Parting Of Ways

Jesus said to the Pharisees: “I am going away and you will look for me, but you will die in your sin. Where I am going you cannot come.” So the Jews said, “He is not going to kill himself, is he, because he said, ‘Where I am going you cannot come’?” 

He said to them, “You belong to what is below, I belong to what is above. You belong to this world, but I do not belong to this world. That is why I told you that you will die in your sins. For if you do not believe that I AM, you will die in your sins.” 

So they said to him, “Who are you?” Jesus said to them, “What I told you from the beginning. I have much to say about you in condemnation. But the one who sent me is true, and what I heard from him I tell the world.” They did not realize that he was speaking to them of the Father.

So Jesus said to them, “When you lift up the Son of Man, then you will realize that I AM, and that I do nothing on my own, but I say only what the Father taught me. The one who sent me is with me.  He has not left me alone, because I always do what is pleasing to him.” Because he spoke this way, many came to believe in him. (John 8:21-30)

John said a lot about the Jews, and not always in flattering terms.  He and many others set the stage for centuries-old persecutions against the Jews, and persecutions continue today as anti-Semitism and neo-Nazis propaganda.  

In this Gospel, John has Jesus say to the Jews, “…you will die in your sin...You belong to what is below, I belong to what is above… I have much to say about you in condemnation.”  Jesus insists the Jews must believe he is I AM.  If not, they will die in their sins.  

This is John talking to Jews who do not believe Jesus is God (I AM).  How could they?  Jesus says “I AM” seven times in this Gospel such as "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me" (John 14:6). Jews did not believe that Jesus was the Messiah.  John did; hence, strong words used against the Jews by John.  John’s community was of Christian Jews who experienced rejection by non-Christian Jews.  This was the time of the parting of the ways between Judaism and early Christianity.

According to New Testament scholar Marcus Borg, “The New Testament does not simply identify and equate Jesus and God. It never says, ‘Jesus is God’ or ‘God is Jesus.’  Of course, it does affirm, in phrases from John’s gospel, that Jesus is ‘the Word of God’ and ‘one with God.’ But that does not mean that Jesus was God. Rather, in John’s language, he was ‘the Word become flesh.’ He revealed what can be seen of God in a human life – and that means within the limitations of human life.’ To affirm that Jesus is the Word become flesh, the Word incarnate, means what another New Testament verse does: he is ‘the image (ikon) of the invisible God’ (Col. 1.15). He shows us what God is like – reveals God’s character and passion.”  

Of course, our Creed takes us in an entirely different direction: “I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Only Begotten Son of God, born of the Father before all ages. God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father; through him all things were made.” 

John had Jesus ask, “Where I am going you cannot come?” Quite true.  Christian Jews went in a different destination than the non-Christian Jews, and the rest is history.

Deacon David Pierce