Ye do the works of your father. They said [therefore] to him, We are not born of fornication; we have one father, God.
In the temple, Jesus tells a crowd who boast of descent from Abraham that their deeds point to a different father. They answer with the highest claim they have, and it raises a question that still matters: can inherited religious standing make anyone a child of God?
Before the Jews make their claim, the Lord has already laid down the principle that decides it. Descent from Abraham settles nothing, because conduct traces back to origin.
To be Abraham's seed, as the Lord lets the Jews know, is a poor safeguard. One might be descended from Abraham and be the worst enemy of God. Such were the Jews then, who were seeking to kill Christ because His word had no hold in them. Everyone acts according to his source; character follows it. So our Lord says, "I speak what I have seen with My Father; and you therefore do what you have seen with your father." To be of Abraham does not save from Satan.
Fatherhood language works this way through the whole passage. It names what a person resembles.
Sons are those who show the typical or distinctive traits of their fathers. This idea of a son standing for his father often appears in moral matters. So the "sons of disobedience" (Eph. 2:2) are those whose conduct displays disobedience as clearly as a son resembles a father. Barnabas showed the features of consolation so plainly that he was called the "son of consolation" (Acts 4:36). The Lord said that the Jews were of their "father, the devil," because they did his lusts and his deeds, showing their moral origin (John 8:41-45).
Their answer appeals to birth. It shows how inherited privilege can hide from a person the very thing he needs to see.
They said to Him, "We were not born of sexual immorality. We have one Father — even God." How far a man can deceive himself by privileges handed down to him, and by their lawful succession! This happens when the moral character of God is not set before him. And when he is morally corrupt, these privileges hide that from him and keep him from seeing his need of it.
The claim was not invented out of nothing. God had used that language of Israel as a nation, but their boast reached further.
The Lord refused their claim: "If God were your Father, you would love Me: for I came from God; neither did I come of Myself, but He sent Me. Why do you not understand My speech? Because you cannot hear My word" (42, 43). God was the Father of Israel as a nation, but in Old Testament times He had never revealed Himself as standing in that relationship to single people. The Lord, the Son, first taught believers that God was their Father. It is the Son who reveals the Father (Matt. 11:27). So although all creatures owe their being to God, no one who does not acknowledge the Son has the right and privilege to call God his Father.
Commentators differ on how far the Lord's reply reaches. Some take it as a flat denial that God is Father to all people:
Notice how the Lord's words completely destroy the false idea, held by so many, of the "universal Fatherhood of God." Even these Jewish religious leaders went no further than claiming a universal fatherhood of Abraham, and so of God, for their nation. Jesus said, "If God were your Father …" It was a denial. The devil was their father. The Fatherhood of God is limited to those who believe, as Galatians 3:26 states.
Others read the reply as aimed at moral condition, not at natural origin. They point to the Lord's same argument about Abraham, whose physical descendants they truly were:
The Lord says the same about their being Abraham's children. By natural birth they truly were his children, however little they were so morally. So it is of their moral condition that He is speaking. The devil was not their father physically, of course.
The failure exposed in the temple was not one nation's failure. It was man's, and a Person was the test that exposed it.
It is really man proved guilty when set against Christ, in every land, language and age. He turns out to be no different when tested by the truth, by the Son. Circumstances differ, but this is always the issue, and it comes out worst where things look fairest. If there was a family on earth that might have seemed furthest from impurity, it was the Jews; if any could claim God as their Father, they could, most of all. But Jesus is the touchstone.
- Source shows. Everyone acts according to his origin. Character follows it, so a person's works name the father he belongs to.
- Descent fails. One could be Abraham's seed and still be God's worst enemy — bloodline is a poor safeguard against Satan.
- Privilege blinds. Handed-down rights can hide a man's moral corruption from himself and keep him from seeing his need.
- Claim tested. God was Father to Israel as a nation. He never revealed Himself that way to single people, so their boast claimed more than He had given.
- Christ decides. Jesus is the touchstone. Love for the One God sent is the proof, and only those who acknowledge the Son may call God their Father.
Jesus said to them, If God were your father ye would have loved me, for I came forth from God and am come [from him]; for neither am I come of myself, but *he* has sent me.
His hearers have just claimed that they have one Father, God Himself. His reply does not argue with their theology. It hands them a test they cannot pass, and gives the reason a true child of God would respond differently.
He does not defend His own title. He measures their claim by how they respond to Him.
Jesus still rests His case not on His own title, but on God's: were they children of God? "If God were your Father" (He speaks from the consciousness of what He was, for He, as well as it, was the truth), "you would love Me." He tests the moral connection of their hearts with God by the truth, that is, by Himself.
Their claim was not empty. God had owned Israel as a nation. But that settled nothing about the individual.
The Jews declared that God was their Father (8:41). That was true of the nation. But it could not secure everlasting blessing for the individual. They had not understood this, because they had never been subjects of divine grace, and they showed it by their hostility towards the Lord... They needed more than agreeing to a creed, or resting in national privileges. If God was their Father, they would share a new nature, the divine nature. They would then become the special objects of His fatherly care.
The same words cut across a common modern idea: that God is everyone's Father.
Notice how the Lord's words completely destroy the false idea, held by so many, of the "universal Fatherhood of God." These Jewish religious leaders only went so far as to claim a universal fatherhood of Abraham, and so of God, for their nation. Jesus said, "If God were your Father …" It was a denial. The devil was their father. God's Fatherhood belongs only to those who believe, as Galatians 3:26 states.
If He had come from God, then hatred of Him exposed what no privilege could cover.
If there was a family on earth that might have seemed farthest removed from impurity, it was the Jews. If anyone could claim to have God as their Father, they most of all. But Jesus is the touchstone, and He proves them to be God's enemies, not His children. Otherwise they would have loved Him who came out from God and was then present among them. He had not come on His own impulse, but at God's sending. He came, and God sent Him, in love beyond man's thought or measure; and they rose against Him in hatred, seeking to kill Him.
The reason Jesus gives has two halves. Older translations render the first as "I proceeded forth and came from God."
But the Lord's answer is positive and solemn. If God were their Father, they would love the Lord Jesus. First, He proceeded forth and came from God; second, God sent Him (v. 42). The first points to His own divine and voluntary coming. The second points to His perfect interdependence with the Father, since the Father sent Him. Both are true: He came in voluntary, divine grace, yet not independently of the Father, but sent by Him. He is therefore the perfect representation of the Father, and He attracts the love of every person who loves the Father.
Each half also says something different about the Son Himself.
It is very important to see that one statement adds to the other. It is not a mere repetition in different words. In His coming forth, the Son acted in His own Personal rights and of His own will; in His being sent, the Son came into the world as the accredited Delegate of God.
He claimed no mission of His own. The great of this world speak very differently.
Jesus never claimed to be the originator of His mission, but delighted to own that He came as sent from the Father. How unlike men this is! The great men of this world boast that they are self-made, and that they started the systems that bear their names, whether in religion, philosophy or politics. But the Son of God was different from every other man. It was His pleasure to name the Father as the source of His mission, and to own His dependence on Him for everything... What rest of heart for the Son, and what joy, to confess that He was not come of Himself! And what rest and joy for those who received the words of the Son, to know that it was from the Father that He had brought such grace and blessing.
- Claim. Saying God is your Father settles nothing by itself. Israel's standing as a nation could not secure blessing for one person.
- Test. Christ does not press His own title. He makes Himself the test: your link with God shows in how you respond to Him.
- Reason. Love for Him follows because He came from God. He came of His own will, and God sent Him — two truths, not one said twice.
- Contrast. He took no credit for His own mission. The great of this world boast of being self-made; His joy was to name the Father as His source.
- Result. Anyone who loves the Father is drawn to the One who perfectly represents Him. Hatred of the Son showed a different father.
Why do ye not know my speech? Because ye cannot hear my word.
Jesus has just told these listeners that if God were their Father, they would love Him. Now He asks why His plain words leave them baffled. His own answer moves the problem out of the ear and into the heart: they cannot hear, and so they cannot understand.
The verse names two things, and the second explains the first. One writer separates the outward wording from the message inside it. He traces the failure back to where these men came from.
He set forth the truth, and those who had God for their Father would both love the truth and love Him. His opponents had an evil origin, and could not hear His word — the revelation that He brought. So they were completely unable to understand His speech — the words in which He clothed the revelation. This is what verse 43 tells us.
In ordinary study you learn the words first, and the subject follows. Here the order runs the other way.
They did not understand what He said because they did not take in His thought. In human things you must understand the language, the technical terms, before you understand the thing. But in divine things you must understand the ideas before you understand the words. If I say, "You must be born again," the words do not give an understanding of what it is. Until I know the liberty of Christ, until I have the thing in freedom, no words make me understand what "free" really is.
This also answers a common complaint. When people call the Bible unclear, the problem may not be in its words.
You come to know a speaker's wording by first grasping his thought, his aim, his mind — never the other way round. If the inner purpose is not received, the outer form is unknown. So it was with Jesus speaking to the Jews; so it is above all with the testimony in John's writings now. People complain that the wording is mysterious, because they have no idea of the truth it means.
Nothing Jesus said here used hard words. One writer points to the real problem.
They could not understand His speech because they could not hear His word; it was not the mind but the heart that was all wrong.
That resistance is not confusion. It is a recoil from what the truth exposes.
Why is it that people, then as now, do not understand the Scriptures? Not really because of difficult expressions. It is the truth that grates on the reluctant will of man. This is the source of all unbelief. It is the will refusing to face the terrible fact of man's ruin. It is the pride that rejects God's grace and will not bow to its own need of it. So the guilt of unbelief is not that man's understanding is weak. It is that he does not fear God and does not believe His love.
One writer looks behind their refusal to the power that shaped it.
The hindrance is the blinding power of the devil. He is the source of their thoughts and feelings, just as surely as he is the enemy of Christ. Men's judgments flow from their will and affections, and these are under the sway of His enemy.
If the fault lies in the will, the way back opens through willingness, not cleverness. One writer points to what Jesus said about doing God's will.
The ability to receive and understand the Divine Word lies in being willing to understand it so as to obey it. Our Lord says: "If anyone's will is to do God's will, he will know whether the teaching is from God or whether I am speaking on my own authority," and "Whoever is of God hears the words of God. The reason why you do not hear them is that you are not of God."
And that inability is not a locked door.
So then, the Jews were spiritually unable to hear the voice of God… Still, being unable to hear was not beyond cure. There was a Great Physician for those who were not stubborn. He had come to make those who were not wilfully deaf "hear joy and gladness."
- Word before speech. Refuse the message He brings and His words stay a puzzle. Miss His inner purpose and the outer form means nothing.
- Reversed order. In human learning you grasp the words first, then the thing. In divine things you grasp the thing first, or words like "you must be born again" mean nothing.
- Heart, not head. The failure was not a weak mind but a wrong heart. Truth grates on a reluctant will, and that resistance is the source of all unbelief.
- A father behind it. The blinding power of the devil shaped their thoughts and feelings; men's judgments flow from a will under the enemy's sway.
- A remedy, not a verdict. Deafness that is not deliberate has a Physician. Willingness to do God's will opens the ear to know whether the teaching is from God.
Ye are of the devil, as [your] father, and ye desire to do the lusts of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning, and has not stood in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks falsehood, he speaks of what is his own; for he is a liar and its father
Jesus is speaking to men who have just claimed two fathers — Abraham and God Himself — and He answers by naming a third. It gives the Bible's sharpest description of Satan, and raises two questions: who counts as a child of the devil, and what does "from the beginning" mean?
The argument of the whole passage turns on family resemblance. Descent from Abraham was never in dispute; the likeness was.
To be Abraham's seed, as the Lord lets the Jews know, is poor protection. One might be of Abraham, and be the worst enemy of God... Everyone acts according to his source; character follows it. So our Lord says, "I speak of what I have seen with My Father, and you do what you have heard from your father." Being of Abraham does not save anyone from Satan... No one denied that they were descended from Abraham, the father of the faithful. But did they bear the family likeness?
Two traits gave them away, and Jesus names both in the verse.
On the one hand, they sought to kill the Lord; on the other they oppose the truth. These are the two great marks of Satan: murder, and no truth in him. They prove that these Jews were children of Abraham by birth, but children of the devil in character.
This is a specific charge, not a description of humanity at large. Writers are careful to mark the difference.
We cannot say that every unsaved person is a child of the devil. All are children of Adam and children of wrath (Eph. 2:3). A child of the devil is someone who hardens himself against what he knows to be true. He has given himself up to the service of Satan. Not that he would admit this, but his own pride and deceit are prominent.
The timing of the sentence matters as much as its content. Jesus said it only after they had made their own choice plain.
Remember this: God's Word never says it of anyone until their own ways have shown who and what they really are. Note also who gives this short account of the devil: the One who is the Word, who was with God, was God, and was in the beginning with God. So it must be true.
Some have taken the phrase to mean that Satan always existed as he now is. Commentators reject that reading.
But John 8:44 points neither to eternity past nor to the start of creation... "From the beginning" is quite different from "in the beginning." That second phrase is used of the Word Himself, and of the moment creation began. The devil has not always existed. He was an angel who grew proud and fell... The Greek phrase here cannot mean "from all eternity." That would deny that the devil is a creature. It would mean God made him a devil from the start, instead of his being an angel who, unlike others, did not keep his first state.
The two titles in the verse are not separate items on a list. One produced the other.
He brought this in at the start, and he brought it in by deceit; for "he was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth." ... He was and is a liar: that is his character, exactly opposed to Christ, who is the truth... Satan is the destroyer; Christ is the giver of life. Satan is the accuser of the brothers; Christ is the Mediator for them. Christ is the truth of God; Satan is the father of lies... By misrepresenting the truth and character of God, he became the murderer of the souls of men.
He does not usually tell a bare lie.
He puts it forward under the guise of truth, in the form of truth, and in some sense mixed up with the truth... He says, "You will not surely die." That was a plain lie. But he adds, "You will be like God, knowing good and evil" — and we know that was partly true... But he held back the one truth man most needed to know: what would follow if he took the advice.
When Christ spoke, He drew from the Father. The contrast is in the source each one speaks from.
When Christ spoke He spoke the truth, that which was indeed His own, but was also of the Father. But when he speaks a lie, he speaks out of what belongs to him, out of his own store. Our Lord had the right to speak of him this way: he is a liar, lies come from him, and he is the father of them.
The first lie attacked God's goodness. The cross answered it.
Satan is a liar from the beginning, and at the cross the Lord proved this. It cost the Lord His life to prove that God was good. Christ came to contradict the devil's lie, which man believed, and under which the whole world is lying... Christ takes my sin on His own sinless person. He bows His head in death on the cross. In this way He sets aside that lie of Satan, "You will not surely die."
- Lineage — descent from Abraham settled nothing. Character follows its source, so the family likeness shows who your father is.
- Lie — falsehood is Satan's own property, drawn from his own store. He serves it mixed with enough truth to be swallowed.
- Murder — the lie was the weapon. By misrepresenting God's character, Satan became the murderer of souls. Liar and murderer are one career, not two.
- Limit — Jesus uses the title "child of the devil" only after a person's own ways have shown it. It is not the same as being a child of Adam.
- Answer — the cross contradicted the first lie at the cost of Christ's life, proving God good where Satan said otherwise.
and because I speak the truth, ye do not believe me.
Jesus has just told these listeners who their father is. Now He names the reason they will not believe Him: people usually reject a message because it is false, but here the truth itself is what they cannot accept.
Everything hangs on that one connecting word. One writer points out what the verse does not say:
Notice the force of verse 45: it is not, "although I tell you the truth," but "because I tell the truth, you do not believe me." They had become so used to falsehood that, when truth is presented, it is the very thing they will not believe! A lie would be much easier for them to accept.
Why would truth itself drive people away? Because of what truth does to the world it shines on:
But truth can never be popular in this world. Even philosophers are puzzled that men love lies for the lie's own sake, when lies bring them neither pleasure, as they do the poet, nor profit, as they do the merchant. Truth shows men's follies and hidden motives too clearly, and sheds too broad a light on the play-acting of the world, for the world ever to welcome it… The truth exposes all human over-valuing, self-conceit and false fancies; and things that sparkle and look bright by the world's candlelight lose their shine in the light of day. Men cannot afford this, for it strips the world of its glory and shows it up as a cheap counterfeit.
The verse just before this one described a liar. Jesus is his complete opposite:
Jesus alone among men is the Truth; He is not only God, but the One who reveals God to man. In Him is no sin, nor did He sin, and no deceit was found in His mouth. He was in every respect the plain opposite of the devil, who, whenever he speaks falsehood, speaks out of his own store, because he is a liar and the father of it. Jesus is the truth, and makes it known to those who otherwise cannot know it. "But because I tell the truth, you do not believe me." How terrible, yet how just, is God's judgment of such people!
So unbelief is not a failure of understanding. The words are not hard. The will refuses them:
Why is it that people, then as now, do not understand the Scriptures? Not really because of difficult expressions. It is the truth that grates on the reluctant will of man. This is the source of all unbelief. The will resists, and refuses to face the terrible fact of man's ruin. It is the pride that rejects God's grace and will not bend to its own need of it. So the guilt of unbelief is not that man's understanding is weak. It is that he does not fear God and does not believe His love.
These men were not irreligious. They had a mark of privilege to boast in, and old false impressions die hard:
Experience of human nature tells us that false impressions of a superstitious kind are harder to get rid of than any others. They suit human nature and prop up human nature, whereas the truth is enjoyed spiritually and is foreign to human nature. "But because I tell the truth, you do not believe me." The Jews were circumcised, the Gentiles were not: that was something they could boast in and hold onto, when all its value was gone.
If the will is the barrier, evidence alone will not break through. The same writer holds two things together: man is responsible, and God gives life:
Man is responsible because God has given full and adequate evidence, suited to man (John 5:33-40). But man's will and desires are such that he loves darkness rather than light. And so God's power gives life sovereignly (John 5:21; see John 3:11; 3:32; 8:45). Conscience is the way in for light, and there is no other — except that love draws. God is love as well as light, and reveals Himself in Christ.
- Because, not although. Truth was not the obstacle Jesus overcame; truth was the reason they refused Him. A lie would have gone down more easily.
- Truth exposes. It shows up men's follies and hidden motives. It strips the shine off what the world calls bright, so it can never be popular.
- Truth has a Person. The liar speaks out of his own store. Jesus alone is the Truth, and He makes God known to those who could not otherwise know Him.
- Truth meets the will. Unbelief is not weak understanding. It is a will that grates against the truth, and pride that refuses its own need of grace.
- Truth needs love. Conscience is the only way in for light. But love draws, and God gives life sovereignly, because He is love as well as light.