Death is Unavoidable

"Truly, truly, I say to you, if anyone keeps My word he will never see death." The Jews said to Him, "Now we know that You have a demon. Abraham died, and the prophets also; and You say, 'If anyone keeps My word, he will never taste of death.' "Surely You are not greater than our father Abraham, who died? The prophets died too; whom do You make Yourself out to be?" (John 8:51-53)

Your are certainly crazy; we know it now, for you are claiming that it is possible to live outside of the restrictions and implications imposed by death. Everyone knows that death is unavoidable. Everything we deal with, everything we believe, all of religion and all of our heritage and culture revolves around the reality and the threat of death.

Now you come along and make this wild assertion that it might be possible to live outside of the threat of death. But you must remember that the threat of death is the power that lies at the very foundation of our own ability to intimidate and manipulate others and keep them under our control. The very foundation of our religion is fear of death. If you come along and pull the rug out from under us by claiming that people can escape death, you are undermining everything we have spent centuries developing. Our whole way of life is threatened by your assertions and you are damaging the very essence of our religion. We cannot tolerate that. You are a direct threat to the way we do business and we cannot tolerate that. It is time to impose on you the very thing you claim people can escape. Then after we kill you people will see that you were crazy and wrong and even dangerous.

Death and its related aspects of pain and fear are the glue that keeps everything together for our government, our religion and our society. Death is woven through nearly everything we believe and teach. Why do you make such wild claims like this about being able to live outside of the threats of death? What do you think you can accomplish by spreading such dangerous ideas that cause false hope to spring up in people's hearts? Your are ruining everything we have spent so long working to perfect. You are contradicting what everyone knows is reality on this earth. Why after all, God Himself has imposed death on us as punishment for our sins. And even our revered forefathers and the godly prophets that we hold in such high esteem have never escaped death. So what is this nonsense you propound about escaping the curse of death by simply accepting your words? This is absolute rubbish and worse. You are out of your head. You must be speaking lies with such outrageous claims and since you accused us of being children of the father of lies, now it is obvious that it is really you who is the son of the devil and who is not speaking truth.

We have successfully been using the threat of death to keep evil in society in check ever since the dawn of our people and religion. Everyone knows that the threat of pain and death keeps people in line. And if they get too far out of line they are required to suffer that punishment. But beyond that, even all the good people on the earth eventually have to die. Its just that their death doesn't have to be so painful or imposed on them by others. Our religion believes that if you are good and live in God's favor that you will not suffer from sickness and disease and that you can die with little discomfort. Those moving more quickly toward death obviously have offended God too much and are suffering under His curse. Those who live pious lives are blessed with wealth and health until a good old age when they can die in peace.

But one thing is absolutely certain which evidently you seem to have forgotten – everyone who is born on this earth eventually will die. So don't come along with some hair-brained idea that people can avoid death simply by agreeing with your strange ideas about religion and your dangerous notions about God.

Obviously it is time to put you in your place. You claim that your words have the power to give people a ticket to avoid death? Well then maybe it is high time we let you experience the penalty prescribed by the law of Moses for making such blasphemous statements.

Therefore they picked up stones to throw at Him, but Jesus hid Himself and went out of the temple. (John 8:59)

Speaking and Hearing

He who is of God hears the words of God; for this reason you do not hear them, because you are not of God. (John 8:47)

For He whom God has sent speaks the words of God; for He gives the Spirit without measure. (John 3:34)

There is a different word in the Greek that seems to implicate something a little deeper than simply spoken words. As far as I can gather so far, this original word rhema seems to imply something more along the line of sentiments instead of just speech. The second reference above indicates to me that Jesus came to condense the sentiments of God down into language in order to try to get us to catch its spirit, its meaning, its true intent, to infect us with its contagious spirit that comes from God.

What I am now seeing in chapter 8 is an increasing emphasis by Jesus on the logos or related words which seems (again in my perception so far) to be the attempts by Jesus to convey to us through the use of words we can hear with our ears, the sentiments that are behind the words and that are far more important than the surface value of the words alone.

This emphasis begins to show up around verse 25 but suddenly takes center focus at verse 31 and throughout the rest of the chapter. Notice the significance of this idea and how the verses tend to explain and compliment each other.

So they were saying to Him, "Who are You?" Jesus said to them, "What have I been saying to you from the beginning? "I have many things to speak and to judge concerning you, but He who sent Me is true; and the things which I heard from Him, these I speak to the world." They did not realize that He had been speaking to them about the Father. (John 8:25-27)

So Jesus was saying to those Jews who had believed Him, "If you continue in My word, then you are truly disciples of Mine. (31)

I know that you are Abraham's descendants; yet you seek to kill Me, because My word has no place in you. I speak the things which I have seen with My Father; therefore you also do the things which you heard from your father. (37-38)

But as it is, you are seeking to kill Me, a man who has told you the truth, which I heard from God; this Abraham did not do. (40)

Why do you not understand what I am saying? It is because you cannot hear My word. You are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies. But because I speak the truth, you do not believe Me. Which one of you convicts Me of sin? If I speak truth, why do you not believe Me? (43-46)

"He who is of God hears the words of God; for this reason you do not hear them, because you are not of God." (John 8:47) This original word is the rhema kind of words, not just the logos type of speech that most of the rest of these reference from in the Greek. It seems more along the line of referring to the sentiments of the Father that Jesus came to reveal through the words (logos) designed to draw us into alignment with those sentiments. The only other place in this chapter that this word rhema is used is in verse 20. These words He spoke in the treasury, as He taught in the temple; and no one seized Him, because His hour had not yet come. (John 8:20)

Jesus finished out this discussion with just a few more references to this idea before He is run out of town.

Truly, truly, I say to you, if anyone keeps My word he will never see death. (51)

You have not come to know Him, but I know Him; and if I say that I do not know Him, I will be a liar like you, but I do know Him and keep His word. (55)

The central key to this issue of really grasping the sentiments of the Father through the words of Jesus seems to be in the receiving part of the equation. That shows up in the references where Jesus talks about the problem of hearing effectively and what we choose to do with what we hear from Him.

So Jesus was saying to those Jews who had believed Him, "If you continue in My word, then you are truly disciples of Mine." (John 8:31)

I know that you are Abraham's descendants; yet you seek to kill Me, because My word has no place in you. (37)

Why do you not understand what I am saying? It is because you cannot hear My word. (John 8:43)

He who is of God hears the words of God; for this reason you do not hear them, because you are not of God. (47)

Truly, truly, I say to you, if anyone keeps My word he will never see death. (51)

You have not come to know Him, but I know Him; and if I say that I do not know Him, I will be a liar like you, but I do know Him and keep His word. (55)

It appears to me that there are two layers of effectiveness, two layers of communication referred to in this passage. Jesus is coming from a different reality where sentiments are far more important than simple language; a realm where language is always expected to accurately reflect and convey sentiments more than just information.

But when He operates within our world and tries to interact with humans who have been seriously handicapped in their ability and willingness to operate transparently and honestly, He has to try to use the lower level of communication in words to try to convey the more important issues of heart concepts. But using human words always involves serious risk of being misunderstood because words have been so long abused among us that we are extremely skeptical that anyone really means what they say anymore. In addition many of us do not want to know truth that might make us uncomfortable because it exposes our own hypocrisy or deception so we automatically distort words spoken to us to align them more with what we want to think.

Jesus is addressing this problem head-on in this passage. In verse 47 He declares plainly that if we are not willing to allow God to define the real meaning of the words He uses to communicate with us then we simply cannot understand accurately what reality is about from His perspective. If we are unwilling to submit to allow God's Spirit do its work in our minds and hearts while we are listening to the words of Jesus, then those words will not produce their intended effect in our lives and we will not be able to properly understand or receive through them the life-giving communications that we need from God.