Amen. If you would please turn within your Bibles to the Gospel of John, chapter 8, beginning at verse 46. Jesus asks, ‘Which one of you convicts me of sin? If I tell the truth, why do you not believe me? Whoever is of God hears the words of God. The reason why you do not hear them is that you are not of God.’ This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Let us pray.
Lord, you’ve given us your word for instruction, for reproof, and for encouragement. Help us to hear you speak, to know the things we need to believe, and help us to believe them with all faith and courage. We ask this in the name of Jesus. Amen.
What is it about public figures that seem to make them seem so important to regular people like us? Who appointed them to a position of authority and relevance where we just can’t help but consider them to be positive exemplars? Why do we elevate them to a place in our minds and hearts that we might actually begin to idolize them and seek to emulate them?
Why do we hold them to a different standard from ourselves, becoming willing to ignore their many obvious faults so that when they do fall from grace, their fall is made so much worse and becomes even more tragic? Why do we do this with every sphere of life, whether it’s important or not, whether we’re talking about politics or sports or education, literature, musicians, or also even within the church?
I mean, politicians, whether they are on the left or on the right, cannot help except to let all their supporters down because they’re always begging to be reelected to fix the same problems, but they never do. Or they’re asking for reelection to fix the problems that they created. No athlete can always be victorious. No team can ever be perfect and win every game, except for the 1972 Miami Dolphins.
How many teachers don’t hold themselves to the same expectations and standards that they set for their students, risking charges of hypocrisy? How many authors, how many of their later books failed to live up to the high expectations that were established by their earlier stories? Or how many authors, whose stories that we may love to enjoy, failed to live up to our own moral standards or failed to share similar viewpoints with us or even with the characters in their stories, as shown by their own personal lives?
How many musicians sing songs that are based upon or inspired by someone’s lived experience but live drastically different lifestyles? Have you ever heard somebody who’s making millions of dollars singing songs about living life in poverty and being like common blue-collar folks? Or even worse, singers who live out a very explicit lifestyle of sinful excess that they sing about and glorify.
How many celebrity pastors get caught in moral failures each year? How many trusted Bible teachers suddenly begin to promote unbiblical positions or viewpoints in the name of tolerance or to try and preserve their own personal cultural relevance? Is all of this a good thing gone wrong, or is this something bad which only gets worse?
I think that it is a good thing for us to have people whom we look up to and for us to have people that we want to emulate. I mean, scripture affirms this and scripture commends that practice. But scripture also limits its encouragement to the extent at which a person imitates Christ, to the extent at which they live a Christian life or that they believe and have Jesus as their Lord and Savior.
So, while it is good for us to seek out godly examples and mentors to follow and copy and echo, we need to remain on our guard when doing so. We must remember that even the best of us are still sinners. We all will fall short of Christ’s perfect righteousness, and we will each disappoint everyone who looks up to us at some time and in some way. That is something as certain as death and taxes.
Jesus Christ alone does not disappoint or fail. And none of us are Jesus, right? None of us here are Jesus. Jesus was and he is the most public person and figure in the whole of redemptive history, and he is exceptionally different. Jesus is greater than any and every other. He alone meets or exceeds the standard that he is held to.
Jesus, here in this passage, asks his opposition a very telling question: ‘Which one of you convicts me of sin?’ He asked this because he was confident that the answer was no one, because he was without sin. Meanwhile, although Jesus had only recently begun ministering in and around Jerusalem after the recent feast of tabernacles, he had been a known and noticed public figure for at least two Passovers all across Judea and Galilee.
Crowds followed him wherever he went. People were on the lookout for him during the feast because they were excited and curious to hear whatever Jesus had to say, even as there were also a number of bad actors looking to remove him. So Jesus was notable and newsworthy. As expressed by the character of King Herod in the rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar, he was the wonder of the year, and he clearly had a lot of fans.
It would have been near impossible for any Jewish person in the region to not at least have heard of Jesus, and everyone who heard of him must have formed some kind of opinion, whether or not they had seen him or heard him themselves. Asking publicly, ‘Which one of you convicts me of sin?’ was actually a challenge against the Jews because the social mores and practices of their culture so tightly revolved around the idea of righteousness and preserving one’s own spiritual cleanness.
All of these mikvot, ritual bathing bathtubs, essentially were carved into the stone along the path leading up to the temple mount. And this was so that the most devout Jews could prepare for worship. To them, holiness was believed to be a person’s top priority—number one—because God had commanded them, ‘For I am the Lord your God. Consecrate yourselves and be holy, for I am holy.’
An idea that’s not so very different from our assertion that our principal purpose—not just as Christians but as human persons—is to worship God and enjoy him forever, and we can only do that by our obedience and by living holy lives. The underlying premise of this question establishes the foundation for Jesus’s role and position as a public person, deserving the public’s trust. It speaks in favor of his credibility and ultimately explains why people ought to listen to Jesus.
Because if the answer to the question, ‘Which one of you convicts me of sin?’ is truly no one, then we must believe him. Because if that declaration were untrue and false, then Jesus would be a liar. He would therefore be a sinful sinner just like everybody else. He would be just another fallen demagogue, unworthy of our attention and devotion.
This goes back to the core principle of what Jesus has been teaching during this season of ministry. First, he told those who were believing him, ‘If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.’ Then here he tells them, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, if anyone keeps my word, he will never see death.’
But what is his work? What specific content was Jesus meaning? What teachings of his were and are we meant to follow to keep and obey? Unfortunately, that question demonstrates the critical problem with John’s gospel because we need to have the synoptics as our Christian foundation. They are the revelation that tells us what Jesus taught that demonstrates how Jesus reexplained and reaffirmed the teachings of Moses.
That which we know is the natural and moral divine law that’s governed all of creation ever since God said, ‘Let there be light.’ John’s gospel, on the other hand, tells us more about who Jesus is—the Lord God, the logos, who is theos andros—and why we need to both believe him and believe in him, because he is true and he is the truth.
It tells us more about who Jesus is than what Jesus taught. It’s another reason why John’s gospel is not really a good introduction to the Christian faith because while it shows us who Jesus is and why we need to believe him and what we need to believe about him, it doesn’t help us to know what we have to do now after we believe.
Although this gospel will commend us to love one another and others, it will commend us to love sacrificially, it really fails to tell us how we should live. John will commend us to follow Jesus as the way. But although his narrative covers a broader swath of Jesus’s life, he really doesn’t show us much about how Jesus lived or how we’re intended to follow him.
Rather, he lets Matthew and Luke do what they’re meant to do: present us with Jesus’s teachings, representing God’s unchanging and holy law, presenting them to an ever-changing world and teaching a corrupted humanity how we ought to rightly love one another and to rightly love the Lord. Again, John’s gospel and the three synoptics are all necessary. They work together hand in hand to give us a more whole picture of our Lord Jesus.
While the epistles do more to explain his work and its meaning for us, the main premise and argument that John is making about Jesus throughout this particular chapter has less to do with the content of Jesus’s teaching and more with who Jesus is and who his audience was, with why they refused to believe him. There is a structure in the text in this narrative that helps us to understand John’s thought process and argument.
Looking through the chapter, we see at verse 12, Jesus said, ‘I am the light of the world,’ where he claims divinity as the Lord. Then from verses 13 to 18, we see the Pharisees denying the validity of Jesus’s testimony. At verses 31-32, he says, ‘If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.’
Coming to verses 39 and 47, we see that Jesus demonstrated that by their unwillingness to receive the truth, the unbelieving Jewish leaders belong to the devil, the father of lies. Then coming out again, we hear Jesus say, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, if anyone keeps my word, he will never see death.’
Then the Pharisees tried again to discredit Jesus as a Samaritan in verses 52 to 54 or as having a demonic possession. And then it ends at verse 58, where Jesus said, ‘Before Abraham was, I am,’ claiming divinity as the Lord.
Moving from who Jesus is to who those who don’t believe in him are in the middle, so leading back to that center verse, the framework emphasizes how their disbelief, their rejection of the truth about Jesus as God the Son, and the truth of his word proves their captivity to Satan, as his children. Those who believe in Jesus are proven to be free by our obedience and faith as the Lord’s children of adoption.
See this argument here, though, it’s beginning to prepare us for one of the most important interpretations and understandings about the resurrection of Jesus, proving that not only is Jesus greater than, he actually is the greatest one of all. Across this narrative, Jesus’s entire defense has been asserting that his Father, that God, will vindicate him because all that he says and does comes from God, claiming that the Father who sent me bears witness about me, and that he who sent me is true.
And I declare to the world what I’ve heard from him, forewarning them that when you’ve lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am he and that I do nothing of my own authority but speak as the Father taught me. And finally, that it is my Father who glorifies me, of whom you say, ‘He is our God.’
So you see the evangelist is building a case against the charge of self-importance on Jesus’s part. He shows that Jesus was not involved in self-promotion. He was not just an ordinary demagogue filled with hot air and empty feel-good platitudes. Jesus has been laying the case that will ultimately justify and prove the truth of him and his words before all the world.
Now, there are really two critical core doctrines of the Christian faith that, if either were somehow proven false, would cause our whole religion to collapse: creation and the resurrection of Jesus. That’s why these two things are so frequently attacked by the world. As Christians, we believe and know that scripture contains truth and is true. We say that scripture is inerrant, meaning it’s free from error, falsehood, or mistake, but it’s only truly inerrant in the original written manuscripts.
We say that scripture is the word of God, meaning that it’s God’s inspired verbal plenary word, that each of the individual words themselves are specifically inspired rather than being the sense of scripture or the underlying concepts that are inspired. This understanding of inerrant inspiration is necessary because Paul tells us that all scripture is breathed out by God. So we believe that these words and their absolute truth have been given to us from God the Father by God the Holy Spirit through human writers, and they have been protected and preserved by the Holy Spirit’s power and are received and confirmed by the Holy Spirit within the heart of believers whenever we hear it.
But if any part of scripture were proven false or untrue, then the whole of it must be called into question, making it reasonable to doubt there. That’s why the world attacks these doctrines because it believes that they are our two weakest links. But they’re really some of the strongest.
The doctrine of creation is critical to the truth of our faith because if the Lord God did not create all things, then nothing in scripture can be true or have any true significance. If God did not create humanity in his image, giving us purpose and meaning to our existence, then there’s no reason for any human life to have value.
Otherwise, we’re nothing more than animals without any consequential importance except what we choose to assign ourselves relatively. Human life and existence would be utterly meaningless, making abortion and euthanasia, murder, and capital punishment to lack any kind of moral quality, whether as being good or evil, it just wouldn’t matter.
And if God did not create all things over a span of six 24-hour days, as scripture plainly records, then God is a liar, violating his own ninth commandment against bearing false witness, because he would have given fraudulent testimony to Moses, which would then cast doubt on all of scripture. So if scripture is wrong on either point, then it cannot be trusted as the truth.
That’s why the world tries to sow doubt about scripture’s narrative of creation, talking about billions of years or the fossil record and evolution, or by just claiming that it’s impossible. But when you consider the variety and diversity of life on our planet and the lack of any kind of intermediate species between any two kinds of creatures—whether they’re similar or not, like fish to amphibians, reptiles to birds, and apes to humans—the theories of evolution get disproven.
Scripture teaches that when God created, everything was created fully formed, implying an original semblance of age, at least because Adam and Eve were not given an opportunity to grow up. So an appearance or a supposed calculation of age is not irrefutable evidence because ultimately a miracle—which by definition can’t be disproven because it’s a natural, supernatural, and extraordinary event—has happened. Creating over a span of six 24-hour days is actually very reasonable because if the God of the Bible chose to create in that manner, then he could, because God can do what he wants, how he wants, when he wants, because he is the true and absolute sovereign of all.
Then there’s the scientific theory of the big bang, which does more to convince honest scientists of the biblical model of creation because science fails to answer the question that only scripture provides an answer to. What caused this original singularity to explode? What made the big bang happen? God said, ‘Let there be light.’ And there was light. So our doctrine of creation continues to stand strong and firm.
Then the doctrine of the resurrection of Jesus is critical to the truth of our faith because if Jesus did not rise from the dead, then there’s no possibility of hope in our faith. Paul argues, ‘For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile, and you are still in your sins. Then those who have also fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied.’
Whereas if Jesus did rise, then all of our hope is certain and sure. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. Because Jesus declared here, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, if anyone keeps my word, he will never see death.’ It stands to reason that if Jesus practiced what he preached, that if that’s true, Jesus should not die. At least not of natural causes, presumably.
But since Jesus was killed by the Jews at Roman hands, the test of his word’s truthfulness might have been ruined unless—except that he was raised from the dead, demonstrating that he is greater than the power of death. Thus, the resurrection of Jesus Christ proves several things. It proves the truthfulness of being obedient to his word as being the right way to live. It proves that Jesus is greater than Abraham and greater than the prophets because they died and they stayed dead, buried within the earth.
It proves that Jesus is glorified, affirmed, and testified to by God the Father. His resurrection and continued living prove that Jesus has the power of life within himself, demonstrating that Jesus is God the Lord. Meanwhile, the world is unable to disprove Jesus’s resurrection. The world cannot deny that Jesus lived and died some 2,000 years ago. His enemies and enemies of the faith affirm the historical fact of his life and death.
Although Islam will affirm the fact of Jesus’s life, it tries to deny the historicity of his death, denying a well-attested historical fact. So the world instead tries to deny who Jesus is—not that Jesus was, but that Jesus is the Son of God. But it can’t disprove the evidence of the resurrection that proves it.
Because the world can only try to ignore it. Instead, the world offers a Jesus that was simply a wise man or a good moral teacher. But since scripture says that he claimed to be God, if he was not God, then he must not have been a very wise man or a good teacher because he is a liar.
Or Islam offers us a Jesus who was a great prophet but not the prophet. Then Islam goes on to commend Jesus’s words to us and commands that we obey both the gospel and the Torah. But then Islam denies Jesus’s claim of divinity, and it denies his death and resurrection. So then Islam becomes contradictory, inconsistent, unbelievable, and so utterly false.
But for Christians, since there is no body in a tomb and there is no body on earth, there’s no evidence of Jesus dying and staying dead. Rather, Jesus must have been raised to life again—a fact that was testified to by countless witnesses, many of whom died affirming that fact. Instead, Jesus ascended to heaven. He was removed from being in this world—a fact that was also testified to by countless witnesses, many of whom died because they affirmed that fact.
So the resurrection and his ascension are miracles that cannot be disproven, and they don’t need to be proven because they are just a matter of faith for us because we trust scripture. Proof is unnecessary for our faith; only disproof could affect it. Really, the onus to disprove belongs to the opposition.
The thing to remember is that we don’t have to prove anything because the people who don’t want to believe simply won’t believe. Meanwhile, the testimony of scripture proves everything that needs proof. Ask any honest scientist, and I’m confident that they will agree with me on this. Theories are not facts. Theories are not proven, nor are they provable. They are tried and they are tested, and they’re discarded and replaced if and when they fail the test.
But although a theory may pass a thousand tests, a million tests, or countless tests, and may even become accepted as generally true, like things such as gravity or the theory of relativity, they’re never actually proven. It might be considered or accepted as true, but it’s never proven true.
So just as with any scientific theory, scripture makes many truth claims. The world must either disprove them or accept them if it’s a theory, but it can’t do the first and it doesn’t want to do the second. That’s why Jesus has been preparing his hearers, and the evangelist here has been laying the evidence to make it clear that Jesus is truly greater than—that he is the greatest—because his resurrection proves it.
Abraham died. Moses died. The prophets died. Paul and Peter died. Confucius died. Siddhartha Buddha died. Muhammad died. Joseph Smith and Brigham Young died. L. Ron Hubbard, the father of Scientology, he died. Jesus died. And Jesus rose again.
So, who do you think you should pay the most attention to? Whose word is the most credible, reliable, and worth obeying? Consider your life and the way you live it. Do you think that you should follow some dead guy or dead gal with no hope of offering you eternal life? Or do you think you really should pay attention to follow and obey the only eternally living Lord Jesus Christ? In whom do you truly believe and trust? In God, or sinful people, or in yourself? Amen.