John 8:48-55 – The Father glorifies Jesus

Jesus’ claim to be deity is clear in John 8. Here we see Jesus slowly leading them to that conclusion. And He was debating with them, stating clearly His claim. This of course led them to conclude that He had committed blasphemy and wanted to stone Him.

In verse 48 we can see that the Jews were truly unconvinced, so they accused Jesus of being a Samaritan. The reason could possibly be due to Jesus’ questioning of their link with Abraham. This was the common dispute the Jews had with the Samaritans, who insisted that the Jews had no exclusive right to call themselves children of Abraham. The other reason could be due to His encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well of Sychar. They could have heard about that incident and reckoned that He had broken the tradition of the elders. Here they even accused Jesus of being demonized. Jesus merely ignored their charge that He was a Samaritan, and also calmly dismissed their accusation that He had a demon. With dignity, He told them that it had always been His practice to honor the Father. Whereas they did not. This was why they kept making erroneous remarks about Him.    

He also denied, in verse 50, that He was seeking His own glory. This was never His aim nor concern. He knew that God would take care of the glory due to Him. Not only would God glorify Jesus, He would also judge the glory the people bestowed. In all these, the people had mistakenly acted as if they had the right to judge, but in reality they were the ones God would judge. Jesus’ point is that God would seek out what they did and would judge them. From here, Jesus launched to the climax of His discussion with them. He asserted that if they listened to His message and keep it, death would not be their destiny.

In response, the Jews pointed to Abraham and the prophets. They told Jesus that even these great people died. Then they challenged Him by asking “...whom do you make yourself out to be? They reckoned His statement had proven that Jesus was a demon-possessed Samaritan. They told Jesus to think about the implications of His words.

In verse 54, Jesus turned away from the subject of Abraham for a while to talk about the glory and His relationship with the heavenly Father. As far as Jesus was concerned, He was not seeking self-glory, for to Him that is nothing. The Father would take care of that. In other words, His glory would be God-given. And unlike the Jews, Jesus addressed God as His Father whereas the Jews only addressed His Father as their God. That was the marked difference. And although they addressed God, they did not realize that He was not their God at all, for they have not known Him. Unlike Jesus who had known the Father intimately. And He acted in accordance to the Father’s words.

Jesus never fluttered and would never back down on misleading errors. He would confront them with truth and logical reasoning. He counters error with truth. No wonder He could so confidently tell us that if we continue in His Word, we will know the truth and the truth will set us free. Let’s seek to know Jesus, know the Word and through them know the Father. Like Jesus we must deepen our relationship with the Father. We must make knowing Him the cry of our hearts.