Note: This talk changed considerably between this draft and the actual talk. I posted this draft because of the extended exposition about Jesus’ identity.
“No one of Consequence.”
“Really I must know.”
“Get used to disappointment.”
“Who are you?” There comes a point in a lot of narratives, where the identity of the protagonist is ambiguous. We know he or she is special, but we haven’t really put all the pieces together. And so the author just has one of the other characters straight up ask “Who…are…you?”
It happens in excellent, quirky, indi, comedies with great sound tracks (Garden State):
“Who are you?” “I’m your new friend Sam.”
It happens in big budget superhero pics
“Who are you?” “I’m Batman.”
And it happens in John chapter 8.
You see, in this passage, Jesus is being grilled and its not pretty. This would be a little bit like doing a cable news interview with someone who disagrees with you.
They are him with leading questions trying to get him to say something embarrassing that will become a viral youtube clip. In this chapter, they ask him 8 questions including some dusies…
I mean right out of the gate the ask stuff that is inappropriate and awkward (e.g. are you suicidal?)…but as the conversation progresses…things escalate:
For example, in verse 41…they say “We were not born of sexual immorality…”
Ouch... Do you get that… Do you see what they did there…
They are saying “hey dude, at least we know our Daddys.”
And then they ask my favorite question…
“Are we not right in saying that you are a Samaritan and have a demon?”
I mean who says stuff like that? That either requires intentional, heedless demegogery for effect...
or a total lack of tact and self awareness...hough Dwight would ask it in a more creative way (Slide)…”
I love Jesus’ answer: “I do not have a demon…” You can almost see him shaking his head, like, “seriously.”
It is an aggressive conversation which, like so many conversations we see around us and, especially on the stuff that passes for news on television…is more interested in generating a damning sound bite than it is in generating actual understanding.
But there is one point in the conversation, where Jesus kind of rattles them to the point that they just ask the obvious question…
“So they Said to him, “Who are you?”
But the answer he gives them is startling, and complicated, and he doesn’t just answer the who question, but also presses the why and what questions..
In John 8 Jesus answers three questions:
1. Who he is
2. Why that matters
3. What you should do about it
Jesus gives two answers to the
First he says
24“I told you that you would die in your sins, for unless you believe that I am he you will die in your sins?”
And so the first cue Jesus drops about his identify is a puzzle. You see, there is a lot that could have elicited a response in Jesus’ words…telling people ”you will die in your sins” is not exactly the road to being voted prom king. But most commentators agree that the phrase that would have grabbed their attention and drew the identity question out of them is …“I am he”
Um what?
That sentence has no content.
The direct object of that sentence is entirely uninformative.
I mean thank you captain obvious.
Or at least that is the way we hear it. But a 1st century Jewish scholar who would have large portions of the OT memorized in the popular Greek translation of the day would have heard something very different in that phrase.
The phrase “I am he” (ego eimi) is the exact phrase Yahweh uses to refer to himself throughout the prophetic literature in their Bibles. It makes them pause, squint a little, and ask a real question.
And then he drops it again in v 28
So Jesus said to them, When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am he.”
The religious teachers don’t take this well, as you might imagine. And they begin to ask a series of increasingly offensive questions…but eventually, Jesus brings the conversation back from the things they want to talk about to the thing they should want to talk about by dropping this gem in verse 51:
If anyone keeps my word, he will never see death.
Well, this time, they aren’t confused, they are pissed. They start ranting at him…and eventually say (v 53)
Who do you make yourself out to be?
Essentially, they are saying “Who do you think you are?” which is phrased like a question…it has the punctuation of a question, and the inflection of a question, I mean your voice goes up at the end like it’s a question, but when someone says “who do you think you are?” its not a question. Yet Jesus answers it…in verse 57 he says:
Before Abraham was, I am?
Excuse me, What? Now he’s just talking funny. I mean the tenses of his verbs don’t even agree.
Before Abraham was, I am?
I mean I realize in our context, verb tenses don’t matter much anymore…
“I has cheeseburger” “I am America (and so can you!)”
But, I mean that sentence doesn’t make sense.
Before Abraham was, I am?
It seems like some kind of word salad…until you hear it as one of Jesus’ opponents would have heard it.
You see, in the Hebrew Scriptures “I am” is not just a verb…it’s also a proper noun.
When Moses encounters God at the burning bush in Exodus 3…and asks him the “who are you”…how does God answer…I AM. Jesus isn’t talking funny, he’s saying the most offensive thing he could possibly say, in the most clever winsome way he could possibly say it.
Jesus is unambiguously identifying himself as Yahweh, the God of the Hebrew scriptures. It may seem like coded language to us, but it could not have been more stark or plainly stated in the spiritual idiom of that day. And if that is not clear enough from the text itself, it is clear from the context, because in verse 59 those listening to him immediately pick up stones. Whatever he said in this grammatically awkward English sentence…it was grounds to get stoned…and not in the fun way.
But the passage is also confusing, because while Jesus is unambiguously identifying himself as God, he also clearly distinguishes himself from “the Father” several times.
The way DA Carson put it…
And, it turns out, that the answer to the question “who are you” goes waaay deeper than they could have imagined. You see, if you want to know who Jesus claims to be, you need to do business with John chapter 8…you have to do business with Trinity.
In the history of the church, there have been those who have wanted to stress God’s unity – getting rid of the messy distinctions between Jesus, Father and Spirit, collapsing them to metaphors for the same single reality. And there have been others who have wanted to de-emphasize the unity of the three, by making Jesus just a dude who served God in a special way and the spirit some cosmic force between them. But throughout its history, the church has refused both of those tidy solutions…because neither is faithful to the complexity o f Jesus’ self understanding.
And so, The Chalcedonianian creed, which is recognized by all major flavors of Christianity (Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant) asserts that the Father, Jesus, and the Spirit are God 'without confusion' and 'without separation'.
SK - “He is the paradox that history can never digest or convert into an ordinary syllogism.” p 30[3]
-Is Jesus Yahweh of the Hebrew Scriptures…YES.
-Is he distinct from ‘the Father’…YES.
-Does that cook your noodle…YES.
-Should God be entirely penetrable by the electrical impulses of 4 lb masses of gooey carbon…NO.
2. Mission:
So in the middle of this debate, Jesus’ interlocutors stop asking weird questions long enough for Jesus to tell a little parable, which is the most famous part of this passage by a long shot. In verse 31-36 he says:
31So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, 32and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” 33They answered him, “We are offspring of Abraham and have never been enslaved to anyone. How is it that you say, ‘You will become free’?”
34Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin. 35The slave does not remain in the house forever; the son remains forever. 36So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.
Well, it’s because theology matters…because understanding Jesus’ identity is the key to understanding Jesus’ mission…and our response.
The point behind his identity is that he is qualified to rescue
Disney recently bought the rights to a science fiction novel I finished last month called Incarceron. Early reports are that they are going to place the film adaptation in the hands of a werewolf and a wolverine.
But in this story there is a prison from which there is no escape. And the slaves in this prison have been there so long that they forget it is a prison and have stopped believing that an outside world exists.
There is this great line in the middle of the book, where one of the characters describes the situation:
"Most men are content to live in their prison and think it is their world." (6:8)
And I love this picture, because it is precisely the way the conversation between Jesus and his interviewers goes down. He says
The truth will set you free.
And his opponents get testy and shoot back.
We have never been enslaved.
Now, Jesus stays on course, because, frankly he loves them, and wants to tell them how they can be free…but if it was me getting interviewed, Right here is the point where I’d start to get sarcastic. I’d be like, REALLY? You’ve NEVER been slaves? SERIOUSLY? So I’m totally imagining those Roman soldiers standing over there. And before that, the Seleucid empire…and what about Alexander the great…oh, and I suppose Assyria and Babylon let you do whatever you want when they marched you out away from your family and lands and pressed you into labor. I mean, at this point, the Hebrews had been politically autonomous for precisely 1 generation in the last 1000 years. They had been conquered and re-conquered and owned and oppressed…yet they look at Jesus with a straight face, and say…”dude, I don’t know what you are talking about…we’ve never been slaves”…but Jesus presses them…he asks them for some real self examination:
If you practice sin, you are a slave to sin.
He argues that most of us are enslaved to the half loves and broken promises of the appetites and authorities we live for. Our autonomy is illusion. We dance. We dance for the things, or appetites, or people who have power over us…because…
"Most men are content to live in their prison and think it is their world." (6:8)
And then Jesus leverages the imagery of the Roman slave market…an imagery probably most familiar to us from the film Gladiator…and says
The slave does not remain in the house forever; the son remains forever. So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.
Jesus says, listen, slaves cannot free themselves…and they can’t free other slaves…but the Son, the co-ruler of the kingdom, he can declare you free…and more than that he can make you the heir to the kingdom you were meant to be.
So, back to the story of Incarceron. In the world outside the prison, there is a princess, who is the only one with the power and position to enter the prison and free those who have been enslaved.
So she gives up all of her royal advantages and uses her power and position to go into the prison to extract a boy who has forgotten that he was born heir to the kingdom. Only an heir to the kingdom had the power to undertake this transform a slave into an heir. Only an heir to the kingdom could free the slave AND make him an heir. The other slaves couldn’t break him free. They couldn’t break free themselves. Most of them had forgotten that freedom even existed. Only the heir had the power and only the heir had the desire to free the slave. And in the process, the slave was also reinstated as the heir to the kingdom and immediately went to work to free other slaves.
And this is how the early church Father’s described what Jesus did for us. Our liberator could only be a God man says Athanasius…because he had to invade our reality, but he had to transcend our reality to be able to free us from it. Only the son of the king can change our status from slave to son.
"The Word of God, our Lord Jesus Christ, who did, through His transcendent love, become what we are, that He might bring us to be even what He is Himself." –Iranaus
“He became what we are so that he might make us what he is.” - St. Athanasius of Alexandria
We can’t be freed by other slaves…only by the son who takes on the life of the slave and then breaks it. Like the prison in Incarceron, our prison can only be solved from the outside. We can only be freed by an external invader.
3. Freedom Sounds Great…How do I get There?:
So how does Jesus say you access truth that leads to freedom. Well, in the midst of a bunch of pretty confusing theology and debate, he spells it out pretty simply in verse 31.
“If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
A lot of people press those last six words into service. They have been used to defend or assert nearly every ideology. But look at that whole sentence again. Knowing truth and being set free by it are embedded in a larger process. Being freed by truth has two antecedent conditions.
1) abide
2) follow
3) know
4) freedom
We throw around the “truth will set you free” phrase all the time…but it follows other stuff. Living with and following Jesus precede freeing knowledge. Jesus isn’t just a special forces agent that sweeps in, knocks down the door, and sets you free.
And that is because freedom requires a transfer of allegiance and a change of address. Truth doesn’t just happen in the context of dispassionate investigation, but by ‘taking up residence’ in the words of Jesus, of building your home there…and then transferring your allegiance to him.
My oldest daughter is five. She started pre-school this year, and that means she has a new set of friends and a new measure of autonomy. She is just getting used to what that means. And so, after school last week, my wife took her to Rainbow City, the big wooden playground in N Davis to play with her new friends. And while the moms were talking they overheard our kids talking…This is what the kids said:
“Wouldn’t it be great if our parents died? Then we could live in rainbow city. We could eat as much candy as we want and watch cartoons all day.”
Now, you understand the world enough to understand that the world they have concocted in their minds is not freedom. They want autonomy. But autonomy does not equal freedom, because their limitations are not external.
Now, most of you are about 15 years removed from Kindergarten. We are about half way through the School year. Which means that the reality of what college is like is dawning on many of you freshman. And maybe some of you upper classmen are at a point of reassessment. You came to college with a sense that your life would be totally changed with all of the new freedom that you would get. And let me ask you. How’s that going for you?
I find that a lot of students find that coming to college and losing the constraints that their parents house put on their lives…well it’s not the same as being free.
Autonomy isn’t the same as freedom. Because, according to Jesus, your constraints aren’t external. You bring your captors wherever you go.
Because whoever practices sin is a slave to sin.
Conclusion: “Stockholm syndrome.”
So why is it that “practicing sin” as Jesus puts it, enslaves us?
And why is it that transferring our allegiance and really orienting our lives around Jesus (either for the first time or the 10,000th) fundamentally freeing?
Let me give you a 3 word answer: “The Stockholm Effect”
Becoming so accustomed to your slavery that you begin to perceive it as benevolent...or even better than ‘freedom.’ Most recently is the central plot point of the show “Homeland”…but classically it is fundamental to the story of King Kong. You know that classic tale of:
Ape abducts woman.
Ape terrifies and abuses woman.
Woman loves ape.
I remember the week that the latest version of King Kong came out. I was at kinkos and the guy who was helping me was a film nerd and we got talking about it…and he started telling me all the reasons this film (which I thought was borderline unwatchable) was artistically excellent…it was really interesting…but then he said this, “But, my girlfriend just couldn’t get into it…you know the Stockholm effect.”
And that was my experience of the movie…when Naomi Watts was gazing lovingly into the face of this beast who had caused her so much terror and pain…I just thought….REALLY!!!???!!!
That’s not sweet…that’s a complete loss of connection with reality.
It is self selected slavery through the mechanism of self delusion.
That is a picture of us…gazing lovingly into the eyes of our violent, ugly captor, forgetting what we were actually made for…we get attached to the things that enslave us that we forget that someone grabing us and dragging us up the empire state building is not loving behavior.
The ape doesn’t love you…you are its slave.
The ape doesn’t love you…and neither do your grades, or your crushes, or those naked girls on your computer screen, or you professional dream…they don’t love you. But if you serve them, they own you.
If you love your grades and dreams, if you live for your professional aspirations or crushes, if you orient your life around the things you want, they will eventually come to own you. These things can drive our decisions and behaviors. And we don’t even notice. They enslave us, and we thank them.[8]
But Jesus says, Transfer your allegiance to me…and then orient your life around me…follow and abide…and the fabric of reality will start to become clear…the things that are worth living for will begin to become apparent. You will begin to see that the thing that you are living for, that you gaze lovingly at, that it is the big ugly mug of an ape that has no interest in your joy or welfare. But Jesus does.
And that truth will set you free.
________
[1] An interesting phrase with intentionally ambiguous referent (to his death and resurrection). Carson: “One of the functions of the cross is t reveal who Jesus is.”
[2] So, theologically, you have three choices, First, you can stress the unity of Jesus as God and ignore the distinction…or Second you can stress the distinction and overlook Jesus’ claims to divinity…or you can take both seriously. And that is how the early church decided to deal with the tension in this passage. The doctrine of the Trinity doesn’t so much as explain how Jesus and the Father and the Spirit are the all God yet distinct…rather, it simply asserts that they are. And attempts to push them together or separate them
[3] “It is hard to believe because it is hard to obey.” Also SK This actually gets at a lot of the epistemology embedded in Jesus’ questions in this passage…epistemology that I had to cut.
[4] FF Bruce calls this passage a “parenthetical parable.” It seems like a diversion. What is it doing in the middle of a passage so clearly about Jesus’ identity.
[5] His body was for Him not a limitation, but an instrument, so that He was both in it and in all things, and outside all things, resting in the Father above. At one and the same time- this is the wonder - as man He was an human life, and as Word He was sustaining the life of the universe, and as Son He was in constant union with the Father” – Athanasius
[6] Now we just wrapped up a series on ‘becoming God’s best version of you’ where we followed what Paul had to say about how to change. And if you remember, Paul put the command to:
“Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly” along side “Put to death whatever is earthly in you.”
Shaking lose the degrading habits and practices happens in the context of a rule of life…of abiding with Jesus.
[7] Let him move you from slavery to sonship, both ontologically but also experientially.
[8] AD wrote this, and I couldn’t fit it, but I loved it: I may have written this before but I never understood why every time I turned in a test in college I would put the piece of paper in front of the professor and say, “Thank you.” I couldn’t stop myself! I would walk away every time and think, “You idiot. Why did you thank her. She just destroyed you with that test. And you thanked her for it.” But even after a few times realizing this, I would tell myself that I wouldn’t say thank you as I was walking up, but whenever I got there, I always did.
