John 8:52-56 52Then the Jews said to him, “Now we know that you have a demon! Abraham died and the prophets, and you say, ‘If anyone keeps my word, he will never taste death.’ 53Are you greater than our father Abraham, who died? And the prophets died! Who do you make yourself to be?” 54Jesus answered, “If I glorify myself, my glory is nothing. It is my Father who glorifies me, whom you say, ‘He is our God.’ 55But you have not known him. I know him. And if I were to say that I do not know him, I would be a liar like you, but I do know him and I keep his word. 56Your father Abraham rejoiced that he might see my day, and he saw it and rejoiced.”
The Jews continued to press their condemnation of Jesus and insisted he had a demon. Their ignorance and narrow vision are apparent again in verse 52. Some of these Jews would have been Pharisees who believed in resurrection, while the Sadducees did not. John does not differentiate at this point which Jews were speaking and just lumps them all together as opposing Jesus. They were thinking on the literal level about how Abraham and the prophets all died. Basically, the logic of their argument is that everyone dies; death is inevitable. Therefore, what Jesus said is absurd. They could not get past two key points: the significance of accepting Jesus’ word and the outcome of eternal life.
Verse 53 summarizes the real issue: Who is this Jesus? That is the crucial question of John’s Gospel. John likes to put questions like this in the mouths of the characters of the story, who speak the thoughts the reader is supposed to have and then look at the stories to find the answer. The form of question the Jews ask assumes a negative response in the Greek. They were comparing Jesus to their preconceived ideas of greatness and thinking that Jesus was glorifying himself and looking for the attention of people.
Jesus answers like he had been doing all along by pointing out his relationship to God the Father. The glory (doxa) is a keyword in John and expresses the awesomeness of God. Humans respond to God’s glory through worship, honor, and obedience. As the revelation of God, Jesus is the glory of God, but he did not seek this glory for himself until the cross (5:23; 8:50; 17:1, 4–5). His death on the cross was the beginning of his glorification because he fulfilled the Father’s plan for the salvation of the world. Jesus came not to glorify himself but to point people to the Father. He glorified the Father through his obedience to the Father’s will in all things. The Father’s response was to glorify the Son, but the path to this required perfect obedience, even to the point of death. Paul expresses a similar idea in Philippians 2:5-11.
Jesus’ accusation in verse 55 is strong and must have really stirred up the Jews. They had not known the Father because they had not known Jesus. Father and Son are one; to know one is to know the other. The Jews had missed the most important part of their faith journey by their refusal to accept their Messiah. The very prophets to whom they appealed condemned their lack of knowledge of God (Hosea 4:1; 6:6). Religious observations and obedience to a set of laws are not adequate for knowing God.
Jesus knew the Father and obeyed all the Father said. God spoke through the Old Testament, and Jesus fulfilled the Scriptures and obeyed God’s commands. The Jews could not find any fault with him. The Jews appealed to Abraham as their father and claimed to be his children. Yet, they missed the core hope of Abraham. The Jews believed that God revealed special knowledge to Abraham in Genesis 15:17–21. Jesus may be referring to that tradition in verse 56. The basic point is that Abraham looked forward to the fulfilment of God’s promises to him. Jesus connects those promises to himself. My day refers to the promised Lord’s Day, to which the prophets referred. That day had come. The Messiah was right in front of the Jews, but they refused to believe. Everything would have made sense to them if they had opened their hearts and minds to accept Jesus. But another part of prophecy was that the Messiah would have to die, and these Jews were setting up for that by their rejection of Jesus and plans to kill him.
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