John 8:58
There
are some things we must believe or we really aren’t Jesus-followers. The first
is the identity of Jesus. C. S. Lewis made popular the line of argument called
“Lunatic, Liar or Lord.” In a nutshell, if we believe the Scriptures, then
Jesus can’t be just a good moral teacher. He can’t be someone to model our
lives after. He claimed to be more than that. How much more is explained in
this passage of Scripture.
Jesus
in chapter eight of John is in a long discussion with the Jewish leaders of His
day. They are challenging His own claims about His identity. They even get
personal in their attacks (v19). Jesus continues to ramp up His claim to being
someone more than just a good teacher. He started with claiming He is the light
of the world.
The
Jews of Jesus’ day hear something in those words that sets them off. They react
to what He says. I see this firsthand knowledge as enlightening. We might react
to His words very differently, but they knew the culture, context, language and
they reacted.
Note
also, that Jesus did not back down from His claim. There are repeated times
when Jesus could have said, “Hey, wait a minute. I didn’t mean that. What I
meant was…” but He didn’t. He could have retracted and corrected, but instead
He ramps it up.
And
the reaction of the Jews also ramps up to the point where they want to stone
Him for blasphemy, claiming to be God. They are pushing for a reason to kill
Him, and they find one. They are insulted by what Jesus says, because it is
true. They feel the sting of His words. Jesus is pushing for clarity and
understanding (v43), and I think he gets it. They just don’t want to believe
what He is saying.
Again,
I want to emphasize, Jesus had many opportunities to retract what He was saying
during this conversation, but He didn’t. Jesus raises His importance above
Abraham, the father of the faith. Abraham rejoiced at Jesus’ coming. Jesus is
the fulfillment of God’s words to Abraham.
But
this is not all. Jesus claims to be the “I AM” that spoke to Abraham. If we go
back and read Exodus
3:14 we see the God of the burning bush introducing Himself to Abraham and
to the people of Israel. He is beginning a covenant relationship with them and
introduces Himself as the One who exists independent of anyone or anything
else. Jesus claims He is this person, this “I AM”. They want to immediately
kill Him.
Christianity
is based on the belief that Jesus is God. We will continue to look at this in
the coming days. What we believe about Jesus determines our eternal destiny. It
is important to know what we believe and why we believe it.