Judica 2025

Judica (Lent V)

John 8:42-59

April 6, 2025

When God made our first parents, He made them to be the crown of His creation. He made them in His image.

This is the source of Satan’s rebellion. He envied man’s place. He despised that material creatures— he despised that a man and woman of flesh and bone—would be so exalted, would be God’s image-bearers in the cosmos. That—man’s place in God’s creation—is the point of attack.

Temptation to sin therefore is not a temptation to do this or that bad thing. The demonic temptation is for “man to cease being man” [Weinrich]. The goal of temptation is to destroy man.

Certain obvious sins make this clear. The alcoholic is destroying his liver, for example. But the less obvious ways come to us in the disguise of freedom. To do what you will, that is the act of a free person. But when your will is opposed to God’s, the thing you think gets you freedom is actually enslaving you, destroying you, as surely as the heroin addict is destroyed more with each fix. Each sin, each act of rebellion, is destroying our humanity. Jesus is the one man who stands undestroyed. Just before the crucifixion, Pilate unwittingly declares this: he brings Jesus out and says, “Behold, the man.”

Today’s Gospel anticipates that declaration. Today’s Gospel is a confrontation between Jesus and His opponents.  But now, two weeks before Easter, it comes to confront us. Myriad are the ways we oppose Jesus, while deceiving ourselves that we are His disciples. “Why do you not understand My speech? Because you are not able to listen to My word.” A better rendering might be, “You do not will [you do not wish/want] to hear.” We put up guards and barriers to the words of Jesus because if we let them penetrate mind and heart we will have to change. And part of us—a very perverse and stubborn part—does not want to change. We want to be Christians while pursuing upward mobility, working and saving for very earthly goals, avoiding hardships, harboring grudges. We do not understand the words of Jesus because understanding would demand repentance, change, sacrifice. And we don’t really want that. We want an entrance into the kingdom while also fulfilling our own will.

Today Jesus teaches us faith is not a spectrum, but a binary, far separated from its opposite. There is a great chasm between faith and unbelief. “If God were your Father, you would love Me,” Jesus says – to us! Where is your loyalty? There are two ways, and there is a great difference between the two ways. There is the way of life – the way of faith, of radical obedience to God. This way is difficult; it demands we forgive others, submit to God, and confess Truth before the world regardless of cost. And there is the way of death – the way of unbelief, the way of the devil. This way is the way of the lie. The lie is the death of man.

Lying may be the worst of all sins. Why? Dietrich Bonhoeffer put it this way: “Lying is the negation, denial, and deliberate and willful destruction of reality as it is created by God and exists in God” [DBW 16, p607]. A lie is an assault on reality. That means a lie is an assault on God who created what is real. Lying is an attempt to destroy God’s creation, and erect in its place your own fabricated reality.

Thus the devil is described in today’s Gospel as not standing in the truth. He rarely comes with cinematic effects, with a foul odor and a low growl. He comes with the lie. How has the lie invaded your own soul? What bitterness and resentment is growing there?

Forty days of Lent is nowhere near enough for us to confront our own fraudulent hearts and motives. But we must confess our own lies, and acknowledge the ways we are still chained to the devil, and filled with his envy.

What is stopping you from believing in Jesus – believing all the way, no more lies, no more envy, no more angling for self-security?

We must start by declaring a break from that voice of envy, the lie permeating our hearts. Instead we confess, “I want, I desire, I wish to follow the Lord Jesus in the narrow way, the way of truth, the way of His Word alone, Sola Scriptura.”

Jesus says the one who keeps His Word will never see death. What does it mean to keep the Word? It’s more than obedience. It’s about identity. To convey the idea in English, we might say, “Whoever stays true to the Word.” We know what it means for a soldier to stay true to his mission. We know what it means for a judge to stay true to a fair reading of the law. We know what it means to stay true to the pledge of love and fidelity in marriage – and the myriad ways such a pledge can be broken. Are you staying true to the Word of God? Are you a disciple of Jesus comprehensively, permeating your life and your being? “‘To keep the Word’ of Jesus is to hold true to one’s identity as a disciple of Jesus” [Weinrich].

When Jesus connects “keeping the Word” to life, He is drawing from the Psalms. Here are two examples from Ps 119: “Your testimonies are righteousness forever. Give me understanding, and I shall live.” Understanding God’s testimonies, His Word, is life. And again, “Behold, I have loved your commandments, O Lord; in your mercy, make me alive.” God makes us alive, and we love His Law.

Approaching Jesus now in His Supper, we lay before Him the truth about ourselves. We have lived as if God did not matter, and as if we mattered most. We have been bound to the things of death. But we come to the conqueror of death and say, “I hate what I have been, done, and said. I love You, Lord Jesus. I bring my shame into Your light, and You clothe me. I bring my death before You, and in Your mercy, You make me alive. Put to death my death. Fill me with Your Word, and so make me alive.” +INJ+