Scripture Introduction
A few years ago, accountability was the hot word among Christians. Many voices encouraged us to find another person, or even a group, with whom we would share what was really happening in our lives. Maybe you think highly of those; others may doubt their value. Leaving aside the potential benefit, it seems to me that true accountability is hard because we may not want others to know who we really are. In fact, we may not even admit it to ourselves.
Blaise Pascal said: “Too much truth is paralyzing.” He may be correct. Don’t you find that we really say to one another: “Tell me what I want to hear”; instead of: “Tell me who I truly am”? Jesus’ enemies did precisely that. And when he responded differently than they wanted, they were deeply offended. So how will we respond to Jesus’ word about us? [Read John 8.37-47. (Sermon #32 in a Series on the Gospel of John). Pray.]
Introduction
Walt Disney plans to release (in May) their film version of Prince Caspian, the second in the Chronicles of Narnia series. Our family listened to the audio book again this week. I think one of Lewis’ most brilliant insights occurs when Caspian discovers that even though he has lived in Narnia all his life, he is actually human. Unfortunately, he descends from pirates – pirates who have mistreated and even murdered! After telling him all this, Aslan says to Caspian, “Do you mark this well?” Caspian hangs his head and responds: “I do indeed sir. I was wishing that I came of more honorable lineage.”
Aslan responds: “You come of the Lord Adam and the Lady Eve, and that is both honor enough to erect the head of the poorest beggar, and shame enough to bow the shoulders of the greatest emperor. Be content.”
Shame and honor – both are our lineage.
St. Cosmas (A.D. 760):
Once His heavenly image bearing,
Man has sunk to depths of sin;
Now defiled, debased, despairing,
Clad in rags and foul within….
Honor and shame. Every human soul binds together these competing realities. Honor – you are created in the image of God; you bear the weight of glory.
C. S. Lewis writes (The Weight of Glory): “It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare…. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations – these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit – immortal horrors or everlasting splendours.”
Such honor: his heavenly image bearing; yet shame: sunken, debased, foul within. Who are we?
John Calvin is an important in church history because he wrote a massive and definitive theology for the Protestant Church during the Reformation. (Few people still have their books published and read 450+ years after their writing.) Entitled, Institutes of the Christian Religion, chapter one is “The Knowledge of the Creator.” Surprisingly, Calvin begins by saying that in some sense, we must know ourselves before we know God. “The miserable ruin, into which the rebellion of the first man cast us, especially compels us to look upward…. Each of us must, then, be so stung by the consciousness of his own unhappiness as to attain at least some knowledge of God. Thus, from the feeling of our own ignorance, vanity, poverty, infirmity, and – what is more – depravity and corruption, we recognize that the true light of wisdom, sound virtue, full abundance of every good, and purity of righteousness rests in the Lord alone. To this extent we are prompted by our own ills to contemplate the good things of God; and we cannot seriously aspire to him before we begin to become displeased with ourselves. For what man does not remain as he is – so long as he does not know himself…. Accordingly, the knowledge of ourselves not only arouses us to seek God, but also, as it were, leads us by the hand to find him.”
Jesus tells these religious men that they do not know themselves. They think of themselves one way – the truth is wholly opposite; therefore, they do not know God. In so doing, Jesus challenges you and me – “Do we think clearly about ourselves? Will we hear the truth about our condition?”
I see here three reasons we must know ourselves:
1. We Must Know Who We Are So We Realize Our Own Weaknesses (John 8.37-41a)
Clearly, the Jews thought much of their ancestry; they greatly valued their family and religious upbringing. Nor does Jesus refute the fact that their great, great, great, great grandfather was Abraham. He says in verse 37: “I know that you are offspring of Abraham….” The word for “offspring” is [Greek: sperma]. It means, literally, “seed.” Figuratively, it is used of a descendant, a child or grandchild. They could trace their family tree back to Abraham.
But notice what Jesus says in verse 39: “If you were Abraham’s children, you would be doing what Abraham did….” The word translated, “children” is not [Greek: sperma], but [Greek: teknov]. The difference is because Jesus insists that the family line which matters is not physical descent, but “faith” descent. A true child imitates his father. These men carried the seed of Abraham, but not his soul.
John Calvin: Though Jesus concedes that they are Abraham’s seed, “yet at the same time he laughs at their folly for glorying in such a worthless title…. Nothing is less like the truth than what they wanted to be called, for they have no resemblance to Abraham” (Commentary, in loc.).
When God came to him in Genesis 18, Abraham responded with eager hospitality and enthusiastic faith. And in Genesis 26.5, God explains to Isaac why he would prosper: it is because your father, “Abraham obeyed my voice and kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes, and my laws.”
Abraham’s response of faith and good works should not teach the Jews to rely on being his physical descendant as their hope, but to imitate his spiritual life: trust and obey, “fear God and keep his commandments” (Ecclesiastes 12.13).
Romans 9.7-8: “…not all are children [Greek: teknov] of Abraham because they are his offspring [Greek: sperma], but ‘Through Isaac shall your offspring be named.’ This means that it is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the promise are counted as offspring.”
Romans 2.28-29: “For no one is a Jew who is merely one outwardly, nor is circumcision outward and physical. But a Jew is one inwardly, and circumcision is a matter of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter. His praise is not from man but from God.”
Now because Paul taught that what mattered was a heart of faith rather than outward forms, he was asked, “If what you say is true, is there any advantage in being Jewish?” He answered: “Much in every way!” (Romans 3.1-2). But every privilege carries with it corresponding weaknesses. Not because the privilege is defective, but because our sin nature turns even good things against us.
Many of you, like the Jews, can look at your family tree and see spiritual vitality and true faith. That is a great privilege. But our sin natures would turn that against us by suggesting that we have no need to work out our salvation with fear and trembling. The flesh delights to take our privileges and turn them into presumptions. For you whose parents or grandparents are Christians, God is warning you that a special relationship with your believing dad is only valuable if you share the grace which placed him in the faith. God’s saving of your mother only blesses you when you have the same saving faith.
God placed you in a Christian home so that your faith would take root and be encouraged to grow, not to give you an excuse for unbelief and failure to respond.
These Jews counted on Abraham’s faith to save. That was their particular weakness, always tempting them to rely on their lineage rather than a life of faith.
Do you know yourself? Do you know what temptations particularly play on your weaknesses? Do you know where you are in danger of pride and self-deceit?
John Calvin, Institutes, 1.1.2: “We always seem to ourselves righteous and upright and wise and holy – this pride is innate in all of us – unless by clear proofs we stand convinced of our own unrighteousness, foulness, folly, and impurity…. All of us are inclined by nature to hypocrisy.”
2. We Must Know Who We Are So We Recognize Our Need For God (John 8.41b-43)
The Old Testament taught that Israel had a unique relationship with God as their Father.
Exodus 4.22: “Thus says the LORD, Israel is my firstborn son….” Deuteronomy 14.1: “You are the sons of the LORD your God.” Jeremiah 31.9: “…I am a father to Israel….” Isaiah 63.16: “…You, O LORD, are our Father….”
Donald Carson, Professor of New Testament at Trinity Divinity School (Commentary, 352): “Jesus does not deny the truth of these Old Testament texts, but denies the applicability to his opponents. The implicit reason has already been given: spiritual sonship in the only sense which matters is attested by likeness and conduct, whether the ‘father’ is Abraham or God.”
Don’t miss this: the privilege given the Jewish people is that they can look at their nation and realize, “I personally need a special relationship with God. Everything God does with my nation is based on his adopting grace. I must need adopting!”
But what did they do instead? They looked at their nation and said, “We are covered; Israel is adopted, so we are God’s children; we are the true church; we are the covenant.”
The same problem remains today. When I was in college I never darkened the door of the church, and there no love for Jesus in my life. But, I had been raised to think of myself as a Christian. When the campus ministry representative came to my dorm room, I said, “Yes, absolutely, I am a Christian.” But my confidence was based on being born in America and not being Muslim or Hindu or Jewish. I claimed God as my Father, but my life was devoted to myself.
Many people call God their Father who have no genuine love for Jesus Christ. They may be members of the church, baptized as believers, and attend most every Sunday. Yet, sadly, some remain distant from the gospel of grace.
They know nothing of repentance, of the fruit of humility, of the joy of serving Jesus and his people. Rather than God’s Spirit molding them into the image of his Son, their life is characterized by inconsistency between a profession of salvation and a practice of selfishness.
God is not your Father because you were raised in the church, born in a believing house, baptized, walked the aisle, live in America, or prayed “the sinner’s prayer.” God is the Father of those whom he adopts into his family; and a sure proof of adoption is love for Jesus.
And how do we know if we love Jesus? “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” I’m not asking you to get busy doing good works so you will be adopted; I am telling you that true belief results in love and obedience. If these are missing, you need to get adopted, to be converted, to be born-again. And all this begins with knowing the truth about yourself, so you recognize your need for adoption into God’s family.
3. We Must Know Who We Are So We Reject The Lies of the Devil (John 8.44-47)
There is a revealing scene at the end of 1Kings. Ahab called on the prophets before he went out to battle, to find out whether he would win or not. But Ahab like to be told what he wanted to hear. So the prophets learned to lie to the king – people can’t stand too much truth.
A day came when Ahab wanted Jehoshaphat to help him fight a battle. But Jehoshaphat wanted to first inquire of the Lord, so the prophets were called, and they came and cheered: “Go up, for the Lord will give victory into the hand of the king.” Jehoshaphat knew they were lying, so he asked for a true prophet. Ahab said there was one, Micaiah, “but I hate him, for he never prophesies good concerning me, but evil.” So Jehoshaphat insisted that Micaiah be called.
When he came, he used his best tongue in cheek voice to imitate the other foolish prophecies: “Go up and triumph; the Lord will give victory into the hand of the king.” Of course, everyone can hear in Micaiah’s voice the mocking of the false prophets. Ahab then demanded: “Tell me the truth.”
So Micaiah told of the great defeat coming. Then he gave this bit of insight: 1Kings 22.19-22: “I saw the LORD sitting on his throne, and all the host of heaven standing beside him on his right hand and on his left; and the LORD said, ‘Who will entice Ahab, that he may go up and fall?’ And one said one thing, and another said another. Then a spirit came forward and stood before the LORD, saying, ‘I will entice him.’ And the LORD said to him, ‘By what means?’ And he said, ‘I will go out, and will be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets.’ And he said, ‘You are to entice him, and you shall succeed.’”
When we want to sin, we are glad to be lied to. We reject the truth precisely because it is true. We must know who we are so that we know where the power of the lie most pulls us away from God.
4. Conclusion
From James Boice, Commentary, 656: “The story is told of a young minister who went to a little town outside Las Vegas to fill the pulpit one Sunday morning. Before the service, one of the deacons gave him a bit of advice: “Friend, you need to know that there a certain things you must not say here, and certain sins you must not preach about. For instance, it will never do for you to talk about divorce – this is the divorce capitol of the United States. You’ll lose half your audience. And of course, don’t mention gambling – you know how big a business this is in our town. And you probably should not talk bad about drinkin’ either.”
The poor young minister asked, “Whose sins am I supposed to preach about?”
The man answered: “Why not go for the sins of the Piute Indians – they never go to church anyway.”
This is a stunning passage precisely because Jesus preaches to those who are at church. He cuts to the heart by revealing who we really are. Will you hear and believe the words of God?
Next Week (Easter): John 8.48-59: Not All Who Die, Die
March 30: John 9.1-41: Not All Who See, See
April 6: John 10.1-21: Not All Who Shepherd, Shepherd
