The Light of the World

John picks the scene back up with Jesus teaching in the temple again (John 7:28, 8:20). Jewish tradition says that during Booths great lamps burned in the temple courts, bright enough to light up the city at night, to remind Israel of the pillar of fire that led them through the desert. Whether or not those lamps were still standing when He spoke, every Jew in the crowd knew the pillar. God had gone ahead of His people in fire by night so they’d never walk in the dark (Exodus 13:21-22). Now a Galilean rabbi stood up and claimed to be that light.

John 8:12 — Follow Me out of the dark

Jesus told them He’s the light of the world (John 8:12). Not a light. Not one lamp among many religious lamps. The light, and of the whole world, not only Israel.

That’s a claim only God can make. David called the Lord his light and his salvation, and so he had nobody left to fear (Psalm 27:1). God promised that the day would come when Israel wouldn’t need the sun, because the Lord Himself would be their everlasting light (Isaiah 60:19-20). And He promised to give His Servant as a light to the nations, so that His salvation would reach the ends of the earth (Isaiah 42:6, 49:6). John had already told us who that is. The life was in the Word, and that life was the light of men (John 1:4-5, 9). The God who made light on the first day is the same God who shines into a man’s heart to give him the knowledge of His glory in the face of Christ (Genesis 1:3) (2 Corinthians 4:6).

Then He made a promise. Whoever follows Him won’t walk in darkness. He’ll have the light of life (John 8:12).

Notice the verb. He didn’t say whoever admires Him or whoever agrees with Him. He said whoever follows Him. Israel didn’t get the pillar’s benefit by staring at it. They got it by moving when it moved and stopping when it stopped (Numbers 9:15-23). Christ’s sheep hear His voice and follow Him (John 10:27). A man who says he’s in the light and keeps walking in the dark is lying to himself (1 John 1:5-7).

And notice what He’s promising. Not a little more light for a man who already sees pretty well. Darkness is where every one of us started. Men love the dark, because the light exposes what they do (John 3:19-20). The god of this world blinds unbelievers so they can’t see the light of the gospel (2 Corinthians 4:4). Nobody walks out of that on his own. God has to deliver him from the domain of darkness and move him into the kingdom of His Son (Colossians 1:13). The man who follows Christ didn’t find the light by being clever. The light found him.

John 8:13-14 — He knows where He’s going

The Pharisees had an answer ready. He was testifying about Himself, they said, so His testimony didn’t count (John 8:13).

It sounds like a fair legal point. Earlier Jesus had said Himself that if He were His only witness, His testimony wouldn’t stand by itself (John 5:31). But they weren’t asking for evidence. They’d already been handed plenty of it. They had John the Baptist, the works the Father gave Him to do, the Father’s own voice, and the Scriptures they claimed to know (John 5:33-39) (Matthew 3:17). They wanted a reason to dismiss Him.

So He answered them. Even if He did testify about Himself, His testimony was true, because He knew where He’d come from and where He was going. They didn’t know either one (John 8:14).

That’s the difference between Christ and every other man who’s ever made a claim about himself. You and I don’t know where we came from in any way that lets us vouch for ourselves. We know a hospital and a family. He knew He’d come from the Father, and He knew He was going back to Him (John 13:3, 16:28). He’d existed before Abraham and before the world (John 8:58, 17:5). A witness who saw the whole thing from Heaven is the one witness who can speak for himself.

They didn’t know where He came from. They thought they did. They’d said so in the same temple (John 7:27). They knew Nazareth, and they didn’t know Heaven.

John 8:15-18 — Two witnesses

Then Jesus told them they judged by the flesh (John 8:15). They looked at the accent, the hometown and the lack of a rabbinic pedigree, and they ruled. God doesn’t look at a man the way men do. He looks at the heart (1 Samuel 16:7). Jesus had already told them to stop judging by appearances and judge rightly (John 7:24).

He said He judged no one. And yet if He did judge, His judgment was true, because He wasn’t alone. The Father who sent Him was with Him (John 8:15-16).

Both halves are true. He didn’t come that first time to condemn the world but to save it (John 3:17, 12:47). But every bit of judgment has been handed to the Son, and God has fixed a day when He’ll judge the world by Him (John 5:22, 27) (Acts 17:31). The same man the Pharisees were sizing up will one day size them up. When He judges, He never judges alone and never gets it wrong, because He and the Father are one (John 10:30).

Then He turned their own Law on them. The Law said the testimony of two witnesses stands (John 8:17) (Deuteronomy 17:6, 19:15). Fine. He testified about Himself, and the Father who sent Him testified about Him too (John 8:18).

He wasn’t padding the count. The Father had spoken from Heaven at the Jordan (Matthew 3:16-17). He’d testified through every sign Jesus did (John 5:36, 10:25). He’d testified in every page of Moses and the prophets (Luke 24:27). We take men at their word every day, and God’s word outweighs all of them (1 John 5:9). The Pharisees wanted two witnesses. They were standing in front of the two most reliable witnesses there are, and they called it hearsay.

John 8:19-20 — Where is your Father?

So they asked Him where His Father was (John 8:19). They wanted a man they could point to.

He told them they didn’t know Him or His Father. If they’d known Him, they’d have known His Father too.

There’s no back door to God that skips the Son. A man who denies the Son doesn’t have the Father either, however religious he is (1 John 2:23). Philip would later ask to be shown the Father, and Jesus would tell him that whoever has seen Him has seen the Father (John 14:7-9). These men had Moses on their lips and the Law in their hands, and they didn’t know the God who gave it. That’s possible for a religious man. It’s possible for a church man. It’s possible for a man who’s read this devotion every morning for a year.

And no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone the Son chooses to reveal Him to (Matthew 11:27). That’s not a closed door. It’s an open one, with Christ standing in it. Nobody comes to the Son unless the Father draws him, and every one the Father gives Him comes (John 6:37, 44). If you know God this morning, it’s because the Son chose to show Him to you.

John closes the scene with a location and a reason. Jesus said these things near the treasury, as He taught in the temple. And nobody seized Him, because His hour hadn’t yet come (John 8:20).

That’s the third time John has told us something like that (John 7:30, 44). The treasury was in the busy courts, a few steps from the men who wanted Him dead. He wasn’t hiding. He wasn’t lucky. His times were in His Father’s hand, and nobody could move that clock a minute (Psalm 31:15). When the hour finally came, it came because the Father had set it, and the Son walked into it willingly (John 12:23, 27, 13:1) (Acts 2:23).