(Audio)
“We are not stoning you for a good work but for blasphemy.
You, a man, are making yourself God.”
The Jews understood the claim Jesus was making about himself. He told them that he was the one who existed before Abraham, the one who revealed to Moses that his name was I AM. There was a limited sense in which God was the father of the Jewish people, and a limited sense in which the Scripture called them gods. This was a prefigurement awaiting fulfillment in Jesus. God was the Father of Jesus in a unique way. Jesus was the only begotten Son. Because of this he shared in the very divine life of the Father, God from God, light from light.
The Jews rightly understood that if the claim of Jesus was true everything they knew was flipped on its head. The authority the spoke was no longer simply law and Scripture but a person. The God who was so far above creation as to be inapproachable, dwelling in inaccessible light (see First Timothy 6:16), approached and entered his own creation. It seemed to the Jews that they were protecting God's holiness by protesting his incarnation. They didn't want their religion to devolve into paganism that made gods in the likeness of man. But that was a problem precisely because it was men doing it. They were called to wait for God to take the initiative and then to receive and recognize it when he did.
If I do not perform my Father’s works, do not believe me;
but if I perform them, even if you do not believe me,
believe the works, so that you may realize and understand
that the Father is in me and I am in the Father.
Jesus understood that the claim he was making required substantiating and so he did. He did the works that revealed that he was from the Father. The Father was truly in him and only because of this could his words have the authority that they had. Even having seen the works the Jews still only found themselves invited, not compelled. And the frightening thing about that is the ability to reject that invitation, to choose our own judgements over the revelations offered.
Terror on every side!
Denounce! let us denounce him!”
All those who were my friends
are on the watch for any misstep of mine.
The revelation of the LORD will prevail. We are called to recognize what he is doing in our midst so that we can share in his victory.
But the LORD is with me, like a mighty champion:
my persecutors will stumble, they will not triumph.
In their failure they will be put to utter shame,
to lasting, unforgettable confusion.
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