Whose Children

The men Jesus had just told about slaves and sons didn’t take it well. He’d said only the Son sets a man free (John 8:36). Now He tells them why they aren’t free, and He doesn’t soften a word of it.

John 8:37-38 — Two fathers

Jesus granted them the obvious. They were Abraham’s descendants. And yet they were looking for a way to kill Him, because His word had no room in them (John 8:37).

That’s the diagnosis. Not a lack of information. Not a bad day. His word couldn’t find a place to land. A man can sit under the preaching of Christ for years and never give it a room in his heart. The seed falls on the path and the birds take it (Matthew 13:4, 19).

Then Jesus set two fathers side by side. He spoke what He’d seen with His Father. They did what they’d heard from their father (John 8:38).

Notice He never puts Himself and them under the same father. He doesn’t share a roof with them. He’s the Son who was with the Father before the world began and has made Him known (John 1:18, 17:5). They were acting on orders from somebody else. Jesus doesn’t name him yet. He lets them walk toward it.

John 8:39-41 — Abraham’s children?

They answered fast. Abraham was their father (John 8:39).

Jesus told them that if they were really Abraham’s children, they’d do what Abraham did. But they were trying to kill a Man who’d told them the truth He heard from God, and Abraham never did that (John 8:39-40).

So what did Abraham do? He believed God, and God counted it to him as righteousness (Genesis 15:6). He left his country when God called, not knowing where he was going (Genesis 12:1-4) (Hebrews 11:8). And when the Lord came to his tent by the oaks of Mamre, Abraham ran to meet Him and set out the best he had (Genesis 18:1-8). Abraham welcomed the word of God and the visit of God. These men had the Word of God standing in their temple, and they were looking for stones.

That’s how you tell a man’s family. Not by his blood. By his likeness. The real children of Abraham are the ones who walk in the steps of his faith, whatever their bloodline (Romans 4:11-12) (Galatians 3:7, 29). A man can have Abraham’s DNA and the devil’s heart.

Then Jesus said it again. They were doing their father’s works (John 8:41).

They knew He didn’t mean Abraham anymore. So they reached higher. They weren’t born of sexual immorality, they said. They had one Father, God (John 8:41). Many readers hear a jab at the talk around Jesus’ own birth in that line. John doesn’t explain it, and we don’t need to. The point is the claim. Israel had been called God’s son, and the prophets had spoken of God as their Father (Exodus 4:22) (Isaiah 63:16) (Malachi 2:10). These men took that covenant title and hung it on themselves while they plotted murder.

But even in the Old Testament, God asked where His honor was if He was a Father (Malachi 1:6). A son who hates his father’s Son isn’t a son.

John 8:42-43 — If God were your Father

Jesus answered with a test anybody can apply. If God were their Father, they’d love Him, because He came from God. He didn’t come on His own. The Father sent Him (John 8:42).

That’s the family resemblance God looks for. Everyone who’s been born of God loves the One God sent, and loves the rest of God’s children too (1 John 5:1). A man can’t claim to love the Father while he despises the Son. Whoever doesn’t honor the Son doesn’t honor the Father who sent Him (John 5:23). There’s no getting to God around Christ.

Then He asked them why they didn’t understand what He was saying. And He answered His own question. It was because they couldn’t bear to hear His word (John 8:43).

Read that slowly. It wasn’t that His words were too hard. Jesus spoke plainly. It’s that they couldn’t stand to listen. Their problem was in their ears, and their ears were tied to their hearts. The mind set on the flesh is hostile to God, and it doesn’t submit to His law, and it can’t (Romans 8:7-8). A leopard doesn’t change his spots by trying harder (Jeremiah 13:23).

That’s what the old divines meant by the bondage of the will. A man does what he wants. But left to himself, he never wants God. He’s free to choose what he loves, and what he loves is the dark (John 3:19-20).

John 8:44-45 — The father of lies

Now Jesus named their father. It was the devil, and they wanted to carry out what he wanted (John 8:44).

He told them what their father is like. He was a murderer from the beginning. He didn’t stand in the truth, because there’s no truth in him. When he lies, he’s speaking his native language, because he’s a liar and the father of lies (John 8:44).

Go back to the beginning and you’ll see both. In the garden he told the woman she wouldn’t die, and with that lie he brought death on the whole race (Genesis 3:4, 13) (Romans 5:12). And the first murder in the Bible came from the same family. John tells us Cain was of the evil one, and he killed his brother because his brother’s works were righteous (1 John 3:8, 12) (Genesis 4:8). That’s exactly the pattern in front of Jesus. Lies about God, and then blood.

So the family likeness was plain. They didn’t want the truth, and they wanted the One telling it dead. Jesus said it outright. Because He told them the truth, they didn’t believe Him (John 8:45). Not in spite of the truth. Because of it. A liar’s children don’t trust a man who won’t lie to them.

This isn’t just a word for one crowd in Jerusalem. It’s the natural state of every son of Adam. Paul says we all once walked the way the world walks, following the prince of the power of the air, and we were by nature children of wrath like everybody else (Ephesians 2:2-3). The god of this age blinds unbelieving minds so they won’t see the glory of Christ (2 Corinthians 4:4). Nobody’s born neutral.

But here’s the hope, and it’s all God’s. He can grant repentance and bring men to their senses, so they escape the devil’s snare after he’d taken them captive to do his will (2 Timothy 2:25-26). He rescues men from the domain of darkness and brings them into the kingdom of His beloved Son (Colossians 1:13). Saul of Tarsus was breathing murder against Christ’s people, and God made him an apostle (Acts 9:1-6) (1 Timothy 1:13-16). A child of the devil can become a child of God, and when it happens, it’s God who did it.

John 8:46-47 — Who can convict Him?

Then Jesus asked a question no other man in history could ask with a straight face. Which of them could convict Him of sin? And if He was telling the truth, why didn’t they believe Him (John 8:46)?

Nobody answered. They’d been hunting for a charge against Him ever since He healed a man on the Sabbath and called God His own Father, and they had nothing (John 5:16, 18). He was tempted in every way like us, and without sin (Hebrews 4:15). He did no sin, and no deceit was ever found in His mouth (1 Peter 2:22). There’s no sin in Him (1 John 3:5). That’s not a pastor’s boast. That’s the only Man God could accept in our place.

So the problem wasn’t Him. Then He told them what it was. Whoever is of God hears the words of God. They didn’t hear them because they weren’t of God (John 8:47).

Look at the order. He doesn’t say they weren’t of God because they didn’t hear. He says they didn’t hear because they weren’t of God. Belonging comes first, and hearing follows. He’d say the same thing later at the Feast of Dedication. They didn’t believe because they weren’t His sheep, and His sheep hear His voice (John 10:26-27). Everyone who’s of the truth listens to Him (John 18:37) (1 John 4:6).

That’s hard to swallow if you think a man’s salvation starts with his own choosing. But it’s the only reason anyone ever hears. The Father gave a people to the Son, and the Son calls them by name, and they come (John 6:37, 10:3). When a man finally hears Christ’s word and it finds a room in him, he didn’t make himself that kind of man. God did. He was born from above, not of blood or the will of man, but of God (John 1:13).

The conversation isn’t over, and it’s about to get worse. We’ll walk through that next.