What is the significance of Jesus telling some of the Jewish religious leaders, "You are of your father the devil" (John 8:44)?

Children of the Devil. — And now the time came for Him to speak with unmistakable clearness. Come from God, and sent by Him, He had authority to do that. "Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it. And because I tell you the truth, ye believe Me not. Which of you convinces Me of sin? If I say the truth, why do ye not believe Me? He that is of God hears God's words: ye therefore hear them not, because ye are not of God" (44-47). Plain speaking indeed! The occasion called for it. Children of the devil they were. God's words, which Christ spoke, who is God, they would not have. The truth they refused, and sought His death. Their ways and their purposes marked out their father. But this grave statement, let us remember, is never made in the Word of any of the human race, till they have shown by their ways who and what they really are. Further, let us remark, we have here a short account of the devil by Him, who is the Word, who was with God, was God, and was in the beginning with God. It is, it must be, therefore, a true one.

John 8:42-44. The Lord meets this claim by showing that they had none of the marks of the children of God, but manifested the two great marks of the children of the devil. Had they been the children of God they would have been marked by love to Christ, and reception of the truth that He came to declare. Utter strangers to the mind of the Lord, they could not understand the speech by which the thoughts were conveyed. Not only were they ignorant of the mind of the Lord, but they exhibited the two outstanding marks of the children of the devil — murder and lying.

John 8:45-47. They refuse to believe the Lord who had told them the truth; why then, if they could not convince Him of error, did they not believe on Him? There can only be one answer: the one that refuses to believe in Jesus is not of God, for he that is of God hears His words.

John 8:48. In answer to the Lord's charge that they were not the true children of Abraham (verse 39), they retort that the Lord Himself is no true Jew but a Samaritan. In answer to the charge that they were the children of the devil (verse 44), they say that the Lord Himself has a devil.

But to all this their minds were blinded, and He questions why they did not understand. He Himself gives the answer: “Because you are not able to listen to My word” (v. 43). Basic, callous unbelief rendered them impervious to the plain, pointed declarations of His lips. They had given themselves up to the blinding power of the devil; and He pronounces upon them the awful truth that they are of their father, the devil, willfully determined to engage in the lusts that have ensnared their father (v. 44). We cannot at all say that every unsaved person is a child of the devil, though all are children of Adam and children of wrath (Eph. 2:3). A child of the devil is rather one who has, by hardening himself against what he knows to be true, given himself up to the service of Satan. Not that he would admit this, but his own pride and deceit are prominent. Two things are here said of the devil. First, he was a murderer from the beginning; not from the time of his creation, but from the time of his attempt to “be like the most High” (Isa. 14:14). His murderous spirit is seen in his temptation of Eve: he was determined to accomplish her destruction. Secondly, he abode not in the truth, for the truth is not in him: he is a liar, and the father of it. Terrible designation! Of course it was by falsehood that he deceived Eve. Only Satan and antichrist are in scripture directly called liars, as well as these to whom the Lord speaks (v. 55); though the term is used to describe the general character of the inhabitants of Crete (Titus 1:12-13). One must be soberly careful in his use of this term.

In verses 37-44, the Lord very solemnly exposes the hollowness of their claim to be Abraham's children. There would have been some value in their claim if they had shown themselves to be his children in a spiritual sense by displaying his faith and doing his works. Actually they were marked by hatred and the spirit of murder. Cain had shown that spirit, and he was "of that wicked one, and slew his brother" (1 John 3:12); so, too, they were doing the deeds of their father, and thus manifesting themselves to be of their father the devil, who was a murderer from the beginning and had no truth in him. Hatred and lying are both fathered by the devil, and those characterized by these two things thereby betray their spiritual origin.

Jesus speaks of Himself, in verse 40, as "a Man that has told you the truth." Others spoke of Him as a Man, and saw no more in Him than that; but it is striking that in this Gospel, which presents Him as the Word made flesh, He should speak of Himself as a Man. Thus the truth is balanced for us, and both His essential Godhead and His perfect Manhood made abundantly clear. 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. Consequently they were wholly unable to understand His speech — the words in which He clothed the revelation. This is what verse 43 tells us.

207 The Lord allows no uncertainty to remain here any longer: you have the devil for your father, and you will do his works; and "he is a liar, and the father of lies" (v. 44). As we have said before, the double character of Satan and of sin, is to be "a murderer" and "a liar"; man has added to it corruption. Such was the character of these poor Jews. They did not believe Jesus, because Jesus spoke the truth, and they were going to kill Him. They claimed, indeed, to be of God - sad and blinding effect of an official religion; but if they had really been, they would have listened to the words of God. There is a certain perception which belongs to the life of God, which recognises that which is of Him, and especially His words. It was, for a Jew, a monstrous thing, subversive of all his pretensions, of the whole divine history of the ages, to say to Jesus that He was not of God. Who, then, was He? A Pagan, a Samaritan? This was enough to shew whence Jesus was.

John 8:38-41. The Lord then draws a formal contrast between Himself and those who reject His words. He was the Son revealing the Father, as speaking of that which He had seen in His eternal existence with the Father. In spite of their claim that they had no father but Abraham, they, as indeed all men, prove their true origin by their works. On the one hand, they sought to kill the Lord; on the other they oppose the truth. These are the two great characteristics of Satan, murder and absence of the truth, and prove that the Jews, whilst children of Abraham according to the flesh, were morally children of the devil.

Finally, the Lord proceeds to challenge them, in order to lay bare their groundless malice. "Which of you convinceth Me of sin? If I speak truth, why do ye not believe me? He that is of God heareth the words of God: for this cause ye hear them not, because ye are not of God." He was the Holy One, no less than the Truth, and surely both go together. And thus were they convicted of being, in word and deed, in thought and feeling, wholly alienated from, and rebellious against, God. They were not of God, save in haughty pretension, which only made their distance from Him, and opposition to Him, more glaring. Instead of convincing Christ of sin, they were themselves slaves of sin; instead of speaking truth, they rejected Him Who is the Truth; instead of hearing the words of God, they hated Him Who spoke them, because they were not of God but of the devil. Terrible picture, which the unerring light failed not to draw and leave, never to be effaced, of His adversaries! To be not of God is to be wholly without good, and left in evil, exposed to its consequences, according to the judgment of Him Who will not, cannot, change in His abhorrence of it. Such were and are the rejecters of Jesus.

Opposition arose from its being the word of truth (v. 45). Opposers were of the adversary. He was a murderer from the beginning, and they would follow him; but as the truth was the source of life, so that which characterised the adversary was, that he abode not in the truth: there is no truth in him. He is the father and the source of lies, so that, if falsehood speaks, it is one belonging to him that speaks. Sin was bondage, and they were in bondage by the law. (Truth, the Son Himself, made free.) But, more than that, the Jews were enemies, children of the enemy, and they would do his works, not believing the words of Christ because He spoke the truth. There is no miracle here; it is the power of the word, and the living word is God Himself: rejected by men, He is, as it were, compelled to speak the truth, to reveal Himself, hidden at once and manifested, as He was in the flesh — hidden as to His glory, manifested as to all that He is in His Person and in His grace.

The words of Jesus witnessed to the truth, but these words were but the expression of what He was in Himself, for He was the truth (John 8:25; 14:6). In the Son of God, and in all that He spoke, there was presented to men the perfect and full revelation of all that God is in His nature of love, and in His disposition of grace and compassion towards men. Under the influence of the devil, the god of this world, the Jews refused to believe the truth that was brought to them in the Person of the Son (John 8:43-46).

Yet there were those who accepted the truth made known in Jesus, even as He said to Pilate, "Every one that is of the truth hears my voice." There was then, and is now, a company on earth that the Lord spoke of as "of the truth." The truth that came in Jesus had been received into their hearts, and by this they were brought into this divine circle that hears the voice of the Son of God. Such heed not the many voices that are heard by the men of this world; they hear the voice that gave them being, the voice of the Son of God, the voice of the Good Shepherd, whose sheep they are.

Further, the Jews claimed a kind of "universal Fatherhood of God" in the presence of our Lord, saying, "We have one Father, even God." His answer was, "If God were your Father …" A big IF that! He even went further and said, "Ye are of your father the devil … When he speaks a lie, he speaks of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it" (John 8:41-44), thus branding their true origin upon them and the doctrine they represented.