NOTES for Joh 8:31-59

Jesus speaks about slavery to sin and liberation from it. The phrase "...everyone who commits sin is a slave of sin" completely sweeps away arguments like the claim of a person who smokes or drinks that he can quit smoking or drinking at any moment. Yes, one can stop sinning, but after committing a sin, a person becomes its slave, and being freed is no simple matter. Only the Son can make us free and help us stop. Abiding in His word and knowing the truth, we become His disciples.

It is striking how Jesus emphasizes His role in this liberation. If a master releases a slave (and an evil master will never do this of his own will), the slave ends up on the street, perhaps without means of support or a roof over his head, and anyone can enslave him again in his weakness (see Matt 12:43-45).

In order to receive true liberation, we need the One who will redeem us from the evil master and bring us into His Father's house. Redeemed by His blood, we become sons instead of slaves, but for this our consent and our striving toward the Son are necessary. And then Jesus will share His dwellings with us (see John 14:2).

All Jews consider themselves "children of Abraham," and every believing Jew is ready to declare loyalty to Moses. So it was in Gospel times, and before that, before Christ came into the world, and today nothing has changed in this respect in Jewish self-understanding. But Jesus seems to call into question things that are obvious to every Jew. He speaks of slavery, and they answer Him that the children of Abraham have never been slaves to anyone.

The point here is not only that Israel really never knew slavery in its classical, Greco-Roman or Egyptian, form, but that everyone who is faithful to the God of Abraham and the Torah of Moses is free by definition. "We are God's children; we are not children of fornication," the people listening to Jesus tell Him. And the point is not that immorality was in principle unknown to Israel (unfortunately, that is far from true), but that everyone who belongs to the people of God is a spiritual child of the God to whom he belongs from birth.

But Jesus is speaking about something else. He has in mind not the external, religious side of the matter, but its spiritual essence. You have no slavery, you are not slaves; but if you are slaves of sin, what freedom can one speak of? You say about yourselves that you are children of Abraham. But Abraham knew how to listen to God and hear Him; he did not place customs and traditions dear to the heart above the word of God, above revelation. And you? You say that your Father is God, Jesus says to His listeners, but He is My Father too; so why do you accept neither Me nor what I say? After all, you have had many chances to be convinced that I came from God. So what then?

The people listening to Jesus have nothing to answer to these questions. And they continue to accuse and doubt. This is what people often do when they have no answer on the substance.

If we separate what the Lord says in today's passage from the discussion with the Jews who do not want to accept His words, we will see an astonishing revelation of what salvation is. The Lord calls us to know the truth, saying that it will make us free. Repeating the same thing in another form, He says that if the Son of God sets us free, then we will be truly free. And we need liberation, because everyone who commits sin is a slave of sin.

Only a person thinks that he freely chooses to sin; in reality this is genuine slavery, from which only the Son of God can deliver us. It is absolutely necessary to acknowledge this fact, but it is very hard and unpleasant. That is why the Jews argue with Jesus.

How often unbelievers say that Christianity is nothing but problems. And sometimes we believers feel somewhat hurt: wherever we turn, everything seems forbidden... The problem is that in the supposedly convenient system of this world, one very quickly discovers that everything may appear to be permitted, yet nothing is truly within reach. Jesus says it simply: “Everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin.” It seems that we may allow ourselves anything, but enslaved to sin, we find within ourselves the strength for almost nothing. Our life moves by inertia... Jesus promises to free us from that inertia. What He gives is genuine freedom: the freedom to be ourselves, to make our choices not automatically but truly. He paid for this freedom of ours with His Blood. It is worth asking ourselves: do we value His sacrifice, or do we fail to notice it?

Jesus' conversation with the Pharisees listening to Him at first glance appears to be a simple misunderstanding, a dispute over words that each person understands in his own way. Meanwhile Jesus Himself does not appear especially eager to resolve this misunderstanding. On the contrary, He speaks in such a way that new questions are added to old ones, and fresh perplexities are layered onto the earlier ones. At first glance it can appear that Jesus is trying to confuse His interlocutors as much as possible, but in reality He is trying to help them see both themselves and the life they are living in a way completely different from what they are used to seeing, for they are used to seeing themselves and their life from the viewpoint of the religious tradition of which they were bearers.

For a believer, religiosity can in a certain sense be considered a natural state, and therefore it is not surprising that such a person perceives everything around him through the prism of his religion. The Pharisees were no exception; on the contrary, Pharisaism as a special movement within Judaism can in a certain sense be called the quintessence of religiosity as such. And the Pharisees' view of the world, of their life, and of their history was naturally religious. Jesus, however, is trying to lead them beyond the limits of this religiosity. He says to them, for example: you think you are free? What about sin? Or do you not count slavery to sin as slavery? Are you descendants of Abraham? But to be Abraham's descendant means to continue the work he began, not to declare loyalty to a tradition. And what are you doing? You want to kill Me because I testify to you about what has been revealed to Me by God? And you consider this a deed worthy of Abraham?

Jesus is constantly trying to lead the people listening to Him beyond the limits of their own religiosity. He wants them to understand what spiritual life is in all its purity and fullness, unrestricted by any human framework, including religious frameworks. He says to the people listening to Him: Tradition is not religion. Tradition is life with God and in God. Everyone who lives such a life continues the Tradition. Abraham is not the founder of a new religion; he began the Tradition of communion with God and life with God, and only in this way can his work be continued. True Tradition, Tradition with a capital T, is precisely the Tradition of life with God. And the fullness and completion of this Tradition is life in that very Kingdom which He, Jesus, brought into the world.

This is the life the Savior is trying to tell the Pharisees listening to Him about, plunging them into complete bewilderment that gradually grows into irritation, and then into hatred. This is what brings Christ's earthly path to the outcome that follows naturally in such a situation.

Jews have always considered themselves children, descendants, of Abraham, and this is an undoubted historical fact. This fact was enough for every Jew in every age to consider himself belonging to the people of God. But then the Messiah comes and poses the question differently.

It turns out that it is not enough to be a descendant of Abraham by blood; one must also be his successor in spirit. And that is more difficult. Indeed, what did Abraham do? He followed God, who called him. But what did this mean for him? Abraham knew nothing about the God who called him; for him the God of Israel was still an unknown God. Abraham came to know Him already on the road to Palestine and later in Palestine itself. At the beginning, he simply had to entrust himself to the One he did not know. To believe at the first encounter. Abraham, of course, heard God's voice, but in those days hearing the voice of some god or spirit was not so rare.

There were many gods and spirits, and many voices as well; whom to trust was for each person to decide. The voice that called Abraham after itself was the voice of the Unknown. This voice promised much, but could it be trusted? Abraham believed. His heart told him that the Unknown One was not deceiving him. And in this he is the complete opposite of those deeply religious but very distrustful Pharisees who constantly demanded proofs of Jesus' messiahship, and proofs that matched their own ideas about the Messiah.

If Abraham had been like that, there would have been no Jewish people, simply because such an Abraham would never have believed the unknown God. And of course, with the openness that characterized Abraham, he would never have begun to persecute, much less try to kill, a person attempting to tell him something new about his God. This is what distinguishes Abraham from those who turned out to be his descendants by blood but not by spirit. Abraham had every possibility of entering the Kingdom. His descendants, however, had serious problems with this. Not all of them, of course, but many. Especially those who considered themselves completely ready both to meet the Messiah and for the Kingdom.

Addressing the Pharisees who are listening to Him, Jesus keeps trying to bring them back to the very foundations of what is called spiritual life. He tells them: you see what I am doing, and still you dishonor Me - that means you are not from God.

At first glance, the argument may seem somewhat strange: Jesus Himself understands perfectly well that His listeners doubt Him and do not trust Him. To declare to them, when they have this attitude toward Him, that He is from God and they, if they do not accept Him, are therefore not from God, may seem somewhat naive at first glance. Making oneself the criterion when people do not believe you appears completely absurd. But Jesus is not speaking about Himself in isolation; He is speaking about His works - the very works about which even many Pharisees could say nothing except that they were from God. Simple logic should then have forced them to acknowledge that the One who performs these works is also from God. But nothing of the sort happens.

What prevents those listening to Jesus from acknowledging what is obvious? And what does He mean when He tells them that "their father is the devil"? Of course, when false witness is involved, that is, a direct violation of the ninth commandment, and a violation of which the offenders have no intention of repenting, one can already speak of direct submission to the devil as the spirit of lies.

But why does this happen? After all, these are deeply and sincerely religious people, for whom a conscious violation of the commandment means betrayal of their own religion. True; but, as can be seen, all this is valid only as long as religion itself is not at stake. If someone appears who encroaches on religion as such, that person is considered an enemy by definition, and the commandments no longer apply to Him: in their eyes He has placed Himself outside the religious law that they follow. There is nothing to discuss with such a person. "He is a Samaritan" (it would be hard to imagine a worse insult in the Pharisees' religious language), "He has a demon," and it does not matter that He works miracles: miracles are no proof if the One who performs them does not conform to religious norms.

And Jesus again and again tries to bring His listeners back to a normal, not religious but spiritual, vision of the situation: look not at your religion, He tells them, but at the One who does God's works; look without prejudice, with unblinded eyes, or else you will fall into the snares of the father of lies and lose everything, despite all your religiosity.

The conversation between Christ and the Jews that we read today in the Gospel of John takes place under enormous tension, which is very noticeable in the Gospel text. The Lord speaks a terrible truth, which the Jews find absolutely impossible to hear, and they have nothing to set against it. "Which of you convicts Me of sin?" (in the Synodal text, "of falsehood"), the Lord exclaims. The authors of the Synodal translation did not even find it possible to use such a word in relation to Christ, although in the Greek original that is exactly the word used. But if it is impossible to convict the Lord Jesus of sin, then it obviously follows that He speaks the truth, and the Jews do not want to accept it because they themselves remain in sin.

They have nothing to set against Christ's words, so the Jews "make it personal." "You are a Samaritan and have a demon," they say. In our present reality, an argument of this kind would sound like, "You are crazy, a Jew, and a Chechen," because the Jews treated Samaritans as we, to our shame, treat certain peoples. Incidentally, the Jews here are very unoriginal: we all, when argument becomes impossible, begin insulting the one with whom we are arguing.

What is striking here is how different the things said by the opposing sides are. Christ's words exist in some other dimension; He does not lower Himself to skirmishing on a human level. And therefore what matters to us is the content of what He says, regardless of the turns of the polemic. First of all, He says that He honors the Heavenly Father, and here the issue is that worship of God which all sinful humanity rejects. In these words lies the pledge of the coming creation of the Church, which will become the Body of Christ and in which, by taking part, we take part in this honoring of the Father by Christ. And, of course, the words that whoever keeps His word will never see death are of exceptional importance for us. This is our only hope of sharing with Christ His victory over death.

What made the people listening to Jesus pick up stones? Obviously, His words about Abraham and about Himself. "I Am" (or, in modern Russian, "I am the One Who Is") meant a reference to Himself as the One who bears within Himself the fullness of God. Such a thing was not forgiven: in the eyes of any religious person, it was outright blasphemy. One could be a prophet or even the Messiah, but one could not be God. Whoever declares such a thing is either mad or a pagan, for pagans believed in the "divinity" of certain people, meaning their supernatural qualities or their connection with the world of the gods. This Man does not look mad, so, as can be seen, He must be an apostate who has imagined Himself to be some supernatural being in the pagan sense of the word. In any case, apostasy and blasphemy were evident, and they were punished by death.

It would seem that one might expect something like this from the Messiah; for example, Isaiah of Jerusalem did call the Messiah "father of eternity." But in the Judaism of Gospel times, these words were understood in the context of ideas about the Messiah whom God had conceived from the beginning of time. Naturally, no one considered the Messiah to be God.

And Jesus, as can be seen, wants to bring precisely this truth to His listeners, a truth inseparable from His earthly ministry. Indeed, He came into the world in order to bring the Kingdom into it, and in all its fullness. The Kingdom that from the very beginning He carried entirely within Himself, since, according to His own words, it is "not of this world" - nowhere in the world, except in Him Himself after His birth into the world, could the Kingdom exist. And the fullness of the Kingdom of God and the fullness of God are, in essence, one and the same: the One who contains within Himself the fullness of the Kingdom also contains the fullness of God.

This, apparently, is what Jesus wants to explain to the people listening to Him. And He does this not in order to exalt Himself somehow, but in order to make them understand what the Kingdom is, what it is really like. But to understand this, one must go beyond the frames of one's own religiosity. And they do not want to do this, or cannot do it - and they pick up stones.

Throughout the whole eighth chapter of the Gospel of John, the Jews, or more precisely, the scribes, that is, the intellectuals, ask Jesus who He is. And yet His answer, repeated more than once in different forms, "the One who exists from the beginning," "the Light of the world," "I came forth from God and have come," is as though they do not hear it. Or do not want to hear it. In the end, the Truth revealed to them proves unacceptable to them, beyond the capacity of simple human reason. After all, everyday logic truly cannot grasp that the Jesus of Nazareth standing before them is the Christ, the Savior of human beings, God going to death out of love for His creature.

Meanwhile Jesus does more than affirm His divine nature. All the time He is trying to make His listeners think about the choice His coming to earth places before them: between light and darkness, between slavery to sin and freedom in God, and finally between life and death. And when the conversation reaches this last boundary, their inability to receive the Message, and the necessity of faith that comes from the heart rather than the intellect, produces only aggression in His listeners, and they rush at Christ with stones. One should not think that such a reaction to divine revelation belonged only to the intellectuals of the first century AD.

Those listening to Jesus stubbornly cannot understand Him. He speaks to them both in parable-images and directly. But the parables still have to be explained later, and the truth spoken "straight on" provokes such a reaction that, if not for His miraculous disappearance, Christ would have been killed long before His hour came.

Today we read that the absolute truth that Jesus saw Abraham and, in general, was before Abraham, irritates the Jews beyond measure. It does not fit into their heads (see John 8:37) that any person could be greater than their father Abraham. That Jesus can be not simply a man but God is very difficult to understand and accept.

Because in that case Jesus must be listened to and His words must be kept. Not every heart is ready to take this difficult step of trust. As the apostle Paul will later say, "we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles" (1 Cor. 1:23).

The promise Jesus gives is very serious and vitally important for us. We very much want it to be fulfilled. But it appears that we need to clarify a couple of questions for ourselves.

First, what does it mean to keep Christ's word? Is this about fulfilling the commandments He gave in the Sermon on the Mount? Or does He mean that we simply need to accept on faith everything He says here in this chapter of the Gospel of John? But the first is impossible by human strength, and the second, well, do we not believe it already? It is unclear.

And second, what does it mean that one will never see death? Never see someone else's death? Or one's own death? Or not simply death, but "death forever"? Perhaps sorting out these questions is a worthy task for today.

The promise which Jesus gives is very serious and vital for us. We really want that to come true. But it seems that we would have to clear up for ourselves a couple of questions. Firstly, what means - to keep the saying of the Christ? Is it about the accomplishment of commands given by Him in the Sermon on the Mount? Or He means simply that we have to accept by faith all what He says here in this chapter of the Gospel according to John? But the first one is impossible with the human strengths, and the second - but, don't we believe in that? It is incomprehensible. And secondly, what means - shall never see death? Shall never see someone else death? Or one's own death? Or not just death, but "never see death"? To analyze these questions is perhaps a worthy task for today.

Readers of these lines usually think that He said something that the Pharisees had to perceive as obvious blasphemy: after all, He speaks of Himself as God, even using, as it may seem, corresponding expressions applied only to God. Yet in fact everything is not so simple and unambiguous.

In this case Jesus is bearing witness about Himself first of all as the Messiah, if not directly, then by hints. The prophets spoke of the Messiah as the One who exists from the beginning of the world. In Judaism of the Second Temple period, the common view was that the Messiah had been conceived by God before the creation of the world. In this sense people even spoke of the divinity of the Messiah, though of course not in the sense of His being the God-man. But the Savior's words could also be understood in more than one sense. Even "I AM" (more precisely, the Greek and Hebrew expressions corresponding to this "I AM") can be interpreted not only as a declaration of divinity, but also as a proclamation of theophany, in particular, of messianic theophany. There was nothing in the Savior's words that, on mature reflection, should have required stoning.

It is another matter if one very much wants to find a reason to grab stones. Then, of course, all ambiguities are interpreted against the accused. And the Pharisees listening to Jesus evidently understand His words in just this way. Not because there is too much in them that is openly provocative. What was provocative was something else: the entire meaning of the Savior's speech as the evangelist gives it. For the whole speech bore witness that the Pharisees listening to Jesus were not at all the bearers of authentic Tradition and guardians of orthodoxy that they were in their own eyes. More than that: it turned out that, with all their religiosity, they essentially had very little relation to authentic Tradition, if they had any at all. And to a religious person, such a position seems by definition to be a challenge to God.

Such a person truly does not see the difference between authentic Tradition and the tradition of his own religion. With desire, of course, one can see it, though it is not always simple. But in a religious person this desire is often outweighed by fear for his own religious identity, which he will inevitably have to give up if he looks at himself and at the world as Jesus calls him to look. It is this fear that makes the Pharisees grab stones. And it lays out the Savior's road to the cross.