The Sweet Saving Truth
John 8:42-59
In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.
St. John 8:46-47a “Which of you convicts Me of sin? And if I tell the truth, why do you not believe Me? 47 He who is of God hears God’s words.”
Dear fellow redeemed in Christ our Lord… In the beginning, after Adam and Eve had sinned against God, Yahweh cursed that ancient serpent, the devil, and then, in His grace, drew a dividing line between him and Eve, between the devil’s seed and the seed of the woman. You remember the verse from Genesis 3:15: “And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her Seed; He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel.”
Ever since then there has been a great, ongoing battle between these two sides: the devil’s side and the side of those whom God has graciously brought onto His side. Today’s Gospel highlights the dividing line between those two sides. On one side, the devil’s side, are the Jews, specifically the Jewish leaders who had heard the word of Jesus but didn’t believe it. They rejected Him as the Christ; they did not believe He was sent from God to save sinners from sin, death, and the devil.
On the other side of the line stands Jesus, the true Seed of the woman, the Son of God and Son of Man. And there with Him, on His side – there in Him, really – are all those who are joined to Him by Holy Baptism and linked to Him by God-given faith. We could never stand against the devil or his seed on our own strength. But in Christ Jesus, we ARE victorious.
You and I witness – we take part in – Jesus’ victory against the devil and his seed in today’s Gospel. There was a great back and forth. The Jews were hurling their accusations against Jesus, and Jesus was responding with His own charges against them, which consisted of His own claims about Himself and about those who believe in Him. It is a grand sight to behold. Jesus, our Champion stands against the forces of evil and defeats them with the very Word of God.
Since the beginning of His ministry Jesus had been speaking nothing but the truth. He was in perfect agreement with all the Old Testament Scriptures, and He proclaimed it before the whole world: that all men are sinners; that no sinner can keep God’s holy law in such a way as to be justified by it or to earn God’s favor by his own works. But God is gracious. He sent His Son, the promised Messiah, into the world, into human flesh, to save sinful human beings by keeping God’s holy law for them and by laying down His life for them and paying the full penalty for all sin. The one and only way for anyone to be justified before God and saved from sin, death, and the devil was by trusting in Jesus the Christ for the forgiveness of sins.
Most of the Jews despised Jesus for saying such things. “We don’t believe You are who You say You are. We don’t agree with Your teaching. You must be a sinner!” But Jesus struck back at them in today’s text: “Which of you convicts Me of sin? And if I tell the truth, why do you not believe Me?” You see, it is one thing to claim that Jesus is a sinner. It is quite another thing to demonstrate it, to show from the Scriptures where He had said or done anything against God’s holy Law. Of course, the Jews couldn’t do that, which meant that Jesus was, indeed, speaking the truth. But if He was speaking the truth, why didn’t they believe Him?
As Jesus explains, “He who is of God hears God’s words; therefore you do not hear, because you are not of God.” What does it mean to be “of God”? It means to be on the side of God; it means to believe and adhere to His holy Word in everything. Here again is the dividing line between the seed of the serpent and those who are “of God.” To be “of God” means to be “born of God,” either eternally begotten of the Father, as is our Lord Jesus, or reborn of Him by water and the Spirit. It means that, if you hear the Word of Jesus and believe in Him as God’s Son and trust in Him alone for the forgiveness of sins, it is because God has begotten you; it is because God the Father has drawn you to Christ by His Holy Spirit, working through the preaching of the Gospel. It means that He has brought you to repentance and faith, thus giving you new birth.
But if you hear the Word of Jesus and don’t believe in Him as God’s Son; if you hear the Word of Jesus and don’t trust in Him as the one Mediator between God and Man, it is because you have rejected the Holy Spirit’s working; you have rejected the truth and chosen to believe a lie. In that case, as Jesus told the Jews, God is not your father; the devil is.
And there is the dividing line, and Jesus was not afraid to point it out. Those who are not on His side, which is God’s side, are on the devil’s side. Those who do not believe in Him are under God’s condemnation.
Dancers, models, and actresses usually suffer viagra cipla 20mg http://amerikabulteni.com/2013/11/10/soru-sormakla-gorevli-bir-gazeteci/ from this disorder. The easiest way to find a reliable buy levitra no prescription internet pharmacy is to study customer reviews. The MVPI is the only inventory buy viagra without consultation that seeks to measure an individual’s impaired behavioural patterns. The best result will be achieved if canada cialis generic you work out. And that angered the Jews, and as they say in the old West, “Them’s is fightin’ words!” “Do we not say rightly that You are a Samaritan and have a demon?” The Samaritans, you may recall, followed a mixture of the Jewish faith and pagan religion. It was a religious slur for a Jew to call another Jew a Samaritan. And accusing someone of having a demon, well that was a huge deal, of course. “We are the owners of the Jewish faith, Jesus, not you. You disagree with us; therefore, You must be wrong. You must be on the devil’s side.” “Do we not say rightly that You are a Samaritan and have a demon?” And this, dear friends, is what practically every religion does; it claims to be the true religion, while all the others are false. And in the depraved times in which we now live, a lot of supposedly “religious” people are happy to believe that all paths are equally good and eventually lead to heaven. It is truly a demonic teaching.
Well, it is one thing to claim something. It is quite another thing to back up your claim with proof. The only proof that will do is the unchangeable, always-dependable truth of God’s Holy Word. The Jews couldn’t even begin to back up their accusations against Jesus from Scripture.
“I do not have a demon,” Jesus replied, “but I honor My Father, and you dishonor Me. And I do not seek My own glory; there is One who seeks and judges.” You see, God the Father expects mankind to honor Jesus, to give Him the glory He deserves, the glory of the Son of God who became Man to be the Savior of all mankind. The Father seeks glory for His Son and will most certainly judge all who refuse to give it.
The dividing line is real. To oppose Jesus is to dishonor the one true God. And that is precisely why every religion that does not recognize Jesus Christ as true God and true Man, sent by God to be the only Savior of the world, is a godless, worthless, demonic religion. The Christian faith is the only saving faith; every other “religion” is lined up on the side of the devil. And in our world today that is an intensely unpopular, close-minded, hateful, exclusionary claim!
But, dear fellow redeemed, we make that claim. And we make it with joy; we make it with absolute confidence, because in Christ we have the only Savior who can actually save and who is alive again. All other leaders of all other religions are either going to die or have died already, and they’re not coming back from the dead. Jesus is the only Savior who died for the sins of all mankind and defeated death and the grave by rising again from the dead. And by doing so He gives eternal joy and hope to all who believe in Him.
Jesus promised in the Gospel, “If anyone keeps My word, he shall never see death!” The Jews recognized what a bold claim that was. They knew that death was God’s curse upon mankind for sinning against Him. The only one who can undo death is the Lord God Himself who first imposed it. If Jesus is claiming to be able to undo death, then He must be claiming to be God.
And, of course, that’s exactly who He is! Jesus said, “Before Abraham was, I AM.” That, as we know, is the name that God claimed for Himself at the time of Moses: “I AM WHO I AM” (Ex 3:14). The Jews were right, Jesus wasn’t yet fifty years old – not according to His humanity. But according to His divinity, He is the eternal Word who was with God in the beginning, and who was and is God. That is why He can claim to undo death and to have the authority to bring sinners onto His side and protect them against sin, death, and the devil.
But Jesus didn’t just snap His fingers and make death go away. Our sins absolutely demand our death and eternal damnation. Justice demands our death and eternal damnation. Christ Himself had to taste death for us all. Christ came to shed His blood – the priceless blood of God, as we heard in the reading from Hebrews (9:12) this morning: “Christ came…not with the blood of goats and calves, but with His own blood He entered the Most Holy Place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption.”
Christ came to suffer what we absolutely deserved – God’s wrath and hell’s fury – so that we might inherit what is rightfully His, which is eternal life. To those whom He graciously brings onto His side by Baptism and by faith, He offers eternal life, He offers forgiveness, He offers salvation. And He seals it to us here in the Sacrament of the Altar under the bread and wine, where He gives us His true body and blood, once given into death, but now made alive again forever and ever, and with the power to make us live forever, too.
Yes, those are bold claims; those are unpopular claims. And, yes, they fly directly and violently in the face of human reason. But they are God’s words and truths, and we Christians believe them by God’s gift of saving faith. That is why we ought never be afraid to call Jesus our Lord, even though doing so pits us against the majority of mankind who are still on the devil’s side. That is also why we continue to invite all people to repent and to believe in Christ Jesus for the forgiveness of sins while there is still time for them to cross over from death to life, from the devil’s side to the side of God.
When you and I were baptized, it marked us as God’s own children and it brought us to the side of the saints. But it also put us at enmity with the devil. For this, let us give thanks to God, who continues to preserve for Himself a little flock on earth to stand together with Christ, in Christ, and against the devil and his seed. And we give thanks to the Lord Christ, who continues to build His Church on the rock of St. Peter’s confession, that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God. Because you are in Christ and Christ continues to put Himself into you in the Sacrament of the Altar, the very gates of hell will continue to rattle in rage, but they will not and cannot prevail against Christ’s Church. He is our Life. He is our Defender. He is our Salvation.
May our good and gracious God continue to keep us all in the one truth faith – the only true faith and confession there is – the sweet, saving faith of Christ crucified, risen, and coming again for you.
In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.
