John 8:12-30 The Light of the World

Video Teaching
Verse-by-Verse Commentary
Full Transcript

From the Pulpit

Commentary

¹² When Jesus spoke again to the people, he said, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”

1. “I am the light of the world….”

1. 1. “As they had brought Galilee as an objection against Him, and doubted His being one of the Prophets, as if that was all He claimed to be, He wished to shew that He was not one of the Prophets, but the Lord of the whole earth: Then spake Jesus again unto them, saying, I am the Light of the world: not of Galilee, or of Palestine, or of Judæa.” -Chrysostom, Hom. lii. 2.
      
      
   2. The Significance of Light
      
      
      1. Light is Self-Evident: Light in a room isn’t subtle; it’s obvious.  In that same way, the existence of God is self-evident (Romans 1:19-20). The reason many people don’t “see” Him is not because He is hidden, but because sin has blinded humanity. Jesus’s miracles of restoring sight are a physical picture of our spiritual reality: he heals our spiritual blindness so we can see God.
         
         
      2. Light Illuminates Everything Else: In a dark room, you can’t really do much. Light allows you to see the world, make sense of your surroundings, and act reasonably. Similarly, through the light of God, we can understand the world and act well within it.
         
         
      3. Light Reveals Us: You can’t see your own hand in a pitch-black room. The light of God is what allows us to truly understand ourselves. Without knowing our origin, destination, and purpose (which are only knowable through God) we can’t fully know who we are.
         
         
2. “Whoever follows me… will have the light of life…”

1. 1. The world is full of darkness, but darkness is just the absence of light.
      
      
   2. When we follow Jesus, we receive the “light of life.” We don’t have to fear the darkness; we carry the light with us and illuminate the dark places we enter.

¹³ The Pharisees challenged him, “Here you are, appearing as your own witness; your testimony is not valid.”

1. “These wasps were always stinging him; when he drove them away once, they quickly returned to attack him again: ‘The Pharisees’” -Spurgeon, Spurgeon’s Verse Expositions of John
   
   
2. They invoke the legal principle requiring two witnesses to validate a claim (Deuteronomy 19:15). They argue Jesus has insufficient evidence for His grand claims.
   
   
3. There’s some real irony in their response.  Jesus says he is the light, and their response is, “I don’t see it.” They’re like a person with their eyes closed on a sunny day demanding evidence of the sun. Their spiritual blindness is self-imposed.

¹⁴ Jesus answered, “Even if I testify on my own behalf, my testimony is valid, for I know where I came from and where I am going. But you have no idea where I come from or where I am going. ¹⁵ You judge by human standards; I pass judgment on no one. ¹⁶ But if I do judge, my decisions are true, because I am not alone. I stand with the Father, who sent me. ¹⁷ In your own Law it is written that the testimony of two witnesses is true. ¹⁸ I am one who testifies for myself; my other witness is the Father, who sent me.”

1. “Even if I testify on my own behalf, my testimony is valid…”

1. 1. Unique Knowledge: Jesus says his testimony is valid because he is the only one with complete authority to speak on these topics.  He was present at creation.  He has seen both Heaven and Hell.  Nobody else could verify these things, but he can speak with complete understanding.
      
      
   2. “I know whence I came. By these words he declares that his origin is not from the world, but that he proceeded from God, and therefore that it would be unjust and unreasonable that his doctrine, which is Divine, should be subjected to the laws of men. But as he was at that time clothed with the form of a servant, in consequence of which they despised him on account of the mean condition of the flesh, he sends them away to the future glory of his resurrection, from which his Divinity, formerly hidden and unknown, received a clear demonstration.” -Calvin, Commentary on John 
      
2. “You judge by human standards; I pass judgment on no one…”
   
   
   1. Different Standards of Judgment: The Pharisees judged with worldly standards (education, prestige, outward acts) and hearts of stone. Jesus did not come to bring more judgment.  The world was already under condemnation for sin. He came as an instrument of mercy and salvation.
      
      
3. “…I am not alone. I stand with the Father…”
   
   
   1. The Father as the Second Witness: Jesus affirms the two-witness rule from Scripture and says he’ll play by it. He testifies for Himself, and His other witness is “the Father who sent me.” He’s not appealing to a vague, abstract, warm-and-fuzzy feeling. The Father’s testimony is objectively available in the Scriptures (the Old Testament), which are filled with prophecies about Jesus (Isa. 7:14, Mic. 5:2, Gen. 12:3, etc). He is telling them to “look it up” and check His claims in the Word of God.

¹⁹ Then they asked him, “Where is your father?”

“You do not know me or my Father,” Jesus replied. “If you knew me, you would know my Father also.” ²⁰ He spoke these words while teaching in the temple courts near the place where the offerings were put. Yet no one seized him, because his hour had not yet come.

²¹ Once more Jesus said to them, “I am going away, and you will look for me, and you will die in your sin. Where I go, you cannot come.”

1. “Where is your father?”

1. 1. Jesus used the word “father,” giving the Pharisees an opening. They’re not asking a sincere question; they are invoking the scandalous rumors surrounding Jesus’s birth (that He was born out of wedlock to a Roman soldier or another man). It’s a deeply personal and humiliating taunt: “Do you even know who your own dad is?”
      
      
2. Jesus’s Response
   
   
   1. Jesus refuses to engage with rumors that are both false and distract from the truth he’s trying to share. He stays on message: “You do not know me or my Father. If you knew me, you would know my Father also.”
      
      
   2. He immediately connects their ignorance to its eternal consequence: “I am going away… and you will die in your sin. Where I go, you cannot come.”
      
      
   3. “Oh, what a terrible sentence is that! I pray that the Lord may never say that to any of us, “Whither I go, ye cannot come.” That would be the death-knell of all our hopes and would make our life one long banishment. Blessed be his name, we who have sought him, and have found him, know that; we shall not die in our sins; and whither he has gone, we shall go also.” -Spurgeon, Spurgeon’s Verse Expositions of John

²² This made the Jews ask, “Will he kill himself? Is that why he says, ‘Where I go, you cannot come’?”

²³ But he continued, “You are from below; I am from above. You are of this world; I am not of this world. ²⁴ I told you that you would die in your sins; if you do not believe that I am he, you will indeed die in your sins.”

1. “Will he kill himself?”

1. 1. In first-century Judaism, suicide was considered an unforgivable sin that led directly to Hell. By suggesting this, the Pharisees are making a radically insulting suggestion that Jesus is going to Hell, which is why they cannot follow Him.
      
      
   2. While different theologians, especially in the past, have wondered if suicide is unforgivable, note that blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is the only unforgivable sin in the Bible (Mark 3:29, Lk. 12:10), broadly interpreted as the unwillingness to recognize the urging of the Spirit to recognize that Jesus Christ is Lord.
      
      
   3. We are saved by our faith, not our works.  If dying while having done ANY sin was a guaranteed trip to Hell, we would almost inevitably all end up in Hell.  There’s no amount of confessing on a deathbed that could stop even a stray errant thought at the last minute!  Trust Christ, not your acts.
      
      
2. “ …if you do not believe that I am he, you will indeed die in your sins…”
   
   
   1. Jesus’s language is intense here, but it’s important to note that he’s trying to snap the Pharisees out of their stupor.  There are real consequences to disbelief, and he doesn’t want them to suffer those consequences.
      
      
   2. “What an awful thing it will be to die in your sins! What cerements for your eternal burial! What a robe of fire in which to lie down for your long sleep, and then to find no sleep because of it! “Ye shall die in your sins.” I should like this short, stern sentence to ring in the ears of every unbeliever. This is not my word, but Christ’s own word, — the word of the most loving and tender Saviour: ‘If ye believe not that I am he, ye shall die in your sins.’” -Spurgeon, Spurgeon’s Verse Expositions of John
      
      
3. “…I am he…”
   
   
   1. “He says, that I am he, to show his eternity. For in all things that begin, there is a certain mutability, and a potency to nonexistence; thus we can discern in them a past and a future, and so they do not have true existence of themselves.”-Aquinas, Commentary on John, C8, L 3, 1179.

²⁵ “Who are you?” they asked.

“Just what I have been telling you from the beginning,” Jesus replied. ²⁶ “I have much to say in judgment of you. But he who sent me is trustworthy, and what I have heard from him I tell the world.”

²⁷ They did not understand that he was telling them about his Father. ²⁸ So Jesus said, “When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am he and that I do nothing on my own but speak just what the Father has taught me. ²⁹ The one who sent me is with me; he has not left me alone, for I always do what pleases him.” ³⁰ Even as he spoke, many believed in him.

1. “Who are you?”

1. 1. How sad to end on this question.  Jesus has been answering this exact question from the very beginning, but their questions were never intended to gain knowledge, only to embarrass.
      
      
2. “Just what I have been telling you from the beginning…”
    
   1. Church fathers often translated this verse differently.  The translation seems inaccurate, but still paints a vivid picture of how people imagined Christ’s revelations in this conversation that especially resonates with Christ’s claim in Revelation, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end,” (Rev. 1:8).
      
      
   2. “In some [biblical manuscripts] we find, “Who also speak to you;” but it is more consistent to read “for” (quia), not, “who” (qui): in which case the meaning is: Believe Me to be the beginning, for for your sakes have I condescended to these words.” -The Venerable Bede as found in Thomas Aquinas, Catena Aurea
      
      
   3. “Who are you, that we may believe? He answered The Beginning. Here is the existence that [always] is. The beginning cannot be changed: the beginning is self-abiding and all-originating.” -Augustine, Tractate on John 38, 11.
      
      
3. “When you have lifted up the Son of Man,  then you will know that I am he…”
   
   
   1. “Lifting up the Son of Man” refers to his crucifixion. The cross is what brings ultimate clarity to everything.
      
      
   2. When we face pointed, accusatory questions, from others or from our own minds, the answer to all of them is found at the cross.
      
      
      1. Who is Jesus? Look at the cross. It is the clearest evidence of God’s love, mercy, and care.
         
         
      2. What is the logic of the world? Look at the cross. It explains everything you need to know about the human condition and God’s plan.
         
         
      3. Who are you? Look at the cross. You may be a sinner, but you are a sinner redeemed by the blood of Christ, bought back by the grace of God. The cross is the definitive answer to every question.
         
         
4. “Even as he spoke, many believed in him.”
   
   
   1. The Pharisees’ goal was to humiliate Jesus and make the crowd lose faith. The opposite happened over the course of the conversation.

Full Transcript

All right, so we continue on. Last week we saw after the Festival of Tabernacles, Jesus came back to the temple where he kept teaching, and some people from throughout the Roman Empire didn’t leave at the end of the festival; they came back to learn from him. And the Pharisees decided to lay a trap for Jesus, a legal trap that would get him in trouble. They found a woman who had been caught in adultery, and they brought her to him. And they said, “Okay, well, according to the law, she should be stoned, right? So, do you want us to do that?”

Now, this was a problem because on one hand, Jesus could obey Mosaic law and break Roman law, because only a Roman judge could call for the death penalty. So that was one option. The other option was, of course, to deny Mosaic law and to obey Roman law and to say, “Hey, I don’t know if it’s that big a deal. I wouldn’t worry about it.” And of course, if he did that, the whole crowd would see that this law that he claims to take so seriously, he doesn’t actually take it all that seriously after all.

You see, this is a problem not only legally, but it’s a problem for his legacy. Jesus built himself up as this man who is both merciful and just. He keeps the law better than the Pharisees do, and he cares about the people. Well, the Pharisees threatened to split that. Which are you really? Do you want this woman saved? In which case, everyone will know you’re a lawbreaker just like anybody else. Or do you want to condemn this woman? In which case, everyone will know you take the law seriously, but you are not their friend. If they step out of line, you’ll get them just as much as anyone else would. And of course, Jesus, in classic Jesus fashion, gets two options and he creates a third and takes that instead: “Whoever is without sin may throw the first stone.” And everybody leaves one at a time. And eventually, Jesus encourages her to go and not sin anymore.

So now here we are. Jesus is back at the temple. He’s teaching on a different day. And now the Pharisees are back at it, and they have a different tactic. If they can’t shut Jesus up with legal threats, with taking advantage of the court system, they are going to do things differently. They’re going to show up and heckle him. They are going to ask pointed, rude questions in an effort to just make him look bad in front of all of the people there. And so that’s what you’re going to see them do. They’re going to show up, they’re going to ask these pointed questions, and Jesus is going to respond with total confidence. He is not shaken by any of this.

And I think in the process we’re going to see how to handle these pointed, humiliating questions. Because we hear those sometimes, right? Whether it’s from a person that does not share our faith—I know before I was a Christian, I asked those kind of questions. I had a whole book of questions, questions that were pointed and intended to show religious people just how silly they were. Were they sincere? Not really. What do you do when you get those kind of questions? And sometimes it’s not even questions that we get from another person. Sometimes it’s those questions that just sneak into your ear in the dark hours of the night, right? Those questions that enter in—just little things like, “Do you really believe that? You know you’re wasting your life, right? You know that can’0t possibly be true.” It’s those whispers from the devil, and this is how we can respond boldly. We’re going to see that modeled by Jesus.

Let’s begin at verse 12. When Jesus spoke again to the people, he said, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” So he’s teaching, and you can see he’s teaching about himself, about who he is. Jesus did not just teach morality. Sometimes people imagine that Jesus was just this wise teacher of how to act well, but Jesus’s teachings were not only about morality in a physical sense; they were also about identity. Who is He? What is the world? What’s the nature of everything? Jesus spoke at length on that, and notice as He speaks about His identity, about who He is, He’s going to say one thing again and again and again. He begins with it, and this is going to be the drumbeat in this conversation: “I am.” You’re going to see that time and time again.

And you know—what was it? Help me out. When Moses asked God for His name at the burning bush, what did God respond with? “I am.” The name that God responded with was “I am.” So you’re going to see that time and time again, Jesus is invoking that name as he speaks. “I am, I am, I am.” All the while, he’s saying who he is, he’s invoking that divine name.

Jesus begins, “I am the light of the world.” And that comparison of God to light is one that you can find throughout the Bible, and it is especially poignant, I think, because, well, first off, light is self-evident, isn’t it? If you walk into a room and there’s a light on, you’re going to see it. That’s just how it works. In that same way, God is self-evident. God is obvious.

You may disagree with that. You may think to yourself, “Well, hold on. If God was so obvious, why are there so many people that don’t believe in Him?” Well, the Bible tells us that. The Bible says the problem is the blindness that has been brought on all of humanity by sin. It’s not that God is hidden somewhere. It’s not that He’s trying to confuse us. God is obvious. His presence in the world is everywhere, but we can’t see it. We’ve been blinded, or some of us just have our eyes closed, right? That’s one of the reasons that those miracles, where Jesus comes to restore people’s sight, are especially important—because Jesus heals our sight so we can see again. We are no longer blinded by sin. Jesus is the light. He is that self-evident light that everyone should be able to see. And as you look around the world, you can see all the evidence of God. You can see the mountains and the hills, you can see the fields that are His handiwork, you can see God at work among people.

The light is self-evident, and it also helps not only us to see itself; it helps us to see everything else. If you’re in a room that’s dark, you’re not going to be able to do very much. You can’t walk. You don’t know what’s in the way. You’re going to bang up your shins. You can’t interact with things. You can’t see anything if the room’s dark. But if a light is on, suddenly you can start to make sense of things. You can act in reasonable ways. You can interact with the things around you. Not only does the world around you make sense if you’ve got light, but you can even start to see yourself, can’t you? If the room’s dark enough, you can’t see your own hand in front of your face. When the light is on, you can see your hands. You can see yourself.

That’s true about God too. If we know God, we know ourselves. Sometimes we imagine that we are the masters of our own self-understanding, that we know ourselves better than anyone. Not always true. If you don’t know where you’re from, if you don’t know where you’re going, if you don’t know what you were made to do—all of which is only knowable through God—you’re missing a great deal of information. You can only really understand yourself by the light of God. Jesus says He is the light. Through Him, you can see His self-evident glory. You can understand God. You can understand the world. You can understand yourself.

And He continues, saying, “Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” And isn’t there enough darkness in the world? I mean, you can’t get through a week without seeing darkness of one kind or another. Especially in election season, you see plenty of darkness. It’s on your screens all the time. There is plenty of darkness in this world, but darkness is not an equal opposite to the light. Darkness is just an absence of light. If we follow Jesus, He gives us the light. We can walk into the darkness without fear, because we carry that light with us. It can’t withstand us. If anything, us walking into that darkness is going to light it up.

The Pharisees—they have been listening. They are here and they are ready to ridicule Jesus. They begin with their first challenge: “Here you are, appearing as your own witness. Your testimony is not valid.” In other words, yeah, you can say all this about yourself. Well, that’s easy enough. A person can say anything about themselves. But in the law, you’re supposed to have two witnesses to something. If you don’t have a witness, how can anybody trust you? You’ve given us insufficient evidence.

And that two-witness rule makes a good deal of sense, right? If I told you, believe it or not, I am one of the best basketball players you will ever see. I am amazing. You should see me on that court. I do magic out there. Would you believe it? Probably not. I hope you wouldn’t; I wouldn’t believe myself if I said that. But if I said that and then Jim followed up by saying, “No, seriously, I’ve seen him. It is weird how good at basketball he is,” suddenly it seems a little more credible, right? Someone else is affirming that, so the rule makes sense. Generally, if you’re looking to see if something is true, if two people are both able to confirm it, it’s a little more credible. That is exactly what they’re saying about Jesus: you’ve not given us credible evidence. You have these ridiculous claims that don’t meet the minimum standard of something that is reasonable.

I do find the objection just a little bit ironic, isn’t it? Jesus says, “I am the light,” and they say, “I don’t see it. Give me more evidence.” Which, I mean, can you imagine going outside on a bright sunny day, and there’s someone there with their eyes closed, and you say, “Man, it’s bright out,” and they say, “I don’t see it. I refuse to acknowledge that; you’ve not given me sufficient evidence.” Well, open your eyes and look! It’s bright. “I’m not going to do that, please give me evidence.” We’re seeing the blindness of the Pharisees here. They don’t see the light.

Now Jesus responds to them questioning His evidence. He says, “Even if I testify on my own behalf, my testimony is valid, for I know where I came from and where I’m going. But you have no idea where I come from or where I’m going.” In other words, it makes sense to have two people—pretty reasonable most of the time. However, I am the only one who can testify about these kinds of things. I’m the only one who knows. None of you know where you’re from or where you’re going. You don’t know things like that. You’ve not seen heaven or hell. You theorize it; you hear about it. I’ve seen it. I was there in the beginning when the heavens and the earth were created. I was there when the plants were formed. I was there when humans were still just the dust of the earth before the breath of God. I have seen all of this. I am the only one who can speak with authority because I know genuinely where I’m from and where I am going. How could any of you verify that? You are all ignorant on that front. I’m the only one that can say these kinds of things with confidence because I’m the only one that knows it.

He continues, “You judge by human standards. I pass judgment on no one.” And we’ve seen the Pharisees repeatedly judge, right? That’s what they do. They show up and they judge people, and their standards are often based on more earthly things, right? The Pharisees are proud of their education. They’re proud of their jobs. They’re proud of the prestige that they have. They’re proud that they get to work in the temple. They’re proud that they publicly keep different acts of the law. They’re proud because they’re impressive people. But as impressive as they are, we can repeatedly see that they don’t really keep a fair understanding of the law. They keep a worldly understanding of the law. They want to look good, they want to be impressive, but we see that their hearts aren’t in the right place. They’re often cruel. They often look down on people that are trying very hard. Their hearts are stone. The Pharisees have a very earthly understanding of what it means to be good.

On the other hand, Jesus—He’s come not to judge people based on earthly standards. The earth already was judged at the very beginning. There was no shortage of condemnation for humanity when sin entered into the world. There was no shortage of wrath on God’s behalf. Jesus didn’t come because the world needed more judgment; that was taken care of. Jesus came to save us. He’s not an instrument of judgment; He’s an instrument of mercy. He’s the opposite of the Pharisees.

“But if I do judge, my decisions are true, because I am not alone. I stand with the Father who sent me. In your own Law it is written that the testimony of two witnesses is true. I am one who testifies for myself; my other witness is the Father who sent me.” And this, I think, sometimes it can sound a little abstract—Jesus saying, “Yeah, there are two witnesses. There’s me, and then there’s my Father.” At different points, I imagine, well, how are they supposed to hear from His Father? Jesus uses that word to talk about His heavenly Father, to talk about God, and how on earth are they supposed to know? Are they supposed to go into a prayer room and just be real quiet, and then they will feel the affirmation that Jesus is indeed the Son of God? It’s a little simpler than that, and it’s a little more objective. Remember, they had the Old Testament; the Word of God was available. When Jesus says, “There’s another witness, it’s my Father,” they can go and verify using the Word of God, which is full of prophecies about Jesus. The Old Testament is all about Him. He said that in no uncertain terms. So when Jesus says, “I have a second witness, it’s the Father,” this is a reference to the Scriptures. Go and verify. You don’t just have to take my word for it—look it up.

So Jesus has clearly shown them, “You don’t think my evidence is sufficient? I have sufficient evidence.” But they respond because He’s used a word that they are delighted to hear. Keep in mind, they’ve heard Jesus on a few occasions now, so they know some of the things He tends to bring up, and they’ve got these questions that are perfectly designed to try to humiliate Him. Jesus used the word “Father,” right? Father. Well, isn’t there a scandal about Jesus’s birth? Now today we believe, of course, rightly, that Jesus was born of the Virgin Mary. That’s something that Scripture clearly teaches. It’s something that the Church has taught from its earliest days. The apostles themselves taught it. But in those days, you got to remember, no one believed Jesus was the Son of God—or at least very, very few, right? The Pharisees didn’t believe that Jesus was born of the Virgin Mary, and there were all kinds of rumors about His birth: rumors that it was a Roman soldier or some other guy that Mary had on the side—all kinds of theories about who’s Jesus’s real dad, many of which continue to this day. That’s what they’re invoking. They’re invoking the rumor mill here. “Oh, Jesus, you want to talk about your Father? Where is your Father, huh? We’ve heard some stories about him. Do you even know who your own dad is? You who were born out of wedlock—we know the dates don’t line up. We know it doesn’t make sense. We know something’s amiss here, Jesus, and you know it too.”

He responds, “You do not know me or my Father. If you knew me, you would know my Father also.” He spoke these words while teaching in the temple courts near the place where the offerings were put. Yet no one seized Him, because His hour had not yet come.

He continues, “I am going away, and you will look for me, and you will die in your sin. Where I go, you cannot come.” Jesus doesn’t beat around the bush engaging with their attempts to create scandalous rumors. He stays right on message. You don’t know my Father because you don’t know me. You don’t know God. That is a problem, because you’re not listening. And He immediately shows the relevance of that too: “I am going to go, and where I go, you cannot follow. You are going to die in your sin.” Crystal clear as to why this matters. He’s not going to play into these rumors. He’s not going to spend time arguing things on their terms. He’s just going to clearly and concisely represent the truth and remind them why it matters.

Now, again, He said something that the Pharisees are ready for—something that He said in the past: “Where I go, you cannot follow.” They’ve got something for that too. They respond, “Will he kill himself? Is that why he says, ‘Where I go, you cannot come’?” Now, in this time frame, in the first century, the commonly held belief in Judaism was that if you kill yourself, that is a one-way ticket to hell, because you have denied the greatest gift that God gave you: life itself. You kill yourself—boom, hell, done. It was considered an unforgivable sin. That’s not what the Bible says. The Bible has one unforgivable sin listed, and that is denying the lordship of Jesus Christ. That’s the unforgivable sin. Despite the witness that He lived, despite the witness of the Holy Spirit, denying Him—well, that’s the greatest unforgivable sin because accepting Him will forgive all other sins.

Now, the logic of it—because it’s not only first-century Judaism, but at different points in church history, people have held that belief that suicide is an unforgivable sin. And here’s the logic of it a little bit, just so you understand why people have held that at different points. The logic goes something like this: Okay, so if you do something wrong, you should ask God for forgiveness, right? Yeah, that makes sense. You should ask God for forgiveness. Okay, great. And is suicide a sin? Yeah, suicide is a sin. It’s wrong, it’s bad. Makes sense. Okay, so if your last act is a sin, how are you going to ask for forgiveness for it? You can’t. You’re dying in unrepented sin. How on earth can you possibly get to heaven like that?

But this logic is a little flawed, and someone else pointed it out to me once. They said, “Okay, so dying in unrepented sin—that’s horrible, you can’t recover from that, right? Okay, sure. So let’s say you are on your deathbed, and you pray for forgiveness, and then you live ten more minutes. Any chance you’re going to sin during those ten minutes? Sure. I mean, sin is not just what you do; it’s thought, word, and deed. It’s what you do, and it’s what you don’t do. It’s not so hard to sin. Most of us are experts at it. Is there any chance you can sin in ten minutes? Sure, definitely. Okay, well, what about five minutes? Yeah, I could pull that off. What about one minute? Is it possible to sin in just one minute? Yeah. Okay, so then the only way to die, if you have to ask forgiveness for all the things—and you don’t even know when you’re going to die, right?—so you would have to perpetually be asking forgiveness every second of every day, just in case something went wrong. Otherwise, you might die in unrepentant sin.”

Does that make sense? Is that the witness of the people we see in Scripture? Well, no, it’s not. The reason God forgives us is because we’ve been redeemed by the blood of Christ. That’s the grace of God. God doesn’t forgive us because we are particularly good askers of forgiveness; He forgives us because of His grace, because of what He did on the cross. Now, does He ask us to ask forgiveness when we sin? Yeah, definitely, because we love God. We love our Father, and when we mess up, we ask for forgiveness. At the same time, the way that works—it’s not this legalistic weapon to be wielded. Our salvation is through grace, not because we are perpetually asking for more forgiveness. That’s my take on the matter.

But you got to keep in mind, the Pharisees did not think that way. That would not have been normative for the time. The norm for them would have been—why are they saying everything they’re saying? Well, they’re implying Jesus is going to go right to hell. That’s why they’re saying, “Oh, where you go, no one can follow, because you’re going to kill yourself. You’re going straight to hell. That’s what you’re doing, Jesus.”

And Jesus responds, “You are from below; I am from above. You are of this world; I am not of this world. I told you that you would die in your sins; if you do not believe that I am He, you will indeed die in your sins.” Again, you can see they keep trying to get Him off track, and Jesus just stays right on track. He keeps affirming who He is and why it matters. And here, it’s almost like He’s pleading with them: “If you do not believe, you will indeed die in your sins.” He wishes they would see. Why can’t you see? Open your eyes and see, you Pharisees! Look!

And they respond, “Who are you?” Who do you think you are, Mr. Hotshot, Mr. Big Deal, Mr. Guy who can forgive every sin? Who do you think you are? Who are you? Who are you? A deeply ironic question to end on, because that’s exactly what Jesus has been saying from the beginning. Every single time He has opened His mouth here, He is saying who He is. That drumbeat of “I am, I am, I am”—every answer to every question is about who He is. That has been Jesus’s teaching from the beginning. It is all about who He is and why it makes a difference. And they have asked question after question, but the questions weren’t designed to know anything more; they were designed to embarrass. After all those questions, they still don’t know.

Jesus responds, “Just as I have been telling you from the beginning. I have much to say in judgment of you. But He who sent me is trustworthy, and what I have heard from Him I tell the world.” 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 He 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 believed in Him.

So here we’ve had this whole exchange, and what was the goal of it the whole time? To humiliate Jesus, to embarrass Him, to heckle Him so much that the crowd loses their faith in Him. And what happened? Just the opposite. People have come to faith because of the incident.

And what Jesus said at the end there: “When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know I am He.” This is all going to make sense when you have lifted up the Son of Man. He’s referring to the cross, to His own crucifixion. That brings clarity to every question. It’s good to remember that when we get those questions, right? When we get those pointed questions—whether they come from someone who doesn’t know God like we do, someone who has really pointed, rude questions to ask about how we can possibly believe any of this; whether it’s those questions in the odd hours of the night that sneak into our minds about Jesus: “You know it can’t possibly be real, don’t you? You don’t actually believe that stuff.” Whether it’s about the world: “You know things do not work the way the Bible presents. You know that’s ridiculous, right?” Or whether it’s even about yourself: “You’re going to keep praying? You know how absurd that is. Do you know how many times you’ve sinned? It’s insane. You’re going to ask Him for forgiveness for the same things over again? Don’t you think He’s tired of you? Don’t you know how fruitless this is? You know you don’t even believe this. Give it up.”

All of those accusatory questions that come up? Everything makes sense when you look at the cross. It explains every question crystal clear. You want to know who Jesus really is? You look at the cross. There is no clearer evidence of God’s love, of His mercy, of His caring than Jesus on that cross. You want to know the underpinning logic of the world? Look at the cross. That explains everything you need to know about the world. You want to know who you are? Look at the cross. You might be a sinner, you might have sinned a million times, but you are a sinner redeemed by the blood of Christ, bought back by the grace of God. You want the answer to every question? It’ll all be clear. Look at the cross. Amen.