30 “I and the Father are one.”
31 The Jews picked up stones again to stone Him. 32 Jesus answered them, “I have shown you many good works from the Father; for which of them are you going to stone me?” 33 The Jews answered Him, “It is not for a good work that we are going to stone you but for blasphemy, because you, being a man, make yourself God.” 34 Jesus answered them, “Is it not written in your Law, ‘I said, you are gods’? 35 If He called them gods to whom the word of God came - and Scripture cannot be broken - 36 do you say of Him whom the Father consecrated and sent into the world, ‘You are blaspheming,’ because I said, ‘I am the Son of God’? 37 If I am not doing the works of my Father, then do not believe me; 38 but 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.
40 He went away again across the Jordan to the place where John had been baptising at first, and there He remained. 41 And many came to Him. And they said, “John did no sign, but everything that John said about this man was true.” 42 And many believed in Him there.
You have probably noticed a pattern developing over the last few chapters in John’s Gospel. We have now reached the end of a long and drawn out account of Jesus’ conflict with the Jewish leaders, and things now finally reach a climax. He had performed works of mercy and love before their very eyes, but they hated Him for the truth He revealed to them, and this pattern has continued to this day where the name of Christ is hated. He said to Nicodemus in John 3:19, “The light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil.” The reason the lost hate Christ is because they love their sin.
John chapter 10 ends with a dramatic scene, as Jesus is surrounded by an angry mob led by the religious elite who are ready to stone Him, as Jesus calmly replies, “I have shown you many good works from the Father; for which of them are you going to stone me?” (John 10:32) Their answer was, “It is not for a good work that we are going to stone you but for blasphemy, because you, being a man, make yourself God.” (John 10:33)
The irony here is remarkable. Had the Pharisees understood the Old Testament prophecies correctly as they claimed to, they would have known that God became a man. Instead, they want to execute a man who claimed to be God. As we saw last week, they wanted to know if He was the Christ, and in John 10:30 Jesus tells them plainly, “I and the Father are one.” Anyone who says that Jesus never actually claimed to be God has clearly not read the Gospel of John.
James Montgomery Boice writes, “Is Jesus God? That is the great question of John’s Gospel. Is He fully divine? In this verse, Jesus declares that He is, doing so in just six words. ‘I and the Father are one.’”
This is the plainest and most direct claim to deity that Jesus made, and His listeners were incensed. It was obvious that Jesus was a man, as He was standing in front of them, yet He claimed to be God, which was blasphemy.
Just what did Jesus mean by saying, “I and the Father are one?” There was a unique unity which He was claiming, and in order to understand the depth of this unity with God we need to look at His words in the preceding verses. “I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand.” (John 10:28-29)
When we connect this with what Jesus said in verse 30 - “I and the Father are one,” we can see why the Pharisees were so upset. They recognised that Jesus was claiming to be one with the Father not only in respect to His will but also to be one with Him in power. Jesus said that just as no one can snatch His sheep out of His hand, the same truth applied to the Father’s hand. He wasn’t claiming to be like God. He was claiming to be God in all of His fullness, as Jesus identifies Himself in essence with the Father.
When He says, “I and the Father are one,” this is far more than the way in which God indwells Christians through the Holy Spirit. Rather, He means that He and the Father are one divine being, and are equal in their power and glory, so here He is talking about the mystery of the doctrine of the Trinity, which states that there is one God in three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. By one God we mean that there are not three different Gods, but one God, yet there are three divine persons who share this one divine being. So much has been written about the mystery of the Godhead, but had God wanted us to fully grasp the doctrine of the Trinity, He would have given us the mental capacity to do so.
R. C. Sproul has an interesting take on the limits of human understanding of the Trinity when he writes, “The Trinity does not refer to parts of God or even to roles. Human analogies such as one man who is a father, son, and a husband fail to capture the mystery of the nature of God. The doctrine of the Trinity does not fully explain the mysterious character of God. Rather, it sets the boundaries outside of which we must not step. It defines the limits of our finite reflection. It demands that we be faithful to the Biblical revelation that in one sense God is one and in a different sense He is three.”
In other words, the true nature of God is beyond our comprehension, and we actually don’t need to have all of the answers.
In John 10, Jesus defended Himself against the charge of blasphemy not by denying His deity, but by asserting and emphasising it, and this is why the Pharisees were determined to have Him executed.
It’s one thing for Jesus to be one with the Father, but we need to ask what the significance of this truth is. What does the deity of Jesus mean to us?
There are at least four important implications of Jesus’ claim to be one with God.
Firstly, although we most certainly do not fully understand all of the deep mysteries of God, in and through Jesus, we can know the Father, simply because Jesus is God. If you want to know what the Father is like, look to Jesus Christ. He said in John 14:9, “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.” We can know God because we see Him revealed in the person and work of Jesus as recorded in the Bible.
Secondly, since Jesus is God, as Christians we can be certain that our sins are forgiven through His death on the cross. There are many who object to the Christian doctrine of the atonement by arguing that no man can die for another man’s sins. This is actually true, except that Jesus was not a mere man, but the eternal Son of God, the second person of the Trinity. His blood, which is of infinite value, is sufficient to pay the penalty of our sins in full.
Third, because Jesus is God, we can trust in and rely on His promises. If He is one with the Father, then He will do all that He has promised He will do, because as Hebrews 6:18 reminds us, it is impossible for God to lie. For Jesus to not do what He has promised to do for His sheep would be contrary to His very nature. When He says in John 10:28, “I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand,” you can bet your life on that. Literally.
And the fourth point is the truth that Jesus is one with God establishes His authority. His words have authority as the very Word of God. His teaching has authority to govern our lives. Jesus has the right to demand our faith and obedience, and His sovereign will cannot and will not be undermined.
The Jews wanted to stone Him at the end of John 10, just as in chapters 5 and 8, but they could not, because as Jesus had said repeatedly, His hour had not yet come. They had no power and no authority over Him. There is an important word in verse 31: “The Jews picked up stones again to stone Him.” John makes the point that this was not the first time. When Jesus finally did go to the cross and die for the sins of the world, it was not because the Pharisees had at last succeeded in having Him put to death. He went to the cross in accordance with the eternal plan of redemption of God, not man’s. John 17 records the High Priestly prayer of Jesus, and in verses 1-5 we read, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you, since you have given Him authority over all flesh, to give eternal life to all whom you have given Him. And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do. And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed.”
Despite the overwhelming evidence which pointed to the reality of who Jesus was, the Pharisees still wanted Him dead. Look at verses 25 and 32: “I told you, and you do not believe. The works that I do in my Father’s name bear witness about me. I have shown you many good works from the Father; for which of them are you going to stone me?”
Jesus had healed the sick, cast out demons, cured lepers, fed the hungry, and gave sight to the blind. In chapter 11 He even raised the dead to life. His whole life was defined by doing good, but in verses 25 and 32 He is referring specifically to His miracles. When we examine the miracles of Jesus Christ, do we come to the conclusion that He was blaspheming when He identified Himself with God, or do they confirm His divine nature and power? The answer, you would think, seems pretty obvious, but still they want to stone Him to death.
This gives us a vivid, yet ugly picture of the sin of unbelief. There will never be enough evidence to convince those who refuse to believe in Jesus Christ. They hate Christ and they hate God, just like the unbelieving world today. They hated Him so much, they wanted to kill Him, despite all the good He had done. Romans 8:7 tells us why. “The mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot.”
The reality is that the heart of most unbelievers is so dark they would do the same thing the Pharisees were trying to do in John 10 if given the chance. J. C. Ryle, in his commentary says, “Unconverted men would kill God Himself if they could only get at Him.”
The problem the Pharisees had was that they could not refute His good works. But, they insisted, they wanted to stone Him not because of what He did but because of what He said: “You, being a man, make yourself God.” (John 10:33)
Jesus’ answer to them seems rather cryptic. “Is it not written in your Law, ‘I said, you are gods’? If He called them gods to whom the word of God came - and Scripture cannot be broken - do you say of Him whom the Father consecrated and sent into the world, ‘You are blaspheming,’ because I said, ‘I am the Son of God’?” (John 10:34-36)
Jesus knew that they couldn’t kill Him just because they didn’t like Him. They needed a legal pretext in order to have Him put to death. They needed to have the law on their side, and so in these verses, Jesus turns their whole argument upside down. Blasphemy was a capital offence. This wasn’t the issue, because the Pharisees were basing their accusation on the law of Moses, so what Jesus did was expose their inability to handle the Scriptures properly. He was quoting from Psalm 82.
In order to understand what Jesus meant here, we need to see that in the Old Testament judges were called gods in the sense that they were given authority to exercise judicial sovereignty. They were called gods not because they were actually divine, but because they represented God when they judged the people. In Exodus 4, God said that Moses would be a god to Aaron. This is the same thing, so we need to bear this in mind as we read Psalm 82.
“God has taken His place in the divine council; in the midst of the gods He holds judgment: ‘How long will you judge unjustly and show partiality to the wicked? Give justice to the weak and the fatherless; maintain the right of the afflicted and the destitute. Rescue the weak and the needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked.’ They have neither knowledge nor understanding, they walk about in darkness; all the foundations of the earth are shaken. I said, ‘You are gods, sons of the Most High, all of you; nevertheless, like men you shall die, and fall like any prince.’ Arise, O God, judge the earth; for you shall inherit all the nations!”
Psalm 82 pronounces judgment and a rebuke on the judges of ancient Israel, and Jesus, by quoting this psalm does the same for the Pharisees. Psalm 82 acknowledges that the judges of ancient Israel ruled with God’s authority, which meant they were to fulfill a holy task on God’s behalf, but when you read the psalm it is clear that they were not being commended, but rather condemned because they were not governing fairly.
Jesus’ point in quoting from this psalm was not to prove His own deity. The miraculous signs He had performed were ample proof. Rather, He did so in order to show that His accusers lacked a Biblical basis for their charge of blasphemy. If sinful judges of the past could be called gods, how much more should Jesus, “whom the Father consecrated and sent into the world” as He says in verse 36 be worthy of the title? Just as Psalm 82 condemned the judges in Old Testament times, so it stood in judgment against the Pharisees in John 10.
Jesus was particularly harsh with the Pharisees, and for very good reason. He “ate with sinners and tax collectors,” in that He treated normal people with mercy and kindness, but not so with false teachers who should have known better. James 3:1 says that those “who teach will be judged with greater strictness,” and this what Jesus was doing verses 34-36.
In His “closing argument” in John 10 Jesus told them that if they really did understand the Scriptures, as they claimed, they would believe in Him. “If I am not doing the works of my Father, then do not believe me; but 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.” (John 10:37–38) Basically He was saying, “Rather than being offended by my claim to be God, you should examine my credentials, which prove the Father has sent me into the world.”
His point here was that since He performed works that only God could do, surely they should think seriously about who He was claiming to be, but they blindly ignored the evidence. Don’t make the same mistake, because your eternal future depends on who you say Jesus is.
If you have yet to repent of your sins and turn to Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, consider this: Who else could turn water into wine, raise the sick and lame, feed a huge crowd with just a few fish and loaves of bread, and give sight to a man born blind?
These miracles provide more than enough evidence to prove that Jesus is who He says He is. John 20:31 again: “These are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in His name.” His signs validate His proclamation in verse 30. “I and the Father are one,” and because Jesus is God, He has the right to say in 14:6, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
James Montgomery Boice writes, “Open your ears. Hear the voice of Christ. Believe Him. Turn to Him. Throw yourself upon Him. Receive Him as your Saviour.”
In chapter 11 He performs His greatest miracle, when He raised Lazarus from the dead? What kind of man can do this, unless if He is God Himself? But Jesus’ greatest work was performed on the cross, where He died to pay the penalty of all the sins of those who believe in Him. Matthew, in his Gospel account, tells us what happened as Jesus died on the cross. “And behold, the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. And the earth shook, and the rocks were split. The tombs also were opened. And many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised, and coming out of the tombs after His resurrection they went into the holy city and appeared to many. When the centurion and those who were with Him, keeping watch over Jesus, saw the earthquake and what took place, they were filled with awe and said, ‘Truly this was the Son of God!’” (Matthew 27:51-54)
And then we come to the closing verses of John 10. “He went away again across the Jordan to the place where John had been baptising at first, and there He remained. And many came to Him. And they said, ‘John did no sign, but everything that John said about this man was true.’ And many believed in Him there.” (John 10:40–42)
These words provide us with tremendous encouragement, because all of what happened before at the temple was so disheartening. If Jesus showed Himself at the temple with such powerful works and words and still was rejected, what hope is there for the Gospel in our world? The hatred of Jesus Christ and His Gospel is growing with each passing day, yet, the good news is still being faithfully proclaimed, and the lost are still coming to salvation by faith in Him. Jesus was rejected at the temple because the people there were proud and hard-hearted. So He went out into the country, back to the place where John the Baptist had preached, “and many believed in Him there.
How should this encourage us? Quite simply by looking at the example of John the Baptist. He was not able to do miracles, and neither are we expected to. All John could do was to live a holy life and tell people about Jesus, and this is what we are called to do.
We don’t have to turn water into wine or walk on water. We simply tell people about Jesus and, as John did, warn them of God’s judgment on their sin. Don’t tell them that God just loves them and has a wonderful plan for their lives. That is not how the lost come to salvation. Warn them about the judgment of God, and allow the Holy Spirit to convict them of their sin. Look at the example of Peter’s sermon on the day of Pentecost: “Now when they heard this they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, ‘Brothers, what shall we do?’ And Peter said to them, ‘Repent and be baptised every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.’” (Acts 2:37-38)
John the Baptist showed people their need, and directed them to Jesus to provide for their need. “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.” (John 1:29)
Homegroup Study Notes
Read John 10:30-42
There are many people who say that Jesus never actually claimed to be God.
Looking particularly at verse 30, how would you answer them?
It is clear here that Jesus was not only claiming to be equal to God in His power and authority, but He was saying He is God in His very essence or nature.
What is your understanding of the Trinity?
We have all heard the example trying to explain the Trinity by using water (Solid, gas and liquid).
Why is this illustration flawed?
Why do we not fully understand the doctrine of the Trinity?
Read Psalm 82
How does this Psalm help us to understand what Jesus meant in verse 34?
Read verses 37 and 38.
Why do you think the Pharisees flatly refused to honestly assess the evidence of Jesus’ miracles?
How does verse 41 encourage our efforts to share the Gospel?