The reaction of many of the Jewish authorities with whom Jesus has been speaking is to believe in him (v. 30), and the remainder of the discourse is focused on this group of “believers.” The prediction that they will realize later who Jesus is (v. 28) appears to be coming true even before they lift him up on the cross. It sounds, and it is, too good to be true. Their faith is not genuine (cf. 2:23–25). Jesus has directed their attention toward the future, but they will have none of it. The present is good enough for these “believers,” and they are satisfied with their current relationship to God.
To become real disciples, they need time. Only by continued obedience to Jesus’ message can they know the truth and know what it is to be free (vv. 31–32). The mention of freedom offends them with its implication that they are not already free. As Abraham’s descendants, they are proud of having never been slaves of anyone (v. 33). Jesus explains that he is using slavery as a metaphor for sin and death (vv. 34–36). Descendants of Abraham or not, they are subject to death like everyone else and, in that sense, slaves (cf. Heb. 2:14–15). Jesus’ promise to set them free is a promise of life, an alternative to the grim prospect of dying in their sins (cf. vv. 21, 24). Verse 51 will make the promise explicit without the use of metaphor: I tell you the truth, if anyone keeps my word, he will never see death.
Two themes—the interplay of life and death, and the significance of being descended from Abraham—are the issues that will drive Jesus and the Jewish “believers” further and further apart and trigger the confrontation with which the temple discourse comes to an end (v. 59). The descent of these “believers” from Abraham is not in question (v. 37), but their conduct belies their heritage. Physically they are Abraham’s descendants, Jesus admits, but neither ethically nor spiritually are they Abraham’s children.
Once again Jesus charges that his hearers are trying to kill him (vv. 37, 40), this time in a context in which his identity is known (contrast 7:19). If their behavior means anything, Abraham is not their father; if he were, they would do the things Abraham did (v. 39). Their deeds give evidence of a very different parentage (v. 41). Jesus links the theme of life and death with that of truth and lies, and both of these with the ancient conflict between God and the devil (vv. 42–47). God is the giver of life, who through Jesus makes his truth known in the world. The devil is the source of death, a murderer from the beginning and the father of lies. The references are to the snake’s denial of God’s truth in the Garden of Eden (Gen. 3:4) and to Cain’s murder of Abel, his brother (Gen. 4:8; cf. 1 John 3:12). Death and falsehood go together as surely as life and truth do. When Jesus charges that you are ready to kill me, he has in mind simply his hearers’ refusal to accept his teaching, the truth that I heard from God (vv. 37, 40). He equates this lie with attempted murder because lies and murder come from the same source and because the one leads inevitably to the other (v. 44). His words are vindicated at the end of the chapter when the “believers” are said to have picked up stones to stone him (v. 59). Though murder was not their intention at the start, Jesus’ words uncover the real import of their actions and attitudes. Their inability to hear God’s words from the lips of Jesus proves that they belong not to God but to the devil and are acting out the devil’s intentions (v. 47).
The fact that those denounced so harshly in this passage are called the Jews (v. 31) has prompted the charge that John’s Gospel is “anti-Jewish” or even “anti-Semitic.” But it should be remembered that these particular Jews had believed in Jesus. It would appear that if they represent anyone beyond themselves, they represent certain groups of Jewish Christians!
The angry “believers” now grope for the ugliest names they can think of to call Jesus: He is a Samaritan (cf. 4:9) and demon possessed (cf. 7:20). These are not measured charges made to stand up in court, but momentary expressions of rage. Jesus leaves his defense, and the passing of judgment on his adversaries, in the hands of his Father (vv. 49–50) and returns to his initial promise of eternal life to those who obey his teaching (v. 51; cf. vv. 31–32). It is like reopening an old wound. Once more Jesus’ claim is rejected by means of an appeal to Abraham (v. 52; cf. v. 33). For Jesus to pretend to give life so that if anyone keeps your word, he will never taste death is to put himself ahead of even Abraham and the prophets (vv. 52–53). Life and death are here conceived in purely physical terms, as if Jesus is promising exemption from physical death.
Without pausing to correct the misunderstanding, Jesus addresses the question Who do you think you are? (v. 53). His answer in verses 54 and 55 counters the appeal to Abraham with an appeal to God himself, the supreme Life-giver and Judge of all. But he adds, Your father Abraham rejoiced at the thought of seeing my day; he saw it and was glad (v. 56). Just as there is a specific allusion in 1:51 to Jacob’s Bethel experience (Gen. 28:12), it is natural to look for something specific here as well. The apparent reference is to the promise Abraham received that from his offspring blessing would come to the whole world (Gen. 12:1–3). The promise is assumed to be fulfilled in Jesus (cf. Gal. 3:16), but the beginning of its realization is the birth of Isaac and his deliverance from premature death (Gen. 18, 22). It is probably in connection with one or both of these events that Abraham is understood to have seen Jesus’ day. The narrator may even have in mind the specific moment when “Abraham looked up and there in the thicket he saw a ram caught by its horns” and knew that his son was spared (Gen. 22:13); this incident was regarded by some early Christian interpreters as pointing to the death of Jesus the Lamb of God (e.g., by Melito of Sardis, in his Eclogues; see R. M. Grant, Second Century Christianity [London: S.P.C.K., 1957], p. 72).
In an apparently deliberate misunderstanding, the hostile “believers” respond as if Jesus had said that he had seen Abraham, instead of that Abraham had seen his day (v. 57). Their effort to make his claim sound absurd succeeds only in displaying their own willful ignorance. But Jesus’ reply is serious, and decisive: I tell you the truth … Before Abraham was born, I am (v. 58). With these words, Jesus goes beyond all his previous claims. He has seen Abraham; he was alive in Abraham’s time, and long before. It is as if the earlier instances of the “I am” formula (i.e., 4:26; 6:20; 8:24, 28) have been waiting for this one for their deepest meaning. In contrast to them all, there is no content that can be supplied either from the nearer or more remote context: for example, that he is the Messiah, or the Son of Man, or the One from above, or everything that he has claimed to be. He simply is. I am in this case is God’s formula of self-disclosure, just as it is in the Hebrew scriptures (Heb.: ‘anî hû’, lit., “I he,” but normally translated into Greek as egō eimi, or “I am”). The formula is clustered especially in Isaiah 40–55, where God uses it to proclaim his uniqueness as Israel’s covenant Lord, faithful to his promises and strong to deliver and restore his people (e.g., Isa. 41:4; 43:10–13, 25; 45:18–19; 48:12; 52:6; cf. Deut. 32:39). Its use implies a radical and unqualified monotheism: “Before me no god was formed, nor will there be one after me” Isa. 43:10b); “I am the LORD, and there is no other” (Isa. 45:18); “there is no god besides me” (Deut. 32:39). For anyone else to use this formula in the same way was blasphemy (Isa. 47:8; Zeph. 2:15). Here for the first time, the implications of Jesus’ use of this formula came through to his hearers; in reaction they picked up stones to stone him (v. 59). There is no doubt that they understood Jesus to be speaking with the voice of God, as if he himself were “the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob” (cf. Exod. 3:6).
The use of the “I am” form in relation to Abraham recalls Jesus’ dispute with the Sadducees in the synoptic Gospels, where he defended the belief in a future resurrection (Mark 12:18–27 and parallels). Jesus’ argument on that occasion was that God had said to Moses, “I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob,” and that God was “not the God of the dead, but of the living” (Mark 12:27 and Matt. 22:32; Luke 20:38 explains, “for to him all are alive”). Here in John’s Gospel it is Jesus himself who both makes the “I am” statement and claims to be the giver of life (v. 51). It is not to be assumed that the statement, Abraham died (vv. 52–53) necessarily represents the viewpoint of the narrator or Jesus, at least not if it implies death’s usual finality. Jesus’ opponents, wrong about everything else, are wrong about this as well. He who existed before Abraham and promises eternal life to believers is the source of life and hope even for Abraham himself, and for the prophets. The God of Abraham, and of Isaac and Jacob, is Jesus; he is the only giver of life, and Lord of the resurrection (cf. 5:21, 25, 28). Only Jesus can promise his followers, “I will raise them up at the last day” (6:39–40; 6:44, 54), and in this passage even Abraham and the prophets are numbered among his followers. The temple discourse, like the synagogue discourse of chapter 6, ends on the note that God’s life is available to human beings only through trust in Jesus and obedience to his teaching.
The self-disclosure is now complete. As for the immediate hearers, their response is marked by neither trust nor obedience. The “believers” of verses 30–31 are unmasked as unbelievers, once and for all. To them, Jesus’ claim of identity with the God of Abraham is blasphemy. Their attempted stoning of Jesus is a natural and inevitable reaction, ironically fulfilling what Jesus said was their intent all along. They had tried to kill him (cf. 7:19; 8:37, 40), first by rejecting his message, but now literally. Their attempt on his life fails, just as earlier attempts to arrest him had failed (cf. 7:30, 44). The manner of his escape is not told; mysteriously he hid himself, slipping away from the temple grounds (v. 59b). He had come out of hiding to make himself known at the temple during the Feast of Tabernacles, and now he goes back in hiding again.
Additional Notes
8:31 The Jews who had believed him. The grammatical construction is different from v. 30 (i.e., “believe” followed by a dative, rather than by a preposition designating Jesus as the object of their faith). But in context the two constructions are equivalents. In this Gospel, to believe in Jesus is to believe what he says, and believing his message means believing in him as God’s messenger. There is no way v. 31 can be made to refer to a less adequate kind of faith than v. 30. In neither verse is it possible to tell from the language that the faith in view is not genuine, even though subsequent events demonstrate that in fact it is not (cf. 2:23–25).
8:31–32 If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. Cf. Jesus’ words in his farewell discourse to those who were genuinely his disciples: “This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples” (15:8); “I no longer speak of you as slaves, for a slave does not know what his master is about. Instead, I call you friends, since I have made known to you all that I heard from my Father” (15:15, NAB). Note that in the latter passage freedom, in contrast to slavery, is defined by knowledge of the truth that Jesus brings, just as it is here.
8:33 We … have never been slaves of anyone. The proud spirit of Jewish independence that brought about the Jewish revolt in A.D. 70 can be heard in this pronouncement. The irony sensed by the narrator and his readers is that Israel had lost its independence to Rome almost a century before this statement was made and still had not regained it when the Gospel was written. Though not exactly in slavery, Israel was by no means free of foreign domination.
8:34 A slave to sin: The words to sin are missing in a few ancient manuscripts and versions. It is not hard to see why some ancient scribes omitted these words. The emphasis of the verse is on the metaphor of slavery as such, not on that to which one is enslaved. But the stronger manuscript evidence favors the longer reading. The slavery here is to sin, just as it is in Paul’s letters (e.g., Rom. 6:16, 20). Sin functions as a middle term between the metaphor (slavery) and the reality (death). Jesus’ next pronouncement, “A slave has no permanent place in the family” (v. 35a), carries forward the metaphor in that it realistically describes a typical household in Jesus’ time, yet it also provides a theological interpretation: “slavery” here means death. The Son (i.e., Jesus), on the contrary, has eternal life (v. 35b) and gives that life to those who are dying. In that sense he sets people free (v. 36).
8:38 The Father … your father: There are no possessive pronouns in the Greek. An explicit contrast between Jesus’ Father (God) and his opponents’ father (the devil) is not introduced until v. 41. It is therefore likely that God is the only Father being referred to in this verse: “I am telling you what I have seen in the Father’s presence. Therefore do what you have heard from the Father” (NIV margin).
This translation is supported by the word oun (“therefore”) in the Greek text. It assumes that the last verb do (Gr.: poieite) should be taken as an imperative rather than as an indicative. Jesus is making one last appeal to his opponents to accept his words as words from God the Father, and put them into practice. But his opponents’ answer (v. 39) demonstrates that their Abrahamic descent is more important to them than Jesus’ appeal on his Father’s behalf.
8:39 If you were … you would do: Some ancient manuscripts continue the note of appeal by making the second verb in this sentence an imperative: “If you are Abraham’s children, … then do” (NIV margin). But the beginning of the following verse in Greek (“But now you are trying to kill me”) makes it clear that the conditional sentence in v. 39 is contrary to fact: If the opponents were true children of Abraham, they would do what Abraham did, but in fact they are not. Grammatically, the first verb is present tense where an imperfect might have been expected. The effect of this is to heighten the supposition of reality, an effect that the GNB translators have achieved with their rendering, “If you really were …”
The things Abraham did: lit., “the works of Abraham” (cf. James 2:21–23). In James the reference is to Abraham’s willingness to offer up his son Isaac as a sacrifice (Gen. 22:1–14), but here Jesus apparently has in mind Abraham’s warm welcome of God’s messengers (Gen. 18:1–8). It is to this that he contrasts the hostile behavior of Abraham’s self-proclaimed “children” (v. 40).
8:44 You belong to your father, the devil: lit., “you are of the father, the devil,” or even “you are of the father of the devil” (!). The end of the verse (he is a liar and the father of lies) could also conceivably be read as a reference to the devil’s father (i.e., “even his father is a liar”). Such possibilities may have provided a basis for later Gnostic speculation about the devil’s origins, but in the absence of any such speculations elsewhere in John’s Gospel or Epistles, it is virtually certain that the meaning implied by the NIV translation is correct. The first clause of the verse might be paraphrased, “You are ‘of the Father,’ all right, but your ‘Father’ is the devil!” The last clause is lit., “he is a liar, and the father of it” (i.e., of the first lie [“you will not surely die,” Gen. 3:4] and therefore the father all subsequent lies).
8:52 Abraham died and so did the prophets. The statement superficially recalls Jesus’ own words in 6:49 (“Your forefathers … died,” cf. 6:58), but its function in the narrative is different. In chap. 6, Jesus’ implication was that God had judged the generation that long ago died in the desert (cf. 1 Cor. 10:5), while those who ate the Bread of life Jesus now offered would live forever. Those who died, he told his opponents, were “your forefathers.” Here, however, Jesus’ point is that his opponents are not Abraham’s true descendants (cf. v. 39), nor are they children of the prophets. The pronouncement that Abraham and the prophets are dead is their pronouncement, not that of Jesus or of the narrator. The righteous have seen Jesus’ day—and they will live! (cf. v. 56, Mark 12:27; note also that Abraham is assumed to be alive in God’s presence in Luke 16:22–31).
For an example of Judaism’s struggle with the notion that even such a great man as Abraham finally had to face physical death, see The Testament of Abraham, trans. M. E. Stone (Missoula, Mont.: Society of Biblical Literature, 1972).
8:56 Your father Abraham: Contrast v. 39, where Jesus denies that Abraham is their father. Here in ad hominem fashion, he mockingly throws their own claim in their face (cf. v. 54; “my Father, whom you claim as your God”).
The thought of seeing my day: Ancient Jewish literature testifies to the belief that God revealed “the end of the times” to Abraham (4 Ezra 3:14; cf. also the late rabbinic commentary Genesis Rabbah 44, 22 [Midrash Rabbah (London: Soncino Press, 1961), vol. 1, p. 376] on Gen. 15:18). The reference here, however, is probably not to Abraham’s vision in Gen. 15 but to the promise of a son and to the birth and deliverance of the promised offspring.
8:57 Not yet fifty years old: It is precarious to argue from this round number, as some have done, that Jesus was approaching fifty years of age (e.g., Irenaeus, Against Heresies 1.22.6) or that he looked almost that old (according to Luke 3:23 he was “about thirty years old” when he began his ministry). Compared to the many centuries since Abraham, even an overly generous fifty-year span sounded like only a moment and served well to make the point.
