If you continue in My word…

“If you continue in My word…”

JOH 8:31-40

It shows up in the amount of repetition there is in the gospel.

Terms that can’t quite get pinned down - like the Jews, and disciples.

You examine a set of relationships again, as the narrative gets more intense.

Everything is interconnected, but you don’t get the entire picture at once .

You are in the presence of things that you cannot quite resolve in your head.

We would like to extrapolate these things to ourselves and to our time.

We would like to put things in a logical order.

1JO 1:1-4

JOH 8:30-32

Now these three verses are moving in the right direction.

Jesus is talking to a group of new Jewish believers.

He is encouraging them to become true disciples of His so they will be made free.

In verse 37, Jesus tells this audience that they want to kill Him.

JOH 8:37

No believer in Christ wants to kill Him!

Every believer in Christ has at least some of His word in them.

JOH 8:44

How can a believer in Christ have the devil as his father??

We are superimposing our categories onto a narrative of events that occurred in the early first century AD - before Christ died on the cross.

- before Christ died on the cross and was raised from the dead.

JOH 8:31-32

This is the simple part - the part for believers.

Simply put, disciples are students.

But saints are still called to continue in Christ’s word - that continues.

COL 3:16

Christ continues to set the saints free.

GAL 5:1

The rest of the passage in John 8:33-49 -is the complicated part. Why?

It deals with the complications (trouble) that unbelief generates.

JOH 8:33-40

Verses 30-32?
Simple.
Why?
Belief.

Verses 33-49? Complicated.
Why?
Unbelief.

Jewish unbelief in the days of Christ’s public ministry.

JOH 9:38-41

And yet the Father predestined that this blind unbelief …

…would serve His amazing plan to save the world and glorify His son.

ACT 2:22-24

All the problems and horrors of unbelief. Yet the remedy is simple.

JOH 20:27