Forbidden Bible Verses: John 8:12-20

Today’s post continues with John 8, entirely excluded from the three-year Lectionary of Bible readings for public worship.

This exclusion qualifies it for the ongoing Churchmouse Campanologist series Forbidden Bible Verses, also essential to our understanding of Scripture.

Today’s reading comes from the King James Version with commentary by Matthew Henry and John MacArthur.

John 8:12-20

¹²Then spake Jesus again unto them, saying, I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.

 ¹³The Pharisees therefore said unto him, Thou bearest record of thyself; thy record is not true.

 ¹⁴Jesus answered and said unto them, Though I bear record of myself, yet my record is true: for I know whence I came, and whither I go; but ye cannot tell whence I come, and whither I go.

 ¹⁵Ye judge after the flesh; I judge no man.

 ¹⁶And yet if I judge, my judgment is true: for I am not alone, but I and the Father that sent me.

 ¹⁷It is also written in your law, that the testimony of two men is true.

 ¹⁸I am one that bear witness of myself, and the Father that sent me beareth witness of me.

 ¹⁹Then said they unto him, Where is thy Father? Jesus answered, Ye neither know me, nor my Father: if ye had known me, ye should have known my Father also.

 ²⁰These words spake Jesus in the treasury, as he taught in the temple: and no man laid hands on him; for his hour was not yet come.

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John’s Gospel relates Jesus’s divinity throughout, often accompanied by the contrasting imagery of light versus darkness. Other running themes are condemnation for those who fail to acknowledge Christ as the Son of God as well as correct and divine judgment. We also see God’s sovereignty at work. So far, we have read the following verses (emphases mine on the common themes):

John 3:18-21:

¹⁸He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.

 ¹⁹And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.

 ²⁰For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved.

 ²¹But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God.

John 5:22-23:

²²For the Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the Son:

 ²³That all men should honour the Son, even as they honour the Father. He that honoureth not the Son honoureth not the Father which hath sent him.

John 5:26-27, 29-30:

²⁶For as the Father hath life in himself; so hath he given to the Son to have life in himself;

²⁷And hath given him authority to execute judgment also, because he is the Son of man.

²⁹And shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation.

 ³⁰I can of mine own self do nothing: as I hear, I judge: and my judgment is just; because I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father which hath sent me.

John 5:43, 46-47:

⁴³I am come in my Father’s name, and ye receive me not: if another shall come in his own name, him ye will receive.

⁴⁶For had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me; for he wrote of me.

 ⁴⁷But if ye believe not his writings, how shall ye believe my words?

John 6:36:

But I said unto you, That ye also have seen me, and believe not.

John 7:6-7:

⁶Jesus said to them,  “My time has not yet come, but your time is always here. ⁷The world cannot hate you, but it hates me because I testify about it that its works are evil.

John 7:19, 24:

¹⁹ Has not Moses given you the law? Yet none of you keeps the law. Why do you seek to kill me?”

²⁴ Do not judge by appearances, but judge with right judgment.”

John 7:28-30, 33-34:

²⁸So Jesus proclaimed, as he taught in the temple, “You know me, and you know where I come from? But I have not come of my own accord. He who sent me is true, and him you do not know. ²⁹ I know him, for I come from him, and he sent me.” ³⁰ So they were seeking to arrest him, but no one laid a hand on him, because his hour had not yet come.

³³Jesus then said, “I will be with you a little longer, and then I am going to him who sent me. ³⁴ You will seek me and you will not find me. Where I am you cannot come.”

John 7:44:

Some of them wanted to arrest him, but no one laid hands on him.

If we grasp only those themes from the first part of John, we will have understood what the apostle was communicating in his Gospel. Each Gospel shows a different aspect of Jesus.  In John it is His divinity.

In last week’s post, a group of scribes and Pharisees challenged Jesus in the temple by bringing before Him the woman accused of adultery.  After He alluded to their hypocrisy and sinfulness, they left suddenly and silently.  Jesus forgave the woman and told her to sin no more.

Today’s passage appears to have occurred on the same day but in the treasury (verse 20).  This was part of the temple complex. John MacArthur explains the temple layout and the treasury design:

In the temple there were a whole lot of different courts … they were just colonnades in a courtyard. The outside one, the furthest one away from the Holy of Holies … where only the high priest could go once a year … was the Court of the Gentiles. The reason it was called the Court of the Gentiles was because it was the only place the Gentiles could go … They were included in the blessing of God but they couldn’t move in to the ministry end of it. The second court in from the Court of the Gentiles was called the Court of the Women. That was because that’s all the further the women could go…unless they were going into the Court of the Priests which was the next one so that they could put a sacrifice on the altar…specifically for that purpose, the only way a woman could get into that. Now there were men also in the Court of the Women but it was called the Court of the Women simply because that’s as far as the women could go.

Now it was in this Court of the Women that the temple treasury existed. Now the Court of the Women was a great court, it had colonnades around it. And then on the walls all the way around it were giant trumpet-shaped treasure chests, and I use that word for lack of a better one. Since it was a treasury and that’s where people brought their money, they had put up on the wall these great trumpet-shaped things, they were large funnel- type things at the top and then they came down to a little kind of a bell-shaped thing on the bottom. The point was you could put something in, you couldn’t get anything out. And it’s very difficult to lock up a temple. So they just had to leave it that way. So they had this thing you could drop the coin through and it would settle into the bottom. Now they must have had some way to get it out as far as their concerned, removing it or something, but for the people’s sake that’s the way it was set up so that it couldn’t be robbed and so forth and so on. And there thirteen of those trumpets all the way around the wall.

Now the number one and two trumpet, we’ll call them trumpets though they’re really kind of a treasury [ch]est, trumpets number one and two were where you put your half-shekel tax that everybody paid, the alloted offering that you had to pay for the upkeep of the temple and so forth and so on. Everybody put something in one and two, they were designated for that. Trumpets number three and four were where you purchased pigeons. Now to buy pigeons you paid in those two so that they knew how much money came in for the sale of pigeons. You say, “Well so what’s the sale of pigeons for?” Well poor people used pigeons for sacrifices, they couldn’t afford the other animals, but beyond that it’s a very interesting thing, and I’m not sure of all the significance. Women who had just born a child had to make an offering of two pigeons, it was called an offering of purification…to purify that mother ceremonially after child bearing. So the women would go into there, pay into the three and four trumpets and purchase their two pigeons to be given as a sacrifice, cleansing symbolically after their childbirth.

Trumpet number five was where you put the money if you wanted to buy wood to keep the altar burning. You could take your choice. Number six was where you put your incense contributions. Trumpet number seven was where you put the money if you wanted it to go to the upkeep of the vessels, the golden vessels and all of the things that were in the temple. Then trumpets eight through thirteen were surplus money which you just wanted to put [in], but you didn’t care where it went.

So the temple treasury was right there. That’s where Jesus is. He’s in the middle of the Court of the Women where the temple treasury is. Now that’s an important thing, keep that in your mind, you’re going to see how that unfolds to be probably the critical thing in this whole passage.

It is there that Jesus utters the most famous words from John’s Gospel (verse 12): ‘I am the light of the world’.  He goes on to say that His followers will walk in His light, eschewing the darkness of sin.

Verse 13 introduces another group of Pharisees.  Matthew Henry believes that this was not the same group in the first 11 verses of John 8, but another, wishing to redeem the injured reputation of those who presented the adulteress to Jesus.  This new group accuses Him of bearing a false witness against Himself — in other words, lying about His origins and His being.  This is a false accusation; they are ignoring the witness of others, from John the Baptist to Nicodemus on the more noted end of the social scale, to the more ordinary, everyday people whom he healed, such as the infirm man at Bethesda, and those who believed His words during the preceding Feast of Tabernacles.  Therefore, the Pharisees are disingenuous and false in their accusations.

Jesus responds by saying that what He says of Himself is the truth (verse 14). Jesus says that only He knows His origins. On a temporal level, He was born in Bethlehem, not Nazareth.  On a divine level, He came from Heaven.  Yet, none of the Jewish hierarchy challenging Him either acknowledges or wishes to acknowledge these facts.  Note the aforementioned verses from the preceding chapters.

Jesus adds that the Pharisees judge the way men do — based on flawed or ignored evidence — ‘after the flesh’ (verse 15).  Of Himself, He says that He judges ‘no man’, which means no judgment of earthly systems relating to the synagogue or to civil government: ‘My kingdom is not of this world’ (John 18:36).

In verse 16, Jesus goes on to say, however, that when He does judge, His decisions are true, as He does so in accordance with God’s will. This alludes to the Final Judgment and points to a judgment of the state of their souls. Yet, these highly educated men, so well versed in Mosaic Law, miss the point entirely, whether through stubbornness or pride.  As Jesus has said many times in John, ‘If you really know who my Father is, you will recognise Me’.

Matthew Henry notes:

The first coming of Christ was for the purpose of administering, not justice, but medicine.

Jesus came to redeem us, not condemn us.  Yet, sin blinds many to the truth.

In verses 17 and 18, Jesus attempts to make the point by discussing Mosaic Law, in which they are well-versed.  The Law states that the corroborating testimony of two witnesses is deemed to be the truth (Deuteronomy 17:6).  Jesus says that He is His own witness as is God the Father.  Remember that we are not discussing temporal law here, but divine law — something which is lost on the Pharisees.  What more supreme and sovereign witnesses can there be other than God the Father and God the Son?

However, the Pharisees refuse to understand His words. Obtusely, they ask where His Father is.  Once again — see the verses at the beginning earlier in this post — Jesus says that if they had recognised Him, which they should have in their exalted religious capacity, they would also have recognised God (verse 19).

Henry cautions us not to let our flawed judgment get the better of us where belief is concerned:

If we knew Christ better, we should know the Father better; but, where the Christian religion is slighted and opposed, natural religion will soon be lost and laid aside. Deism makes way for atheism. Those become vain in their imaginations concerning God that will not learn of Christ.

Let us, therefore, avoid being like those who rip pages out of the Bible or draw lines through verses with which they disagree!

In closing, there is another reason why Jesus refers to Himself as the ‘light of the world’ in verse 12.  Two points here: first, He came not only to redeem God’s chosen — the Jewish people — but also the Gentiles, wherever they are in the world. Second, He is also alluding to the ceremony just recently performed during the Feast of Tabernacles and is asking the hierarchy to make the connection. In other words, the Jews have become so wrapped up in legalism — ritual observance, in this case — that they miss the promised Messiah and Redeemer standing in the flesh before them!

MacArthur explains why Jesus said what He did where He did when He did:

At this feast there were several very important rituals. We already saw one, that was the pouring of the water when all of them had their bows and everything over the altar … And there Jesus said, “If any man thirst, come to Me.” He grabbed that ritual and turned it to Himself. The second ritual, very important ritual during this week was called the illumination of the temple ritual. Now this is what’s going on here in Jesus’ mind, and I’ll show you what I mean.

In the evening this ritual took place and the illumination of the temple ritual was to commemorate, mark it, the light in the wilderness that had led Israel. Now you remember that during the day they were led by a light that looked like a cloud. And at night they were led by… a pillar of fire, flaming light in the sky … And to commemorate the light that led them, they had this ceremony called the illumination of the temple which commemorated the light that led Israel in the Old Testament. Now you can see we’re beginning to zero in on this light concept.

… They had this ceremony … in the Court of the Women, see, that’s why Jesus is there. That’s why He went there to say, “I’m the light of the world.” I’ll show you. In the middle of the Court of the Women they erected giant candelabras, gigantic massive things with a multiplicity of lights that reflected up. And at night, in the evening, they would light all those candelabras and that light would just stream out of the top of that courtyard and flood the city of Jerusalem. In fact, the rabbis used to say that every courtyard in Jerusalem was lit all night, like a brilliant diamond flashing its light over the entire city of Jerusalem, the light just came pouring out of the top of that temple courtyard in the Court of the Women … And they actually had places where people could sit around it. At the same time it was the noisiest celebration of the feast cause everybody sang and they sang certain Psalms and they had certain dancing that they did and all this noise went on all night long while this light kept burning. And that light was to commemorate the light in the wilderness.

Now just…now that you have it in your mind, has it become reasonable to see what Jesus was doing? He walks into the Court of the Women and the light is long out … but sitting in the middle of that place is this gigantic candelabra. Jesus steps into the middle of this courtyard where there’s nothing on their minds perhaps any more significant than seeing this candelabra and remembering the great illumination of Jerusalem. And they walk in there and they see that candelabra and Jesus steps up beside that candelabra and undoubtedly with some gesture says, “I am the light of the world.” What a dramatic statement. For in their minds they would be remembering a light in Jerusalem that commemorated a light that led Israel. But Jesus says, “Yes, you remember the light last night in the temple here which made you remember the light that led Israel…I am the light of the world.” Now do you see the significance of that statement?

Next week: John 8:21-30