John 8:48-51 48The Jews answered and said to him, “Are we not right in saying that you are a Samaritan and have a demon?” 49Jesus answered, “I do not have a demon, but I honor my Father, and you dishonor me. 50But I do not seek my own glory; there is one who seeks and judges. 51Truly, truly, I say to you, if anyone keeps my word, he will never see death.”
The reader continues to have the privilege of listening to one of the teaching encounters between Jesus and the Jews of Jerusalem. Unfortunately, they were having a difficult time understanding what Jesus was saying because they were stuck in their humanistic thinking and traditions. The dialogue continues to descend into accusation as they show their wrong thinking by assuming Jesus was a Samaritan and demon-possessed. They could not argue with Jesus based on theology, and so they turned to emotion and personal attack. Jews despised Samaritans, so they were being racist and demeaning by calling Jesus a Samaritan. Calling him demon-possessed would be like claiming he was crazy and totally against the people of God, who were the chosen and elect Jews. Their thinking was very narrow, prejudiced, and self-centered, which prevented them from seeing the truth.
Jesus follows his pattern of responding with further revelation and insight into his theology. His first statement in verse 49 answers their accusations and points out their core problem. He clearly did not have a demon because he honored the Father and revealed the Father to them. Demons are aligned with the devil, who is the chief of liars. God the Father is the Truth, and Jesus, as the Son, is the revelation of this Truth. The problem was that the Jews did not see the connection and did not honor or recognize Jesus. They were aligning themselves with demons.
Jesus was the opposite of the Jews, who were seeking their own glory by their religiosity and claim of heritage from Abraham. Jesus set the pattern for all his followers by seeking the glory of God in all he did. Honoring the Father requires not seeking one’s own glory. God will bring honor to a person, sometimes in this lifetime, but more significantly, in the end. Verse 51 brings all these ideas together in another timeless truth. The reason Jesus came was to glorify the Father by speaking the truth of the Father to people. Jesus is the in the form of another conditional sentence. Way and the connection to the Father (14:6). He repeats the idea of verse 31 of the crucial importance of keeping his word. Keep (tērēsē) has the sense of obeying and living out the claims of what Jesus taught. The word has the sense of holding on to something as important and not losing it. Keeping Jesus’ word requires recognizing the authority of what he taught, accepting it as truth, not changing it to fit our own thinking, and obeying what it says. If the first part of the condition is true, then the result will be eternal life. Death in this verse must refer to eternal death since all people are appointed to die once and then face judgment (Hebrews 9:7). Death has no power over those who obey Jesus.
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