Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to John · About this commentary
You Are of Your Father
John 8:39-47
39 They answered him, “Our father is Abraham.” Jesus said to them, “If you were Abraham’s children, you would do the works of Abraham. · WEB
The hardest words in the Gospel, and the argument that leads to them is about descent proving nothing.
"Our father is Abraham." Jesus said to them, "If you were Abraham's children, you would do the works of Abraham" John 8:39.
The argument turns on a distinction between descent and resemblance, and it is not new — John the Baptizer had said God could raise children to Abraham from stones Matthew 3:9. Children are recognized by what they do.
"But now you seek to kill me, a man who has told you the truth which I heard from God. Abraham didn't do this" John 8:40.
The test is applied and the evidence is their own intention. Abraham's characteristic act was to receive a message from God and act on it; theirs is to plan the death of a man for delivering one.
"We were not born of sexual immorality. We have one Father, God" John 8:41.
The first half is an insult and it is worth registering. They have moved from arguing to sneering about the circumstances of his birth, which is what the village at Nazareth would have supplied them with.
"If God were your father, you would love me, for I came out and have come from God" John 8:42. The same test applied to the second claim. A family resemblance would show as recognition.
"Why don't you understand my speech? Because you can't hear my word" John 8:43.
The diagnosis distinguishes two things the English blurs. They understand the sentences; what they cannot do is receive what the sentences carry. It is not a language problem, and it is not a failure of intelligence.
"You are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father" John 8:44.
This is the hardest sentence in the Gospels and it must be read for what it is and is not.
It is not a statement about a people. Everyone in the room is Jewish, including the speaker, his disciples and the writer; the words are addressed to a specific group in a specific argument who have just declared their intention to kill him, and the account has said so twice in five verses. Using the verse against a nation inverts it — the whole point being made is that ancestry does not determine anything, in either direction.
What is being said is that parentage is shown by conduct, and that the conduct on display has an origin. Two characteristics are named, and both are specific.
"He was a murderer from the beginning." Death entered by his work Genesis 3:4 Romans 5:12, and the men listening are arranging one.
"When he speaks a lie, he speaks on his own; for he is a liar, and the father of lies." The second is falsehood, and the phrase speaks on his own means it is native to him — the only thing in the universe he can be said to have originated.
So the charge is precise: they are doing the two things that are characteristically his, murder and untruth, in a conversation about who told them the truth.
"But because I tell the truth, you don't believe me" John 8:45. The word is because, which is the whole tragedy in one conjunction. Not although.
"Which of you convicts me of sin?" John 8:46.
The question is asked in open court, to hostile experts who had followed him for months and would have used anything. It is a challenge no one else in Scripture makes, and the silence that answers it is part of the record.
"He who is of God hears the words of God. For this cause you don't hear, because you are not of God" John 8:47. The argument closes where it started, with hearing — and it has moved from you will not to you cannot, which is the direction this chapter has been traveling since verse twenty-three.
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