John 8:52-59

JESUS PRE-ABRAHAMIC

John 8:52-59. “The Jews said to Him, Now we know that Thou hast a demon.” Sharpers, sent out for that specific purpose, hung on His lips, like lightning upon the skirts of the clouds, seeking with diabolical chicanery to catch some word on which they could found an accusation, either to arraign Him before the Roman governor or the Sanhedrin. “Abraham and the prophets are dead, and You say, That if any one may keep My Word, he shall never taste of death; art Thou greater than our Father Abraham who is dead? And the prophets are dead; whom do You make Yourself? Jesus responded, If I shall glorify Myself, My glory is nothing; there is One who glorifieth Me, whom you say that He is your God, and you do not know Him, but I know Him.” Jesus made no mistakes. These people stood at the head of the Church, both clerical and laical; yet they were strangers to saving grace, aliens from God, and traveling the way of death. Never did the sun look down on a people more sanguine that they were right than those scribes and Pharisees, who were in the gall of bitterness and the bond of iniquity. “If I say that I do not know Him, I shall be a liar like you; but I know Him, and I keep His Word.” See with what utterly unimpassioned candor our Lord calls them liars! To convict is to convince. As conviction is fundamental in every work of grace, everything else being spurious without it, it becomes pre-eminently important that we call everything by its right name, as otherwise the normal force always goes out of the message. “Abraham, your father, rejoiced that He might see My day, and He saw it, and was glad. Then the Jews said to Him, Thou art not yet fifty years old, and hast Thou seen Abraham?” Some have concluded that our Lord was much more than thirty-three when crucified, deducing their proof from this statement. We doubt not the correctness of the chronology, making Him thirty years old when John formally introduced Him into His official Messiahship; then His ministry, beginning at the Passover in the purification of the temple, winding up by crucifixion at another Passover, two other festivals transpiring in the interim, making three years in all. Then why do they speak of fifty? From the simple fact that, as thirty was their majority, fifty was their maturity. Hence they think to confound Him outright by the affirmation that He has not so much as reached mature manhood, being comparatively a tyro.

Hence the glaring inconsistency of His claiming, as they construed it, to be contemporary with Abraham. “Jesus said to them, Truly, truly, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am.” The present tense of the verb “to be” is peculiar to the Deity, applicable to Him in all ages, and to no one else; hence, in this affirmation, our Lord not only claims to be pre-Abrahamic, but eternal, without beginning or end. Hence the “I Am,” immutable, through all ages, without beginning or end. “Then they took up stones, in order that they may cast them at Him.” With the Jews, the penalty of blasphemy was death by stoning. They see from His phraseology that He identifies Himself with God, being even pre-existent to Abraham. Consequently they construe His phraseology into blasphemy, and, apparently in a paroxysm of righteous indignation, take up stones, to vindicate the Mosaic law by His execution. “And Jesus was hidden, and passed out from the temple;” i. e., as on many other occasions, resorting to His omnipotence, in order to prolong His life and finish His work, He renders Himself invisible, passing through the midst of the crowd unseen, and going away from the Temple Campus. In this miracle He, to the surprise of all, suddenly disappears, all looking for Him, both His friends and His enemies; but no one being able to catch a glimpse of His person, while at the same time He is passing through the crowd unseen. It seems that such a miracle would satisfactorily confirm His Christhood in the estimation of all. However, they well remembered when Elisha, at Dothan, dropped an optical illusion on the whole Syrian army, so that they mistook him for their own commanding officer, obsequiously obeying his marching orders, till he led them to Samaria and turned them over to the king of Israel. Hence the tardiness, even on the part of His own relatives and friends, to acquiesce in His Messiahship, so many of them thinking that He was either a mighty prophet of Israel or one of the prophets risen from the dead.