Thoughts on the Gospel of John (56) - All The Good Seed Daily Devotionals for 2025

He said to them, You are from beneath; I am from above. You are of this world; I am not of this world. Therefore I said to you that you will die in your sins; for if you do not believe that I am he, you will die in your sins. Then they said to him, Who are you? And Jesus said to them, Just what I have been saying to you from the beginning.
John 8:23-25.

Thoughts on the Gospel of John (56)
The Lord made a marked contrast: on the one hand He was "the light of the world", on the other, they rejected the light. Seen morally, they were "from beneath" under Satan's power. Jesus was from heaven. Being of the world, they were in darkness, far from God. Christ was light in the world; He did not belong to the world, as they did. They were living in their sins, and because they refused to believe in Christ, they would die in their sins.

Faith in the Son of God could alone alter their fate - that faith that discovers the "I AM". The translation here should not be: "I am he", but literally, "I am", as God had revealed Himself to Moses (Exodus 3:14). The Lord's words here express unmistakably His claim to be God.

The Jews grasped the sense of this sublime claim: they immediately asked, "Who are you?" They received a remarkable answer: "Just what I have been saying to you from the beginning". Jesus' statement presented Him as He really is: the truth. This could not be said of any other human being, however good. We could never express what we genuinely are so accurately and so tersely. If we could, we would refrain from doing so, knowing what we are really like.

(to be continued next Sunday)

Today's reading: Job 37:5-24 · Acts 17:22-34