EU•AN•GE•LION (YOO-AN-GEL-EE-ON) · εὐαγγέλιον — Good News
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EU•AN•GE•LION (YOO-AN-GEL-EE-ON) · εὐαγγέλιον — Good News
Prophets point away from themselves. Jesus said I am, and a crowd picked up stones. Day 3 sets the titles the Old Testament keeps for God beside the titles the first Jewish Christians gave to Jesus, and hears what Islam, Judaism and the Witnesses say about him in their own words.
John 8:56-59; Exodus 3:13-14; Isaiah 44:6; Philippians 2:9-11
Opening
Your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see My day. He saw it and was glad.” Then the Jews said to Him, “You are not yet fifty years old, and You have seen Abraham?” “Truly, truly, I tell you,” Jesus declared, “before Abraham was born, I am!” At this, they picked up stones to throw at Him. But Jesus was hidden and went out of the temple area.
John 8:56-59 (BSB)
Jesus is arguing with a crowd in the temple. Their reply to his last sentence tells us how they heard it.
Jesus is in the temple, and the argument has been getting hotter. He tells the crowd that Abraham rejoiced to see his day. They answer that he is not yet fifty and has seen Abraham.
Then he says: before Abraham was born, I am. He does not say I was. He says I am.
The crowd understands at once. They pick up stones. In the law of Moses the penalty for blasphemy was stoning, and the crowd treats his sentence as blasphemy. If he had meant only that God knew him before Abraham, no one would have reached for a rock.
John then says Jesus was hidden and went out of the temple area. He is not caught. The scene ends with the crowd holding their stones and the man gone.
The question for this day is plain and old. Was Jesus a prophet pointing to God, or was he something else? A prophet says thus says the Lord. Jesus says I tell you, and he says I am. We will look at what that means and at what other faiths say about him.
REFLECT
Do this today: read John 8:58 aloud twice. Then write one sentence for yourself: what did the crowd hear that made them reach for stones?
A Two-Minute Prayer
Lord Jesus, I want to know who you are, and not only what people say about you. Show me. Give me the honesty to ask and the courage to follow the answer. Amen.
IN YOUR OWN WORDS
Then Moses asked God, “Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is His name?’ What should I tell them?” God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I AM has sent me to you.’”
Exodus 3:13-14 (BSB)
Moses asks God for his name. This is the answer Jesus’ hearers had learned from childhood.
Start with what a prophet does when people bow to him. In Acts 14 Paul and Barnabas heal a man in the city of Lystra. The crowd decides they are gods and prepares to offer them sacrifices. The two apostles tear their clothes and rush into the crowd. We are only men, human like you, they shout, and they tell the people to turn to the living God.
In Revelation, the apostle John falls at the feet of an angel to worship him. The angel stops him. Do not do that, he says. I am a fellow servant with you. Worship God.
The Old Testament and the New agree. A messenger of God directs worship to God. He does not take it for himself.
Now look at what happens around Jesus. After he walks on the water, the disciples in the boat worship him, and Matthew says so. After the resurrection, Thomas sees the wounds and says, My Lord and my God. Jesus does not say, Do not do that. He says Thomas believes because he has seen, and he blesses the ones who believe without seeing.
Either the Gospel writers are describing a man who took worship that belongs to God alone, or they are describing God. Those are the two readings. A good moral teacher, who stopped a student from kneeling, would have done what Paul and the angel did. Jesus did not.
The difference is not in his gentleness. He was gentle. The difference is in what he let people say to him.
A messenger of God directs worship to God.
When Moses asked God his name at the burning bush, God answered: I AM WHO I AM. Tell the Israelites that I AM has sent you. That is the name behind the Hebrew name of God that English Bibles print as the LORD.
Isaiah takes it further. God says through the prophet: that you may know and believe me, and understand that I am he. Before me there was no God formed, neither shall there be after me. In the Greek Old Testament the phrase that I am he uses the words ego eimi.
Now go back to John 8. Earlier in the same chapter Jesus says that if you do not believe that I am, you will die in your sins. He says that when you lift up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am. In both lines the Greek is just ego eimi, with no he or anything after it. In English Bibles a word has to be added to make the sentence finish. Jesus does not finish it.
Then comes verse 58. Before Abraham was born, I am. The contrast is between a thing that came to be and a thing that simply is. Abraham was born. Jesus is.
The case is not airtight, and it should not be pushed further than it goes. Ego eimi is ordinary Greek, and the blind man in John 9 uses it to say it is me. The Greek of Exodus 3:14 is slightly different, ego eimi ho on. John 8:58 is not a word for word quotation of Exodus. The argument rests on the whole scene: the way he speaks, what he claims about Abraham, and what the crowd does next. Taken together they heard a claim to the name of God. That is what the stones say.
Was Jesus a prophet who pointed to God, or the God who spoke?
Prophets refuse worship. Angels refuse worship.
Jesus accepts it.
Truly, truly, I tell you, before Abraham was born, I am!
They picked up stones to throw at him.
At a burning bush, God had given Moses his name. I am.
Isaiah has God say, I am the first and I am the last. In Revelation, Jesus says it.
Prophet, or God. Day three sets out what the texts say.
Thus saith the Lord the King of Israel, and his redeemer the Lord of hosts; I am the first, and I am the last; and beside me there is no God.
Isaiah 44:6 (KJV)
God speaks in his own voice. The same words come back in the last book of the Bible.
This is the center of the week. If you remember only one page of this series, remember this one.
In the Old Testament, God claims certain things for himself alone. He says: I am the first, and I am the last, and beside me there is no God. He says: unto me every knee shall bow. He says that he will not give his glory to another. He says that whoever calls on his name will be delivered.
In the New Testament, the writers give these same things to Jesus.
First and last. In Revelation 1, the risen Jesus puts his hand on John and says: Do not be afraid. I am the First and the Last. In chapter 22 he says: I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End. The words are the words of Isaiah 44:6.
Every knee. Paul writes that God gave Jesus the name above all names, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. The words about every knee bowing come from Isaiah 45, where God says they are for him.
Calling on the name. Joel says that whoever calls on the name of the LORD will be delivered. Paul quotes it in Romans 10 and applies it to Jesus: everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.
His glory. John says that Isaiah saw Jesus' glory and spoke about him. The vision John is thinking of is Isaiah 6, where Isaiah sees the LORD on his throne.
Pierced. In Zechariah 12 God says they will look on me, the one they have pierced. John applies it to Jesus on the cross.
Forgiving sins. When Jesus told a paralyzed man that his sins were forgiven, the scribes thought: who can forgive sins but God alone? They were right about the principle. Jesus then healed the man to show he had the authority.
The Son of Man. At his trial the high priest asked him, Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed One? He said: I am, and you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of Power and coming with the clouds of heaven. The high priest tore his clothes. Jesus had put himself on the throne next to God.
One more. Paul takes the Shema and divides it. For us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came. The oldest creed of Israel now has the Son in it, and Paul sees no conflict.
Here is the point. The people who wrote these words were Jews. They believed in one God more strongly than almost anyone. They did not say Jesus was a second god. They put him inside the identity of the one God, and they did it in the first years of the church.
Some scholars, such as Richard Bauckham, call this the divine identity of Jesus. Others, such as Bart Ehrman, argue that the earliest Gospels do not have Jesus say it plainly and that the idea grew over time. The disagreement is real. The texts above are the reason many readers still find the claim hard to remove.
Eighty and Six Years
Polycarp was the bishop of Smyrna, a city in what is now Turkey. He was an old man when the authorities came for him. The Martyrdom of Polycarp, a letter written soon after by his own church, tells what happened.
The Roman official in charge urged him to save himself. Swear by the emperor’s fortune, he said, and say the words the crowd wants. Curse Christ.
Polycarp answered: Eighty and six years I have served him, and he has done me no wrong. How then can I blaspheme my King and Savior?
The letter says he refused to say Lord Caesar. In the Roman world, calling the emperor lord was a mark of loyalty. Christians called Jesus Lord. For Polycarp the two names could not both be spoken in the same breath.
He was put to death in the middle of the second century. His church kept his bones and held a service each year on the day. The letter says they would never worship any other, since they worshiped Christ as the Son of God.
Scholars debate whether the eighty-six years mean his age or the length of time he had been a Christian. Either way, he was old. He chose to be killed rather than call Caesar what he called Jesus.
People do not die for a title they think is a figure of speech. Polycarp and the early Christians called Jesus Lord, in the full sense of the word, and they paid for it.
Jesus Christ Our God
Around the year 110, a bishop named Ignatius was taken from Antioch to Rome to be executed. On the way he wrote letters to churches. In the opening of his letter to the Romans, he wrote of the love of Jesus Christ our God. This is one of the earliest places outside the Bible where a Christian calls Jesus God. Ignatius does not stop to defend it. He writes it the way a person writes something everyone around him already takes for granted.
HISTORICAL CONTEXT
Ignatius of Antioch, Letter to the Romans, opening greeting, written in the early second century on his way to Rome. Translated in the Ante-Nicene Fathers, volume 1.
A Great Moral Teacher
ANCIENT TRUTH
Many people have honored Jesus as a prophet, a teacher or a sage. That is an old way of respecting him, held by people of several faiths.
C. S. Lewis argued that the middle ground is not open. A man who spoke the way Jesus spoke, if he was only a man, would not be a good moral teacher.
MODERN APPLICATION
Today you can hear it said kindly: I like Jesus, I just do not think he was God. It sounds like a respectful middle ground.
NEW TESTAMENT ECHO
John 20:28 puts the choice in one verse: Thomas answers Jesus, My Lord and my God, and Jesus accepts it.
It is not enough to say what Christians believe. It is fair to hear what others believe, in their own words, and to say where they agree.
The Qur'an honors Jesus. It calls him the Messiah, born of the virgin Mary, and it records his miracles. It also says what he was not. In Pickthall's translation of surah four, verse one hundred seventy-one: The Messiah, Jesus son of Mary, was only a messenger of Allah, and His word which He conveyed unto Mary, and a spirit from Him. So believe in Allah and His messengers, and say not Three. Surah five, verse seventy-five says the Messiah, son of Mary, was no other than a messenger. Verses one hundred sixteen and one hundred seventeen of the same surah picture Jesus on the last day saying he never told people to worship him and his mother: worship Allah, my Lord and your Lord. Muslims honor Jesus as one of the great prophets and deny that he is God or the Son of God.
Jewish teaching holds that God is one and has no body. Maimonides listed this among his thirteen principles of the faith, and it is why Judaism has not accepted Jesus as God. Many Jewish readers do not accept him as the Messiah either, and they read Isaiah 53 as speaking of Israel.
Jehovah's Witnesses honor Jesus as God's Son and as their Savior. They teach that he is a created being, the first one God made, and their Bible, the New World Translation, reads John 1:1 as the Word was a god. They render John 8:58 as before Abraham came into existence, I have been.
Some people, Christian and not, hold that Jesus was a wise teacher and not more. Thomas Jefferson cut the miracles out of his own Bible for that reason. Others, such as the Unitarians of the early nineteenth century, taught that Jesus was a man with a divine mission.
Each of these views has reasons, and its holders hold them sincerely. Christians answer them in three ways. The first is the evidence above: the titles and the worship. The second is the one C. S. Lewis made famous. He wrote that anyone who says Jesus was merely a great moral teacher is saying what Jesus did not leave open. You must make your choice, Lewis wrote. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. Scholars have criticized the argument. They note that it leaves out a fourth possibility, that later writers made up the sayings. The third answer is that the early evidence for the high claims is earlier than the legend explanation allows, and Day 5 returns to that.
None of this is an argument for treating a neighbour of another faith with anything but respect. A Muslim neighbour who says Jesus was a prophet is saying more than many people say who have never opened the Gospels. Christians are asked to say what they believe and why, and to say it gently.
Therefore God exalted Him to the highest place and gave Him the name above all names, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
Philippians 2:9-11 (BSB)
Paul quotes what many scholars think was an early hymn. It borrows Isaiah 45:23 and gives it to Jesus.
REFLECT
If someone asked you today who you think Jesus is, what would you say, and would it match what you pray?
A Practice for Today
Paul says every knee will bow. This practice puts that in your body. It takes about three minutes.
Stand
Stand where you are, and say: Jesus Christ is Lord.
Bow or kneel
Go down on one or both knees, or bow your head if that is not possible.
Say the words
Say, out loud or silently: My Lord and my God.
Stay still
Stay in the posture for one full minute. Do not try to feel anything.
Rise
Stand up slowly. Say: Glory to God the Father.
Come back to the scene in the temple. The crowd has picked up stones. They are near enough to throw them. And John writes that Jesus was hidden and went out of the temple area.
It is a quiet ending. There is no lightning, and there is no argument. He is simply gone, and the stones are in their hands.
That is how the Gospel of John often goes. Jesus says something no prophet would say, and then he walks on. The reader is left standing where the crowd stood. Do you pick up a stone, or do you stay and ask who he is?
You do not have to answer all at once. The Gospel does not hurry you, and it does not let you pretend the question was never asked. Thomas needed to see the wounds. The man born blind needed to be asked twice. Both ended by worshiping him. John tells these stories so that you can ask the question while the stones are still in the air.
Tomorrow we turn from the question to the life. If Jesus is who he said, and God is Father, Son and Spirit, what does it look like to live inside that? How do Christians pray, baptize and bless? And how did the church answer the people who got it wrong? For today, stay in the temple and hear the sentence once more. Before Abraham was born, I am.
Prayer
Lord Jesus, you said what no prophet says, and you did not stop me from asking. I come with my questions. Where I doubt, help me. Where I believe, make me bold and kind. You are my Lord and my God. Amen.
BREATH PRAYER
Inhale: My Lord — Exhale: and my God
IN YOUR OWN WORDS
Today's Commitment
I will ask the question of who Jesus is honestly this week. I will read John 8 and John 20 in one sitting, and I will speak of other faiths with respect.
LEAVING AT THE CROSS
RECEIVING FROM THE CROSS
One Question
What did Paul and Barnabas do when the crowd at Lystra tried to worship them?
The Voice Behind Today
bishop of Smyrna in what is now Turkey, put to death in the middle of the second century
Polycarp was a bishop who, according to Irenaeus, had known the apostle John. His church wrote an account of his death soon after. It is one of the earliest descriptions of a Christian martyrdom outside the New Testament.
Eighty and six years I have served Him, and He has done me no wrong.
LESSON FOR US
Polycarp shows what it cost the first Christians to say that Jesus is Lord, and that they said it anyway.
Sources & Further Study
RELATED SCRIPTURES
John 8:56-59
Before Abraham was born, I am!
Exodus 3:13-14
I AM WHO I AM.
Isaiah 44:6
I am the first, and I am the last.
Revelation 1:17-18
I am the First and the Last, the Living One.
Philippians 2:9-11
Every knee should bow, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.
John 20:28
My Lord and my God!
FOR DEEPER STUDY
Sources for today. Ego eimi is Strong’s G1473 with G1510; ehyeh H1961. The Greek of Exodus 3:14 in the Septuagint reads ego eimi ho on; Isaiah 43:10 in the Septuagint reads that I am he. The Qur’an: Pickthall (1930) and Yusuf Ali (1934) translations, surah 4:171, 5:72 to 75, 5:116 to 117, 3:45, 19:16 to 35. Maimonides, Thirteen Principles of Faith, numbers 2, 3 and 5. New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures, 2013 revision, jw.org, John 1:1 and 8:58. C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (HarperCollins, 2001), book 2, chapter 3. Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the God of Israel; Larry Hurtado, Lord Jesus Christ; Bart Ehrman, How Jesus Became God, chapter 3. Ignatius, To the Romans, opening greeting. The Martyrdom of Polycarp, chapters 8 and 9 and 17, in the Ante-Nicene Fathers, volume 1.
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BEFORE YOU GO
Anything you want to keep from today?
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