Forbidden Bible Verses: John 10:37-42

Most of John 10 is read in church during Eastertide. However, the last six verses are not part of the three-year Lectionary, which makes them eligible for inclusion in my ongoing series, Forbidden Bible Verses — also essential to our understanding of Scripture.

Today’s reading is from the English Standard Version with commentary by Matthew Henry and John MacArthur.

John 10:37-42

³⁷ If I am not doing the works of my Father, then do not believe me; ³⁸but if I do them, even though you do not believe me, believe the works, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me and I am in the Father.” ³⁹ Again they sought to arrest him, but he escaped from their hands.

 ⁴⁰He went away again across the Jordan to the place where John had been baptizing at first, and there he remained. ⁴¹And many came to him. And they said, “John did no sign, but everything that John said about this man was true.” ⁴²And many believed in him there.

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Scholars are undecided whether the events in John 10 are a continuation from the end of John 9 or if they occurred a short time later.  Suffice it to say that they take place in December, the same month described in John 9.

The setting is Solomon’s Porch, so called because this is where the original porch of Solomon stood in the first temple. It offers shelter from the damp and chilly weather of winter.

The Jewish people were celebrating the feast of Hanukkah, as described in 2 Maccabees, no longer part of Protestant Bibles, but still included in the Catholic canon.  As we saw earlier this year in reading about the history of the King James Version (KJV) of the Bible, 1 and 2 Maccabees were an important source of hope to black slaves and informed the Rastafarian beliefs later on in the 20th century. Maccabees, along with the rest of the Apocrypha, was removed from the KJV editions after 1820, much to the disappointment of the slaves.  This is why some Rastafarians refer to the Protestant Bible as a white man’s book.

Back to Hanukkah, which was initiated not by Moses but by grateful Jews living 400 years before Christ, whose deliverance from Syrian oppression under Antiochus Epiphanes is recorded in Maccabees.  In short, Antiochus Epiphanes was furious that the majority of Jews were not following along with his remaking of their land into a secular Greek-influenced society.  So, he forbade their religious practice and had the temple profaned. John MacArthur’s commentary today has a full description of what occurred.

1 and 2 Maccabees are named after the man who managed to liberate the Jews from Antiochus Epiphanes’s rule — Judas Maccabaeus.  MacArthur takes up the Hanukkah story (emphases mine):

He was a patriotic Jew.  He was also very brilliant and a great leader.  He had a lot of brothers and a lot of uncles and others, too.  And he formed together a little hillside army, like a guerrilla band and he began to really irritate the situation.  Pretty soon his rebellion turned into a whole scale revolution and by the year 164 Judas Maccabaeus and his rebels had delivered Jerusalem from the hands of Antiochus Epiphanes all together.

Well, needless to say this was a great day in Israel.  The temple was immediately restored.  The temple was cleansed.  All the profane and polluted things were taken out of the temple.  It was declared to be set for God, the altar was purified, all the robes and the utensils were brought back into use.  Everything was set in order.  And then Judas Maccabaeus stood up and said, “From this day on the cleansing of this temple will be commemorated on the 25th of Chisleu by a great feast called the Feast of the Dedication.”  Hanukkah then is the commemoration of the revolution that ended in the great cleansing of the temple.  It’s a memorial then to the purification of the temple and it takes place two months after the Feast of Tabernacles which we read about in chapters 8 to 10.   

John 10 begins with Jesus’s parable of the Good Shepherd.  Matthew Henry explains beautifully the significance of the story and why it is still relevant to Christians.  It’s well worth reading, and I might come back to it in a separate post.

Afterward, the Jewish leaders assail Him once again as the various factions of ordinary Jews, having heard this parable, argue amongst themselves.  They continue to say to each other, ‘Is Jesus the Messiah?  Surely, the Messiah is a king, a political leader — not this man, who must be mad.’

The Jewish hierarchy goad Jesus into saying that He is the Messiah.  That way, they can turn him over to the Roman authorities as the main enemy of the state.  However, whilst Jesus is generous in discoursing with the hierarchy, He never falls into their trap in matters of deception or unbelief.  This is why some of His responses may appear somewhat vague or mysterious to us. They aren’t, but He is telling them the truth without playing into their hands.

They also wish to have Jesus condemned for blasphemy — anything to get rid of someone they see as a threat but also a man whose words they do not understand. They are spiritually blind. As Jesus answers them, they grow angrier.  Recall that at the end of John 8, a group of Pharisees picked up small stones left over from building work in the temple to throw at Him.  He escaped miraculously.

Now, they try again, but with larger stones they have brought in specifically for that purpose. However, God stayed their hands.  Then, they seek to arrest Him, as we will see, but He manages in His divinity to escape.

Between this second stoning attempt and a second attempt to arrest Him (verse 39), Jesus says something in John 10:34 which informs today’s passage:

Jesus answered them, “Is it not written in your Law, ‘I said, you are gods’?

MacArthur explains:

By the Law He means the Old Testament, here He quotes Psalm 82:6.  He says, “Well look here, fellows, you’re all really bent out of shape because I claim to be God …  I mean, after all…now watch the reasoning here…verse 34, “In your Old Testament, in your Old Testament, is it not written ye are gods?”

…  In the Old Testament there were certain judges that were set to rule over Israel.  They were to effect justice.  And these judges had the responsibility of judging the people of Israel.  They were like magistrates.  They judged in the place of God … the supreme judge …  They ruled in the place of God and so they were called in the Old Testament gods.  It’s just a term that means authority or rule ...  They received their office by divine appointment.  They were called gods since they ruled in the place of God.

Now … verse 35, “If he called them gods, that is human judges, okay?  If he called them gods, unto whom the word of God came…right?  Those guys who were already on earth were called gods and to them the word came and the Scripture can’t be broken.”  In other words, He throws that in lest they say, “Well, that was a mistake, didn’t mean to call them gods, using the wrong word, probably the writer got mixed up.”  No, no, Jesus reminds them you can’t mess with Scripture, that’s what it says.  If he called them gods and the Scripture doesn’t [err], if he called them gods and all they were were human judges…now look at verse 36, “Say ye of Him whom the Father hath sanctified and sent into the world, Thou blasphemeth cause I said I am the Son of God?”  You see what He’s saying here?

These guys were on earth to start with and they were called gods.  Can’t I even be called Son of God when I was up there to start with?  In other words, He says if your own Old Testament, fellas, if you’re all bugged about this idea of calling somebody God, if your own Old Testament called human judges gods, you think maybe your Messiah might be called the Son of God?  Pretty good argument.  And He takes them right at the point of their law.  Be objective, He says.  There are many judges, there is only one Messiah, may I not have the same title that your magistrates had? 

So, in verse 37, He says to the Pharisees that, if He is not doing God the Father’s works, they would be right in not believing in Him. However, if He is doing God the Father’s works, then, may they believe the divine power of those works so that they may see that He and His Father are indeed one (verse 38).

Henry analyses these verses:

As the invisible things of the Creator are clearly seen by his works of creation and common providence (Rom. 1:20), so the invisible things of the Redeemer were seen by his miracles, and by all his works both of power and mercy; so that those who were not convinced by these works were without excuse.

MacArthur:

… having charted the deeds that He did, then you see the conclusion is He can be no other than God in human flesh.  All you have to do is be objective when you approach Jesus Christ.  But so many people have a predetermined subjectivity based on the love of their own sin and their own ego that they never can get to the truth.  Jesus says, “Be objective.  Start by believing the works that I do and then you’ll know that I am God.  The Father is in Me and I in Him.”

Sadly, the hierarchy remain spiritually blind, and this is what MacArthur is saying above about wilful unbelief. In verse 39, the Jewish leaders seek to arrest Jesus a second time, the first having been in John 7, when the arresting officers were unable to do so as they were impressed by Jesus’s discourse. This second time, Jesus manages to escape His enemies.  We do not know how, but it would have been through miraculous means.

Some might ask if He was showing off or being cowardly, but His time had not yet come.  He was still about His Father’s work and must make good use of His remaining time on Earth. So, He crossed the Jordan River and returned to the place where John the Baptist had performed the first baptisms.  There Jesus remained (verse 40).

Some might take issue with Jesus’s desire to remain in a notionally safe place.  However, He had souls to save and could not be where His life would be in danger — not yet. Spending time where His cousin had baptised many — along with Jesus Himself — would have remained in the minds of those living nearby.  They had admired John the Baptist, although they acknowledged that he performed no miracles (verse 41).  However, they remembered his prophetic words about Jesus, all of which they agreed were true.

The last two verses tell us that many who lived in the area followed Jesus during this sojourn:

And many came to him … And many believed in him there.

Next week: John 11:45-57