make way for, at the end of Revelation, new heavens and a new earth, that’s going to be ruled by God and ruled by justice. And the image that’s most commonly used for this is the flood of Noah. There was a world that existed before the flood, and that world was characterized by evil: had become sinful and wicked continuously. Every thought of every person was always evil all the time, it says literally before the flood. And so the people who remained in that world died in that world and died in their sins, whereas, through the flood, through the destruction, Noah and his family were brought through into a new world. And in 1 Peter, St. Peter’s going to use this image very explicitly: it’s the Church being the ark of our salvation. So Christ is the means to come through out of this age into the next age, out of this world into the new world. And so what he’s saying to them is, “You are of this world. You are part and parcel of this world. You truly belong here, and so because of that you’re going to be here when this world perishes, and so you’re going to die in your sins.”

Now notice, remember that “I am from above”—remember what he told Nicodemus in chapter three, “You must be born from above to enter into the kingdom.” So the people who follow Christ are from above; the people of this world are from beneath, and they’re going to perish in this world.

Q4: Speaking of “this age,” what’s the implication for “this age,” the 21st century? I would guess that what he’s saying is that we’re… The world is still under the power of the devil and so forth, but in it there is the Church, which is the ark, on its way to…

Fr. Stephen: Right, which is the outpost of the kingdom.

Q4: On its way to…

Fr. Stephen: ...the new heavens and the new earth, right. And that’s why we… in the Nicene Creed, that’s why we look forward to the life of the world to come, that that’s our ultimate hope.

So he drops this: “If you do not believe that I am, you will die in your sins.”

“And they said to him, ‘Who are you’ ” So they don’t immediately interpret that as, you know… “That we don’t believe that you’re… who? That you’re what?” [Laughter]

“And Jesus said to them, ‘Just what I have been saying to you from the beginning.’ ” [Laughter] He basically says, “Have you not been paying attention to this entire conversation? Have you not listened to anything I’ve said?”

Q5: We’ve all been in conversations like that.

Fr. Stephen: “ ‘I have many things to say and to judge concerning you, but he who sent me is true, and I speak to the world those things which I heard from him.’ ” So he says, “I have lots of things to teach you. I have lots of things of judgment—there are lots of things about you that I need to correct, to be condemned.” So he says… So he’s speaking to the world—remember, they’re of the world—those things that his Father sent him to speak. Remember, he didn’t come to condemn the world; he came that the world might be saved through him.

“They did not understand that he spoke to them of the Father.” So, again, just in case you were wondering, they still don’t get it.

“And then Jesus said to them, ‘When you lift up the Son of man, then you will know that I am’ ”—again, they inserted that “he”—” ‘then you will know that I am, and I do nothing of myself, but as my Father taught me, I speak these things. And he who sent me is with me. The Father has not left me alone, for I always do those things that please him.’ As he spoke these words, many believed in him.” So while the Pharisees aren’t buying it, remember there’s this crowd. There’s this crowd, and…

Q5: So we sort of picture that there’s Jesus and the Pharisees and whole lot of people listening.

Fr. Stephen: Right, and a whole lot of people watching this, because, remember, he’s teaching in the Temple court near the treasury, so there’s lots of pilgrims around. And these Pharisees are the people whom the people have traditionally looked at as: Well, these are the religious experts. These are the teachers. These are the experts in the Law. So they’re all standing there sort of watching Jesus run rhetorical rings around them and make clear just how little they know and how little they understand scripturally, and so they’re coming to be followers of Christ rather than the Pharisees.

Q5: But it says, “When you lift up the Son of man.” Is that explicitly a reference to the crucifixion, or is it something more than that?

Fr. Stephen: It is, looking back on it. [Laughter] Whether they would have—even the disciples, we know, didn’t understand that at the time. Remember, he’s referring back to it. He’s already used the example of the snake, the bronze serpent was lifted up. “As the snake was lifted up in the wilderness, so that everyone who looked to it was saved, so the Son of man will be lifted up.” So he’s referring back to that, and what he’s essentially saying here is, “When that happens, when the crucifixion happens, and including in that the resurrection, when that happens, then you’ll understand; then you’ll see who I am,” because the resurrection is going to sort of be the ultimate testimony as to who Jesus is.

Now, we know a lot of these Pharisees are still going to reject even that, but remember there’s these other people listening, too. If you have any doubts, when the resurrection happens, that will be the ultimate proof.

Q5: Well, I’ve sometimes said in classes where it came up that the definition of a Christian is somebody who believes that Jesus rose from the dead.

Fr. Stephen: Yeah, that’s the core.

Q5: Yeah, it doesn’t mean that that’s all there is, but that’s sort of the…

Fr. Stephen: That Christ is risen.

Q5: ...the fundamental point that all Christians—separates Christians from non-Christians, or some sort of Christians.

Fr. Stephen: Right, that’s the core, and then you go from there to what the resurrection testifies to as to who Jesus is, and everything builds out from there.

“So then Jesus said to those Jews who believed him”—so now he turns from the Pharisees, because, again, Jesus always knows what’s going on and what people are thinking. So he knows that there are people in the crowd who are now decided that they’re now going to follow him based on this conversation, so he speaks directly to those people.

“ ‘If you abide in my word, you are my disciples indeed, and you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.’ ” So there’s a couple of pieces here. The first is that what makes them truly his disciples, not just making a decision—as sometimes the gospels present it: we need you to make a decision for Christ, right now, and that’s it—he says, “No, if you’re really my disciples, then you’re going to abide; you’re going to remain; you’re going to live in my word.” As he’s going to say later, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments. You will actually follow me throughout your life.”

And the consequence of that will be, if you follow Christ truly, if you will abide in him and his teaching, is that you will know the truth. And then, knowing the truth, you will be set free. So the question is: Set free from what? Well, in context here, whom has he just been arguing with? The Pharisees. And we’ve talked about how the Pharisees are essentially holding the people in bondage to a set of rules—not just the Law from the Old Testament, but their extrapolation of the Law and the Old Testament. So these people are not free. They’ve been enslaved by the Pharisees and their rules and their demands, because if you violate any of those, you’re a sinner, you’re wicked, you’re unrighteous, you’re not one of God’s people. So they’re holding them all spiritually hostage. So what Jesus is saying, “If you come and follow me,” implied “as opposed to them,” “you will actually know the truth. And by knowing the truth, you will be set free of all that, because you will really know God.”

Now he’s not saying you can now ignore the Law, now you can do whatever you want. That’s not what he means by “set free.” Why? Well, because of the first sentence. This is people who are abiding in his word. These are people who are keeping his commandments. These are people, therefore, who will truly know God. So this isn’t him saying, “Oh, go and sin boldly.” Apologies to Martin Luther. [Laughter] This is Jesus is saying… But this is: “You will know the truth of God’s law and God’s will. And by following that, instead of this other, you will be set free.”

“They answered him, ‘We are Abraham’s descendants, and have never been in bondage to anyone. How can you say, “You will be made free?” ’ ” Now there’s a couple of ironies here. Were the descendants of Abraham ever slaves to anyone?

Q4: Um, yeah, really.

Fr. Stephen: That would be Egypt, right? At least Egypt. I mean, we could throw in Babylon, too.

Q4: And you could say at this point the Romans.

Fr. Stephen: The Romans, yeah. The Greeks. But at least Egypt. At least Egypt. And who set them free from Egypt?

All: God.

Fr. Stephen: Right. God freed them in the exodus, freed them and delivered them. So the primary expression of who God is, if they actually knew the Law, if they actually knew the Torah, the first five books of the Bible, the actual expression of who God is is what? How does he introduce himself in the beginning of the Ten Commandments? “I am Yahweh, your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.” That’s who God is and how he identifies himself. So what are they proving here by this statement.

Q6: They don’t know anything!

Fr. Stephen: They don’t know God, which is exactly what Jesus has been saying. If you don’t understand that you’ve been freed from slavery by God, then you don’t know God at all! You don’t know the God of the Old Testament at all, the one you claim to know.

Q4: And this would be blasphemy in Judaism. I mean, the Jewish seder is all about commemorating coming out of slavery.

Fr. Stephen: Right, exactly, that’s the primary experience of God in the old covenant. So they don’t understand. It’s not that they had the old covenant down pat, and now somehow Jesus is saying something different; it’s what Jesus has been saying all along: “You don’t understand Moses. You don’t even understand the Torah that you claim to be an expert about.” So clearly they’re: “We’re the children of Abraham, and we’ve always been free.”

Q4: Well, the people who are saying this, are these the very ones a moment ago decided to follow Jesus, or…?

Fr. Stephen: Well, this is the crowd, because he’s addressing the crowd. So they don’t… [Laughter] So what’s their understanding, and what’s their understanding of what it means to be a Judean, to be a child of Abraham? What is their understanding of being the chosen people? Just that they’re special.

Q4: Yeah, it seems like that crowd, they’re thinking in terms of present slavery, such as that they’re not born in the house of a slave, they are children of Abraham, they are Jews, they are nationals.

Fr. Stephen: Right, well, that’s it.

Q4: Which is ironic there, too, right?

Fr. Stephen: Because the Romans… [Laughter]

Q5: Yeah! And they’re always complaining about being oppressed by the Romans.

Fr. Stephen: Right, but so where this is coming from is this idea that they are this special breed, ethnically, based on being ethnically descended from Abraham: they’re special; they’re better than the others.

“Jesus answered them, ‘Most assuredly I say to you, whoever commits sin is a slave of sin.’ ” Now, what is Jesus doing? Jesus isn’t bringing them something new; Jesus is trying to explain the Torah to them. “This is what you were supposed to understand by the whole Passover thing you celebrate every year.” What are they here celebrating now? The feast of tabernacles, which is what? Remembering when their ancestors were wandering in the wilderness after being brought out of Egypt. So Jesus is trying to explain this to them, that that was always, that memory of being freed from literal slavery was supposed to show you that God has set you free from the sin that enslaves you. And we have to remember, too, that slavery— We tend to think of slavery in terms of oppression, that one more powerful group takes another group as slaves. But in the Roman world, the world they’re familiar with, slavery was much more intimately connected with debt. The way people ended up in slavery was that they ended up owing money. There was no bankruptcy, so if you owed someone a huge debt and you couldn’t pay it, the way you would do that is you would sell yourself as a bond-servant, essentially a slave: you’d work it off. You’d say, “Okay, I can’t pay you back the money. I will come and work for you for five years or ten years or whatever, to work off the debt. And then after the end of that time, I will be free.” Well, if the debt is monumental enough, or you died before you repaid it, guess what? Your children would be born as slaves, and they would be responsible to work off that debt.

So the analogy here, and the Fathers draw this out quite a bit, is that Adam, by sinning, incurs a debt that he can’t pay back. He can’t pay back, so he spends his life as a slave to sin. All his children are born into slavery to sin. They didn’t incur the debt, but the debt hadn’t been paid. So the idea is that Christ, by laying down his life, pays that debt.

Q4: This sounds like Calvinism.

Fr. Stephen: No, this isn’t Calvinism at all. Calvinism is very different. Calvinism is that God punishes Jesus for our sins, if you’re elect, and not if you’re not. This is an understanding of— This goes much earlier than that.

Q4: But it sounds very much like the original sin idea, that you’re born with the burden of your ancestors.

Fr. Stephen: We are born with the consequences of Adam’s sin. We are not born guilty of Adam’s sin. We didn’t incur the debt—until we sin, then we add to it. Then we add to it, but we’re not born with the guilt. We didn’t incur the debt, but we’re born into this state of slavery, and then we add to the debt by our own sins. So this is… When Christ said he came to give his life as a ransom for many, that ransom is not like a kidnapping ransom; it’s a slavery ransom. You could ransom a slave by coming and paying off that debt that they owed, and then they’d be freed, because the debt would be gone. This is a metaphor also. Jesus doesn’t pay money to the devil or… [Laughter] This is a debt… We’re talking about sin and death, so this is a metaphor. It is a metaphor. So when Jesus says, “If you’ve committed a sin, you’re a slave to sin,” this is what he’s talking about. He’s talking about: as soon as you sin, sin now has ownership of you, because you’ve contracted this debt and you’re not able to pay it, because what’s the wages of sin?

Q4: Death.

Fr. Stephen: Death, so until you die, you’re not going to be able to pay this off. You’re not going to be able to pay this off. So when they say, “We’ve never been a slave to anybody,” Jesus comes back with, “Oh, really. So you’ve never sinned? You’ve never sinned? Ever? Because you’re Abraham’s children?”

“And he said, ‘A slave does not abide in a house forever, but a son abides forever.’ ” What does he mean there? Well, if I’m somebody’s slave, once the debt is paid, I’m gone! [Laughter] I’m a servant. I’m a servant for a period of time, for a contract, then I’m gone from the house. But somebody who’s the son of the person, they’ll remain in that household forever. They inherit the wealth. They’re part of the family.

“ ‘Therefore, if the son makes you free, you shall be free indeed.’ ” So he’s saying to them, “Not only have you been slaves, you’re all slaves. So when I say that following me will set you free, it’s because I’m the Son. I’m the Father’s Son. I am born into this household, therefore I have the ability to redeem you and set you free.” So that’s where freedom is, freedom from sin. And so you can see he’s shifting sort of the narrative they’ve heard from the Pharisees, because for the Pharisees, when the judgment happens, when the Messiah comes, you’re either going to be righteous or a sinner, and the way you are righteous is by following all the Pharisees’ rules, and that makes you righteous; and if you don’t, you’re a sinner and you’re going to be smoked; you’re going to be struck down.

Q1: The flip-side to this statement, too, is if you’re a son of the Father, then you’ll abide in his house forever, but if you’re a son of… the other, then you’ll abide…

Fr. Stephen: Ha! He’ll get there in a little bit! So that’s the understanding they’ve heard, and the crowd is showing an even more simplistic understanding. Their understanding is: “Well, we’re Jews, we’re the chosen people, so when the Messiah comes, we’re going to be exalted, and all those no-good Gentiles are going to be smoked.” So they have an even more simplistic view than the Pharisees.

And what Jesus is countering that with is a different picture. What he’s countering that with is: If you’re in sin, you’re a part of this world and you are under the condemnation of this world.

Q4: Jew or not.

Fr. Stephen: Jew or not, it doesn’t matter. Jew, Gentile, whatever. If you’re under sin, you’re under the condemnation of this world. And the way to be free of sin, the way to survive the condemnation that’s coming upon this world, is to abide in Christ and in his word, is to come and believe in Christ. And so he’s presenting a different standard as to what’s going to take place when the judgment happens, sort of reorient their thinking, that it’s not about ethnicity and it’s not about following the Pharisees’ rules, because the Pharisees don’t know what they’re talking about, as he’s already established, but it’s about following Christ, coming to know the truth, and then that making you free—not free to do whatever you want: free to truly do good, free to truly come to know God, free to truly follow Christ. This is…

Q4: Free to do good because you know God and understand what God wants rather than just following a rulebook.

Fr. Stephen: Right, following a rulebook or following your slavery to sin, following your sinful passions. And this is important, because, again, this is a radically different understanding of freedom than the one we have in our modern culture. And this… A really fine point was put on this in the seventh century by St. Maximus the Confessor. We tend to— When we talk about people having free will and being free, we mean they’re free to choose to do what they want. St. Maximus the Confessor, on the other hand, argues that that kind of free will, choosing things, is a defect that’s caused by sin; that our true will as human beings, the will we were created with by God, that’s part of our human nature as it was created by God, is a will that desires what is good and desires God. But because of our sin, our sin has dimmed our mind, dimmed our vision, darkened our vision, so that now we don’t know what is good and what isn’t. And so we have to reason about it and think about it and deliberate and try and choose what the right thing to do is, and a lot of times we choose the wrong thing, thinking it’s good, because it seems like it’ll be good right now or it seems like it will be pleasurable or for whatever reason we choose it.

Q4: I think we’ve degenerated even from that in present times, because choice has been reduced to the level of whim, feels good, why not?

Fr. Stephen: And so the person who is most free is the person who is the closest to God and has become and is doing good, not the person who’s free to rebel and choose what is evil—that is slavery. That is slavery. So we have to sort of reorient our idea of freedom. And even some of our brothers and sisters in Christ… I was reading a theological book written by a Protestant not long ago, where he said the reason there is evil in the world is that God wanted people to have free will. [Laughter] Which—no! No, evil is in the world because our will isn’t free. We aren’t free to become human in the way God created us to become human.

Q4: I’m sure you’ve probably heard of the whole idea of an upward fall, that Adam and Eve had an upward fall, because before they were sort of enslaved, they were automatons doing God’s will, and only when they sinned were they actually free to choose, and so all of our creativity, everything like that, comes from that.

Fr. Stephen: Yeah, the felix culpa idea. Yeah, the happy fault or happy guilt. [Laughter]

Fr. Stephen: Where did that idea come from? It’s very popular at the college.

Fr. Stephen: Yeah, it’s usually wrongly accredited to St. Augustine. St. Augustine does use the phrase felix culpa, but he uses it in his Paschal hymn, and what he’s saying is, “O happy fault,” because of the redemption that it brought about in Christ, that the redemption of God that comes about in Jesus Christ is so much more wonderful than Adam’s sin is horrible. That’s the idea he was trying to get at, but that got elaborated in sort of odd ways.

It really comes out of the, in the West, the very earliest period of theology in the West, following Augustine, in the sixth and seventh centuries, is referred to as the Platonic period in Western theology. Plato had this idea that distinction implies opposition, so if you have two separate things, they cannot be equally good; one has to be better than the other. It’s this way of thinking about things. And so any time you have a moral choice, there can only be one option that is truly good, and all the other options, because they’re less good, are bad. Because they’re less good, they’re wrong. And you can see this coming up in all kinds of places in Western theology. Clerical celibacy: if the Bible praises virginity and celibacy, that must mean marriage is somehow less than that, that you find in the West. And when Protestantism responds to that, rather than going the way the East has traditionally gone: No, these are two different ways of life: some people are called to celibacy; some people are called to marriage, and these are equally good, equally paths to salvation—the Reformation just flipped it and said, “Marriage is good, and people who ought to be celibate are weird.” [Laughter] And their works righteousness or something. Because it’s that same kind of dialectical thinking, that one must be better than the other.

So by virtue of that, freedom then comes to be the ability to choose between them, not, again, the freedom to do what is right. So free will becomes a very different thing. So those same writers will say that, in the age to come, in the life of the world to come, we won’t really have free will, because there will be no choices to make; whereas in the Orthodox Church, again with St. Maximus, we’ve taught, no, that’s when we will be truly free. We will be freer then than we are now.

Q4: But we’ve all had the experience of being enslaved to sin, of not being able to do, what we know that we should do, what we really wish that we would do, and we say, “Well, no, I really can’t do that,” and often we’re right. We really can’t, because we’re defective.

Fr. Stephen: Yeah, or just being so lost that we don’t know what we should do.

Q4: Yeah, we’ve all been there!

Fr. Stephen: I don’t know what is the right thing to do. Every option looks bad in some way! And I don’t know what to do. Yeah, and that’s not freedom; that’s the opposite of freedom. It’s the opposite of freedom.