John 10:22-42
From Commontary
"My Sheep Listen to My Voice"
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Summary of passage
People always say, "If I could just see a miracle, I would believe." Jesus says, "No you wouldn't." This story shows us why people who witnessed the miracles did not believe.
GOSPEL
Who you are determines what you hear, what you believe. Every part of us is fallen, including our minds. Apart from the revelation of God in Jesus Christ, and his prior work in our hearts by the Holy Spirit, we would never believe in Christ. Even the first seed of faith is the result of God's grace.
COMMUNITY
The leaders did not believe, and their community reinforced their unbelief. Belief has a communal component, but without the Gospel, community will lead us astray.
MISSION
If we cannot be snatched from the hand of the Father, what kind of courage should this give us as we carry out his mission?
Original Context & Exegesis
See also parallels in Matthew 21:23-27, Mark 11:27-33, and Luke 20:1-8.
Exegesis of passage
22-24
The "Feast of Dedication," also known as Hanukkah, celebrated the rededication of the Temple. A leader who some had regarded as the Messiah, Judas Maccabaeus, had reconsecrated the Temple in 165 BC after it had been defiled by Antiochus Epiphanes. It was a feast celebrating the last great deliverance of God's people, and heightening the question the Pharisees ask. The Pharisees want Jesus to "tell them plainly" if he is the "Christ." Christ is Greek for Messiah, or Anointed One. They ask because there were many different & competing ideas of what the "Christ" was.
25
Jesus claims "I did tell you." Their unbelief does not arise from lack of information or clarity. He has told them numerous times, even if we just look at the "I AM" statements throughout John: John 6:35, John 8:24, John 8:28, John 8:58, earlier in John 10:7-18, and John 17:21-22. Jesus goes on to say that not just his words, but his actions have told them. "The miracles I do in my Father's name speak for me." The character of the miracles testified. They are not mere magic tricks, but recreative, restorative, redemptive acts: healing, feeding, preaching (see Jesus' summary in Matthew 11:4-6). These miracles were signs that pointed to Jesus' identity. For example, the Feeding of the 5000 in John 6 points to Jesus as the "Bread of Heaven."
26-27
Jesus elaborates on the "sheep" metaphor from earlier in this chapter. "You do not believe because you are not my sheep." It would be tempting to hear that fatalistically. Skeptics/non-Christians read statements like that and deduce that if they do not currently believe, they never will. But this would make all preaching of the Gospel pointless. Jesus is making the point that who you are determines what you hear, and what you believe. He is making the point that professing Jesus as Messiah will flow from an internal change of heart, and identity. He has a similar conversation with the Pharisee Nicodemus in John 3, where he makes the statement "you must be born again." It is the same for these Pharisees, and for us. When we are born again, and become Jesus' sheep (to mix his metaphors), we are able to hear his voice and to follow the Good Shepherd.
28-30
"Eternal life"--an emphatic statement about never perishing, never being lost. No one can be snatched away. So you can't be "in" and then "out." You can't lose your salvation, because it is God's decision and is left to his power. If he is greater than all, and his will is to save, no one can snatch anyone out of his hand? No one is stronger than him or can overrule his will.
Jesus' use of "My Father" is controversial. It was not common practice in this period to refer to God this way; it was regarded as claiming an unlawful closeness and intimacy, and regarded as blasphemous, particularly when Jesus ups the ante with his statement "I and the Father are one." Now Jesus has been perfectly, unambiguously clear. The Pharisees have the statement they were looking for, which presumably was the pretense for what happens next.
31-33
Stoning was the penalty for blasphemy in the Law (Leviticus 24:16), but they took up stones without due process. As Jesus points out, they are ignoring the evidence of his miracles. Jesus' question about "for which of these miracles" highlights that they never refute or deny the fact of his miracles. With the evidence right in front of them, they ignore the miracles and cling to their unbelief. Despite the miracles, they assume Jesus CAN'T be who he says he is. This backs up Jesus' claim earlier: we hear what we want to hear, believe what we want to believe, not based on evidence, but based on our hearts and our presuppositions.
34-36
Jesus responds to them on their terms: on the basis of the Law, and the Scripture's claims. This is a "how much more" argument: we're all connected to God; but Jesus claims to be "One" with him.
37-39
Jesus' argument is that his words and actions (including miracles) are consistent with the character, teaching, and work of God. Jesus is saying "If you don't believe what I'm saying, look at what I'm doing, and tell me if its nature and purpose is inconsistent with God." The miracles are intended to testify to Jesus' identity, that "the Father is in me and I in the Father," and that is precisely what they refuse to believe. Again, the Pharisees do not bother trying to refute Jesus here. They just try to kill him again.
40-42
John is not without a sense of dramatic irony. Adding to the transparent veracity of the account is the acknowledgment that some people believed, and some did not. (In a purely fictional/fable type context, we would expect everyone to believe and things would tie up neatly at the end). We have just seen how some people did not believe, despite seeing the miracles. Then John takes us back across the Jordan, where we meet people who believed in spite of NOT seeing miracles.
This demonstrates that, much to the objections and chagrin of skeptics, it is NOT evidence that persuades people to believe. The reason for unbelief is not, as Bertrand Russell claimed, because there's "not enough evidence." It is about a deeper conflict, a conflict about knowledge, specifically how we "know" what is true--epistemology.
In this passage we see a conflict between a Revelational epistemology and what we could call a "Theorational" epistemology. One receives the miracles and teaching of Jesus as direct, special revelation from God himself, and results in belief. The other clings to a man-made system of reasoning (in this case, one with theological underpinnings) that nevertheless keeps the leaders from seeing what should be as plain as day: that Jesus is Lord. Why do they not believe? It is because they do not WANT to believe, and this warps their epistemology.
Sin warps every part of us, including our mind and reasoning (some theologians call this the "noetic" effects of sin--nous is Greek for mind). So people pursue objectivity and unimpeachable logic, as if that was possible in a fallen world. The self-righteousness of the Pharisees inevitably led them to reject the Christ standing in front of them, because if you believe you can save yourself, you don't listen to God, and you don't believe you really need him. The Christian has a foundation for our beliefs, but the foundation is revelation, not reason. So we say with Augusine, "I believe in order to understand." This is not to say the Christian faith is unreasonable, but that we see the importance of the new birth and faith to redeem every part of us in order to believe, including (especially) our mind/reason.
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