The Gospel of John - part 26
The Good Shepherd - part 2
More division
There was again a division among the Jews because of these words. Many of them said, “He has a demon, and is insane; why listen to him?” Others said, “These are not the words of one who is oppressed by a demon. Can a demon open the eyes of the blind?”
John 10:19-21
It is noteworthy the amount of division that took place among the Jews regarding Jesus. The following passage will explain the division in light of the sheep metaphor from the previous passage. Jesus is the Shepherd, and His sheep hear his voice. The reason some Jews understood is because they were listening to their shepherd’s voice. The others were not a part of the fold, and so could not understand.
The one true division in humanity is between those who follow Christ and those who do not.
The Feast of Dedication
At that time the Feast of Dedication took place at Jerusalem. It was winter, and Jesus was walking in the temple, in the colonnade of Solomon.
John 10:22-23
The Feast of Dedication is what we know as Hanukkah. It commemorates the retaking and re-consecration of the Temple from Antiochus Epiphanes. Now, if you have studied the Maccabees in a Catholic Bible, you’ll know the story, but since we’re Baptists, I’ll tell it now:
Around 167 BC, Antiochus led a slaughter in Jerusalem after an upheaval in the Temple. He considered the turmoil in the Temple an act of revolt and ordered the slaughter of anyone who stood in the way of his ‘restoration’. As an act of punishment against the Jews, he outlawed Jewish religious rites and customs and ordered Zeus to be worshiped as the supreme god. To add insult to injury, he then had a pig slaughtered in the Jewish Temple in worship of Zeus. His continued persecutions and blasphemy led the Jews to consider him the “abomination that causes desolation” of Daniel.
In response, the Maccabee family led a revolt against Antiochus which lasted from 167-160 BC. (On a side note, the name “Maccabee” is actually a nickname, meaning ‘hammer’, given for the family’s guerrilla warfare tactics.) Upon taking the Temple, the Maccabees searched for oil to light the lamps, but only found one untainted jug which should have only lasted a day. However, the oil continued to burn for the eight days it took to procure more. Thus, the Jewish celebration is eight nights to honor the miracle of the lamp oil—hence why it is also called “the Festival of Lights”.
The Festival of Dedication is also Hanukkah which celebrated the Maccabees reclaiming the Temple in 160 BC.
Now, this context is important for the same reason the context of the previous festivals was important. During the festival which marks the geopolitical salvation of the Jews from a time of persecution, and coincidentally fulfillment of prophecy given during the Exile, Jesus is now offering one more chance for salvation for the Pharisees. Where about 200 years before, the Jewish leaders were God’s people being persecuted by demonic forces, now they are persecuting God’s Son—even calling for His death by stoning. John is painting a picture, some of it subtly and some overtly, but in both ways, it is a picture of great irony. For thousands of years, the Jewish people had been led and protected by God despite their rebellions, only to turn their backs for a final time when the Son of God came to save them.
Hanukkah began as a celebration for Jewish deliverance and a recognition that God was about to deliver Israel into the Messianic Age.
However, once the Temple was fully destroyed in 70 AD, it has for the most part lost all sense of eschatology. And why? Because the Jewish leadership failed to understand the Messianic Age had come. Jesus is God’s Son sent to save Israel, and the world, from their slavery to sin.
Eternal security and ‘One’
So the Jews gathered around him and said to him, “How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Christ, tell us plainly.” Jesus answered them, “I told you, and you do not believe. The works that I do in my Father's name bear witness about me, but you do not believe because you are not among my sheep. My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father's hand. I and the Father are one.”
John 10:24-30
The Pharisees want a plain answer from Jesus. Is He the Messiah or not? Jesus’ answer implies he did tell them plainly, however commentators note the absence of a quotable quote. The dilemma for the Pharisees is the same dilemma for some folks today. In 10:6, John notes Jesus used a figure of speech, or parable. Those who understood Jesus to be the Messiah, based on His works and teachings, understood the parable. The Pharisees did not understand the parable because they did not understand Jesus. The sheep metaphor helps explain the root problem, as stated before—only those who belong to Jesus hear and understand.
Verse 27-28
Those who do belong not only are able to hear Jesus, but they are also given eternal life and “no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand.” This verse illustrates one of the most precious truths in Scripture: the one who belongs to Jesus will always belong to Jesus.
When we receive eternal life, it is an eternal life.
Adrian Rogers explains it this way: if we could lose our salvation, it wouldn’t be eternal life. If someone is saved for 15 years and then loses their salvation, they didn’t have eternal life, they had a 15 year life. If someone is saved for 50 years, and then loses their salvation, it was a 50 year life. Eternal life lasts for eternity.
Apart from the various denominational traditions, the reason many Christians struggle with this truth is because many Christians fail to understand the biblical writers’ view of salvation. The modern idea of salvation is typically an altar call, prayer, and then baptism. These acts are supposed to signify the person’s salvation. However, the biblical writers viewed salvation much more deeply than a series of rites. In fact, much of Jesus’ ministry, and the disciples, and the Old Testament prophets before, was spent combatting this type of thinking. Whenever good Baptists hear “works-based salvation”, they typically think of good deeds to outweigh the bad deeds. However, if a person believes that because they walked an aisle, recited a prayer, or got dunked in water, they are saved regardless their activities or heart-felt beliefs afterward, that is also a works-based salvation. Their salvation is based on 3 easy steps instead of true repentance and trust in Christ.
That is why those of us who confess in the perseverance of the saints should have no qualms about Hebrews 6 which speaks of those who have fallen despite “sharing in the Holy Spirit”. Likewise, when James speaks of a dead faith without works, there is no scandal.
Salvation in the biblical view is a thorough salvation—changing heart, mind, and soul.
Salvation comes through repentance—a change in mind.
Salvation comes when the Holy Spirit turns the stony heart to flesh—a change in heart.
Salvation comes by being “born again”—a change in soul.
To be saved is to become a new creation.
John’s First Epistle gives the test for whether a person is truly saved.
This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.
1 John 1:5-7
If you want to be sure of your salvation, simply ask yourself how you feel about sin—not your neighbor’s sin, your sin.
Do you have an excuse for your sin, or do you not even care?
Do you take comfort that your sin isn’t near as bad as other people, or do you find reasons why it’s ok?
Do you take comfort that God loves you even with all your faults, or do you know “that’s just how you were made”?
Well, here’s the kicker: those are trick questions.
The biblical view of sin—what Jesus taught about sin—is God hates it, and the best thing we can do for ourselves is purge anything and everything causes us to sin. “If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off.” Now, hear me well, I am not saying the true Christian never sins. I am saying the true Christian hates their sin, and prays daily for God to cleanse them of their sin.
The true Christian cares deeply about their sin and makes no excuse for it.
The true Christian does not find comfort in other people’s sin, but only in the righteousness of Christ.
The true Christian knows God loves us despite our faults and knows God creiated us to be holy as He is holy.
True salvation is from a true faith with true evidence—without evidence, it cannot be a true faith which means it is not true salvation.
Verse 29-30
The verse, “I and the Father are one”, has been used as a prooftext in the past for heretical views concerning the relationship between Christ and God. Some have over-emphasized “one” to mean that Jesus and God are the same exact being, denying the Trinity in favor of what is called modalism. In this view Jesus is just one ‘mode’ of God, while the Father is another mode and the Spirit is yet another, also. The problem with using this verse is that ‘one’ refers to the mission of God. Jesus and the Father are ‘one’ in purpose. If you compare this verse with 17:11, 21-23, you’ll see the same ‘one’ (en) used to describe the unity Jesus prays for his disciples. Jesus’ disciples cannot become physically one person, but we can become one in purpose or mindset. His prayer is for his disciples to be as united in mission as He is with the Father.
‘One’ refers to a united mission, not a singular person.
However, the opposite extreme is just as wrong. Jesus is certainly one with the Father in that He is fully God and fully man. John’s entire gospel is arguing just that—from 1:1 to the very end. They are separate in that Jesus has a physical body and the Father does not, but they are connected in that Jesus shares the Divine Spirit. In fact, a couple of chapters before that prayer, Jesus will speak of the Helper, the Holy Spirit, coming who will guide his disciples into that oneness.
Christians are called to the same unity of mission through the power of the Holy Spirit.
The Son of God
The Jews picked up stones again to stone him. Jesus answered them, “I have shown you many good works from the Father; for which of them are you going to stone me?” The Jews answered him, “It is not for a good work that we are going to stone you but for blasphemy, because you, being a man, make yourself God.” Jesus answered them, “Is it not written in your Law, ‘I said, you are gods’? If he called them gods to whom the word of God came—and Scripture cannot be broken— do you say of him whom the Father consecrated and sent into the world, ‘You are blaspheming,’ because I said, ‘I am the Son of God’? If I am not doing the works of my Father, then do not believe me; but if I do them, even though you do not believe me, believe the works, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me and I am in the Father.” Again they sought to arrest him, but he escaped from their hands.
He went away again across the Jordan to the place where John had been baptizing at first, and there he remained. And many came to him. And they said, “John did no sign, but everything that John said about this man was true.” And many believed in him there.
John 10:31-42
This final passage presents something of a conundrum if we are not careful. The Jews pick up stones to kill him, and Jesus asks for which good work is he being stoned. They reply it is not about what he has done, but what he has said. Again, Jesus is claiming divinity which in their eyes is blasphemy. The conundrum comes when Jesus cites Psalm 82:6.
Psalm 82 is an interesting, albeit confusing, psalm. It starts with ‘the Most High in the midst of the gods’. Then, in verse 6, God calls them gods, sons of the Most High, but they are going to die like humans, because of their failure to give justice. It ends in verse 7 with a call to God for judgement. Some have interpreted this psalm as a judgement against angels, while some say it is against the kings of the earth. Up to and following the first century, rabbis and Christians have debated the precise meaning of the psalm.
For our passage in John, the interpretation of Psalm 86 actually does not matter too much, because Jesus’ point is not about the psalm but rather its existence. The Jews are ready to stone Him for calling himself the Son of God, which is against the Law. But here, in the Law, is an example of God calling a created being ‘god’. If this verse can have a rightful place in Scripture, then how much more can Jesus, who is the Son of God, call himself ‘Son of God’?
Additionally, consider again the context of Jesus’ message, the Festival of Dedication. The Jews are celebrating the consecration of the Temple following its salvation from pagan hands. Jesus is the Greater Priest who not only saves humanity from the Great Enemy, but also consecrates us to God in holiness. It is one more example of irony in John. By missing the true identity of Jesus, they are missing the greater spiritual truth of what God is doing.
Jesus’ final call is for the Pharisees to at least believe the works He is doing. If they cannot believe His message, at least examine the works. If His actions line up with his talk, then they must believe. But if His actions are found to be lacking, then they have every right to disbelieve.
Jesus can be trusted because His actions match His speech.
The last few verses allow for a pause until the next chapter in John’s story. The crowd helps to summarize why people believed and followed Jesus, and they reinforce what John started back in Chapter 2. John the Baptist said the Messiah was coming, would perform many signs, and take away the sin of the world. The last eight chapters have been just that. Jesus has taught, performed miracles, and we are about to enter the phase of John’s gospel which tells how Jesus takes away the sin of the world. But before that, there will be one more sign which we will discuss next week.
Theology in Practice
For this week, however, we have looked at some deep theology. Before I close, I would like to share how these deep truths lead to very practical living.
First, consider again “Jesus is the Good Shepherd”.
When we talk of Jesus as our shepherd, it means that we can look to Jesus for help in all walks of life—not just because He created all life, but also because He cares for us. “Cast your cares on the Lord, because He cares for you.”
Second, consider again “No one is able to snatch them out of the father’s hand.”
Your salvation is eternally secure, if you believe in Jesus. Death should not be a worry. It is simply a transition from one world to another. Worry about living this life well, and let your death deal with itself.
Third, consider again “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.”
The people of God hear when God speaks to them. They recognize it and follow. When was the last time you heard God speak to you? When was the last time you were listening? It does not take hours of meditation, it simply takes you picking up your Bible. Now, certainly God does speak to people in a variety of ways, and He could certainly send you a vision, but those mystical experiences are fascinating because they are rare. What is common is for someone to read their Bible and understand their next step, because God has already spoken everything we need into His Word. If you want a mystical experience, by all means head out into the woods and pray for one. But if you want to know what to do with your money, your relationships, your health, or your spiritual walk, just pick up your Bible. It’s all in there.
Last, and I think the most important for Monday morning, consider “If I am not doing the works of my Father, then do not believe me; but if I do them, even though you do not believe me, believe the works, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me and I am in the Father.”
Remember what Jesus has done when you doubt what He is doing.
Jesus could point to his life and his works as proof he was who he said he was. Can you point to your life and your works as proof you are who you say you are? If you claim to be a Christian, do others look at how you live and agree? I once read a sign above a desk that asked, “If being a Christian was a crime, would there be enough evidence to convict you?”
Remember, the biblical view of salvation is not a “say a prayer, get a bath, and move on with your life” scenario. It is a complete transformation of mind, body, and soul that will be evident to everyone around you.
If you cannot see the fruit of your faith in your life, and no one else can as well, then it may just be that you have been fooling yourself—maybe for a long time. Turn to Jesus in full repentance, and ask for a new heart, a new mind, and a new soul. There is no better time than now.