Your Father – John 8:31-47

Ayn Rands’ book, Atlas Shrugged, is known for its rambling moralism, but one passage attracts my interest:

People think that a liar gains a victory over his victim. What I’ve learned is that a lie is an act of self-abdication, because one surrenders one’s reality to the person to whom one lies, making that person one’s master, condemning oneself from then on to faking the sort of reality that person’s view requires to be faked…The man who lies to the world, is the world’s slave from then on…There are no white lies, there is only the blackest of destruction, and a white lie is the blackest of all.

This speaks to the kind of enslavement that sin can create, and it fits with what Jesus has to say to those who cannot really accept him.

So Jesus began to say to those Jews who had believed in him, “If you remain in my word, truly you will be my disciples and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”  They responded to him, “We are the seed of Abraham and have never been enslaved.  How is it you’re saying we will be set free?”  Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you that whoever continues to sin is a slave to sin.  Now the slave does not remain in the house forever, the son remains forever.  So if the son sets you free, you are truly free.”

“I know that you are the seed of Abraham.  Yet you seek to kill me, because you don’t make room for my word inside you.  What I have seen from the Father I speak.  And you, what things you have heard from your father, you do.”  They responded, “Abraham is our father.”  Jesus said to them, “If you are children of Abraham you would do the works of Abraham.  But now you seek to kill someone who has told you the truth that I heard from God.  Abraham wouldn’t do this.  You do the works of your father.”  They said, “We weren’t born of immorality.  We have one father, God.”  Jesus said, “If God was your father you would love me, for I am come from the Father and I’m present.  I didn’t come on my own, but He sent me.  Why don’t you understand my words?  Because you are not able to hear my word.  You are from your father the devil and you want to do the desires of your father.  He has been a murderer from the beginning and has not stood for the truth, because there is no truth in him.  Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from himself, because he is a liar and the father of lies.  I speak what is true and you don’t believe me.  Whoever is from God hears the words of God.  The reason you don’t hear is because you are not from God.”  (John 8:31-47)

Incredibly, Jesus now addresses the ones who have professed to believe in him and says that if they “remain” in him, persevere in believing in him, this is what demonstrates they are truly his disciples, and he says that adhering to the truth will set them free.  Their lack of genuine faith causes them to respond haughtily that they have never been slaves and so as sons of Abraham they don’t need “freedom.”  Their slavery has not been to men but to sin, Jesus retorts, and if they stay in sin they will not remain, but if they find the son’s freedom they will be truly free.

But they, though genetically sons of Abraham, are spiritually sons of the devil (seed of the serpent, as Genesis 3:15 puts it) as evidenced by their murderous thoughts toward him and their inability to receive the truth, which is tantamount to lying.  Jesus very strongly seeks to bring them to repentance by arguing that if they were of Abraham they would love him and recognize that he comes from the Father.  Their desire to kill him is evidence of Satanic influence, the one who killed Abel through Cain in the beginning.  They are not of God.

There are always those who claim to believe in Jesus but when the reality of what he requires becomes evident their true colors come out.  They don’t really believe and can’t receive the truth.  This may become evident in persecution, through suffering the ills of this life, because of love for money or other pressures to yield to sin.  The true believer truly believes and remains in Jesus’ word.

Discussion Questions

1. Describe a situation in which you were supposedly free but really weren’t.
2. In what sense do you think the Jews Jesus is addressing believed, if they turn around and argue with him?
3. What is the evidence that these people aren’t really sons of Abraham but sons of the devil?
4. What is the source of their inability to believe in Jesus, genuinely?
5. Paul says we were all by nature children of wrath and under the sway of Satan (Ephesians 2:1-4).  How were we able to hear the truth in Jesus?
6. What evidence can others see in you that you are a genuine believer?