This chapter ends with a stark sentence, simple enough to be an example in my colleague Owen Ewald’s open-access Greek textbook: “So they took up stones, in order to cast them at him.” (John 8:59) The stone-throwers are the same as at the beginning of the chapter, but instead of aiming at a woman, they aim at Jesus. The end of Chapter 8 tells us how things unfold and unravel.
This escalation takes place in the treasury of the temple, (8:20) an expansive plaza on the temple’s east side. The events that end with the ugly threats start with a beautiful image, also drawn from the Feast of Tabernacles: Jesus says, “I am the light of the world.” (8:12).
This seems to answer the charge that the Messiah can’t come from Galilee. Isaiah 9:1-2 specifically says “in the future he will honor Galilee of the nations, by the Way of the Sea, beyond the Jordan. The people walking in darkness have seen a great light!” Now we read this passage every Christmastime because it fits so well. The leaders had this passage, too, but could not hear it.
As John says in his Prologue, “the true Light which gives light to all … was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him.” (1:9b-10) I should have seen this coming from these words. I don’t want this passage to have happened. I want the Light to be focused on the colors I like, the happy parts, the comfortable parts of life. True light, however, is a full spectrum, millions of lumens bright. It reveals all truth, even the parts I don’t want to see.
The Judean leaders knew a lot about the light of Wisdom. They knew a lot of true things from Isaiah, other prophets, God’s own words. But their intense focus on one aspect of God and their refusal to listen, like an intense focus on a single color, led them to a very dark place.
This reminds me of a chemistry demo called the “black flame.” You light a beaker of ethanol with dissolved table salt, and the sodium in the salt emits bright yellow light. (This is the same color you see if you sprinkle table salt onto a lit gas flame.) This flame will appear yellow in sunlight, fluorescent light, and in darkness.
But there’s one condition where the flame becomes black. If you use a yellow sodium-emission light (like those in old streetlamps), it only puts out a few focused wavelengths, all of which are yellow. In this yellow sodium light, the yellow sodium flame absorbs all the light with none left over. It becomes a shadow, shown in the image with this entry.
This is how light becomes darkness, and how your eye becomes full of darkness, and how great is that darkness! A too-tight focus on a sliver of the true spectrum will distort your vision and turn light itself into darkness.
So this is why Jesus calls the Judean leaders some of the harshest terms he uses in all Scripture. They ask him questions that show they have such a narrow focus that they are not listening, can not even listen, to his answers.
Jesus talks about what the Father wants, and they ask “Where is your Father?” (8:19) He says they can’t go where he’s going, and instead of following him, they ask if this is code for self-destruction (8:22; note that when modern scholars ask this same question, they are thinking nothing new). They ask over and over again “Who are you?” but, like Pilate, refuse to hear the response.
Jesus stays engaged, and asks them his own questions. “Why do you not understand my speech? Because you are unable to hear my word. You come from a father who is the Slanderer; and you wish to do your father’s wishes. That one was a murderer from the beginning.” (8:43-44a)
“The Slanderer” can be translated as “The Accuser,” “The Adversary,” or as “Satan.” This understandably upsets them — although they can’t deny that Jesus is right, they have contemplated murder. They had just literally tried to stone a woman!
John writes this knowing Jesus taught that everyone who hates their neighbor, even just calling someone a name, is in danger of the fires of hell. (Matthew 5:22) These leaders are well beyond that point, and don’t recognize or accept it. They are lying to themselves about their own anger and capacity for violence.
The ease with which people joke about assassinations online or call their opponents dehumanizing names reveals this same roiling violence just underneath the surface of civilized smiles. The light reveals this violence. If it is not of the Father of lights, it is of the Father of lies. If you see me doing it, when I do it, as I know I do in my heart, do me a favor and call me out.
The first murder was in Genesis 4, when Cain hated his brother the same way Jesus warns against. The Accuser was there, Jesus says, and is still there in the hating hearts arrayed against him. And of course their first thought is that turnabout is fair play. I was accused, therefore I will accuse — and the Accuser laughs. “No, I don’t have a demon! YOU have a demon!”
Jesus responds calmly to the accusations of demon-possession, saying this is dishonoring (8:49). Then he returns to his own focus, his message of overwhelming life: “if anyone keeps my word, he shall most certainly not see death.” (8:51).
This doesn’t help because they know that all the patriarchs died, up to and including Abraham. Jesus replies: “Your father Abraham was eager to see my day, and he saw and rejoiced.” (8:56)
Abraham was a prophet who trusted God when he and Sarah were promised a son in old age. As Paul writes, Abraham “did not waver at the promise of God through unbelief, but was strengthened in faith, giving glory to God,and being fully convinced that what He had promised He was also able to perform.” (Romans 4:20-21 NKJV) God’s promise was the same as Jesus’s, which was to give new life.
When Abraham rejoiced with Isaac’s birth, he saw that if God was able to give new life to an old couple in a few years, then how much more could that God give to the world, through that child? In the light of his baby’s eyes, Abraham saw reflected a nation, a line of kings, culminating in a figure that would represent and sum up that nation, to give life to the whole world. He believed this, and God saw that this was right.
Think of the gifts God has given you, wrapped in the years He has given you. The light of faith lets you see that the God who has given good gifts knows how to give good gifts. Even when this “knows how” is shrouded in pain and darkness, there is still light, because the light of the world has promised, “I am with you always.”
And, sadly, it is this claim that casts the darkness into its sharpest relief, sending hearts into rage. “Before Abraham came to be, I AM.” (8:58)
Jesus isn’t just saying he predates Abraham – Wisdom personified said that much in Proverbs 8 already. He doesn’t get in trouble for saying “I WAS.” He provokes the leaders by saying he was, is, and will be. His kingdom extends through time as earthly kingdoms extend through space, without borders, to past, present, and future, as far as the eye can see. In fact, he IS the light by which the eye can see this.
Since the leaders cannot imagine accepting this, they have to destroy it. And many stones are at hand. (The Kingdom is also at hand, but they choose the stones.) John describes this in Greek simple enough for a textbook, simple words that hold depths of sin.
But love is deeper still. Something happened, we don’t know what. “Jesus was hidden and departed from the Temple.” (8:59) Ezekiel describes how the glory of God had left the Temple hundreds of years before, and no one knew. Then the glory of God returned to his Temple, and they took up stones against him, and that glory departed that place again, and again few knew.
That glory continued outside its walls, and continues today. We still see his glory, full of grace and truth. With John, with Paul, with Abraham, we look to him lifted up, above the world and above time itself, yet closer than a brother. Even the light with which we see him is him.
GREEK TEXTBOOK: Owen’s open-access Greek textbook is available for free at https://digitalcommons.spu.edu/open_books/2/
IMAGE CREDIT: C&E News https://cen.acs.org/education/k-12-education/Chemistry-Pictures-Black-flames/101/web/2023/11
