John 8:12-30 Jesus is ....

John 8:12-20 We have here the next self-revelation of Jesus: 'I am the Light of the world.' Jesus connects light not to seeing but to walking, and specifically, walking with Him. The Pharisees were so focused on the rules of evidence that they could not even take Jesus' words seriously enough to try to understand what He was saying. But Jesus talks about His judgment. Following the incident with the woman who was caught in the act of adultery, it seems very likely that when He refers here to His judgment, what He means is mercy and grace. He didn't even judge the Pharisees - He just created a situation that allowed them to recognize their own hypocrisy. This was light - apparently the Pharisees were so used to sitting in judgment on others that they did not bother with self-examination. Not that Jesus was implying that we should sit around focusing on our sin and saying 'woe is me'. What He did say was that He came to bring light to the world, and that this light brings life. (See also John 1:4) He then went on to explain that the Father also bore witness to Him (see John 5:37), so that He satisfied the legal requirement of Moses for two witnesses. ( In John 5:33-47, He identified four witnesses). John then adds the parenthetical comment, very similar to John 2:4 & 7:30, that they did not arrest Him because it was not yet the appointed hour.

          The amazing thing is that the light of God, which is Jesus, brings life to the world, not judgment.

John 8:21-30 Jesus repeats His statement from John 7:33-36 that He would go away where they would not be able to come to Him. They still don't understand. He goes on to explain that His origin and the source of His life are fundamentally different from theirs. He then promises to forgive the sins of those who believe that He is the one from YHWH. At least, the use of the phrase ego eimi in both verses 24, 28, and 58 seems to be a clear self-identification with the "I AM" of the Jewish faith. There are then two consequential revelations. Firstly, He will be lifted up, and then they will know who He is, speaking of His crucifixion, as in John 3:14 and 12:23-34, and then they will recognize His deity. Secondly, He always obeys the Father, both in doing what the Father tells Him to do and things that please the Father, and not doing the things that He is not told by the Father to do. In fact, He repeats (frequently apparently) that He does nothing on His own initiative (John 5:30, 8:28, 8:42, 12:49, 14:10). His is not the passivity of waiting for something to happen so He can respond, but the aggressive seeking of His Father's will (in prayer - see Mark 1:35, Luke 5:16, 6:12, 11:1, John 17:7-8) so that He would know the Father's will and do it.

          The result of this discourse was that many people believed in Him. Perhaps they did not understand much of this yet, but they knew how to tell the true from the counterfeit, and hang on to the right stuff.