The Gospel of John

Who Art Thou

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Conversations, Panels and Sermons

Lesson: 25- 70

Genre:

Track: 025

Dictation Name: RR197N27

Location/Venue:

Year:

Let us worship God. Oh Lord open Thou my lips and my mouth shall show forth Thy praise. For Thou desirest not sacrifice, else would I give it or delightest Thyself in burn offerings. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and a contrite heart oh God Thou wilt not despise. Let us pray.

Our Father we come again knowing Thy mercies day after day that they are new every morning, that Thy loving kindness ever fails. Teach us how great Thou art and how great is our need to trust in Thee. To commit all our ways unto Thee and to move forward in the confidence that Thou wilt never leave us nor forsake us. We thank Thee that the grimmest of our yesterdays Thou dost convert into blessings for us. How great Thou art oh Lord and we praise Thee. In Christ’s name, Amen.

Our scripture is the Gospel of John, the eighth chapter, verses twenty one through twenty nine. Our subject: Who Art Thou. John 8:21-29.

“ Then said Jesus again unto them, I go my way, and ye shall seek me, and shall die in your sins: whither I go, ye cannot come.

22 Then said the Jews, Will he kill himself? because he saith, Whither I go, ye cannot come.

23 And he said unto them, Ye are from beneath; I am from above: ye are of this world; I am not of this world.

24 I said therefore unto you, that ye shall die in your sins: for if ye believe not that I am he, ye shall die in your sins.

25 Then said they unto him, Who art thou? And Jesus saith unto them, Even the same that I said unto you from the beginning.

26 I have many things to say and to judge of you: but he that sent me is true; and I speak to the world those things which I have heard of him.

27 They understood not that he spake to them of the Father.

28 Then said Jesus unto them, When ye have lifted up the Son of man, then shall ye know that I am he, and that I do nothing of myself; but as my Father hath taught me, I speak these things.

29 And he that sent me is with me: the Father hath not left me alone; for I do always those things that please him.”

Earlier in verse twenty five the question was raised ‘Who art thou?’ The question was an evasion, you’ve probably had the experience of someone cross examining you in effect and they don’t give you chances to answer the question but they shoot another question at you because they don’t want to hear the answer. Not to learn is their goal, not to gain answers. They want to postpone and obscure the very obvious facts that confront them. One thing was clear about Jesus: His powers so obviously came from God but it was clear that He ever came from God or was God incarnate. In verses twenty one through twenty four our Lord tells us the religious leaders have the very pillars of orthodoxy, the very pillars of conservatism supposedly that they should die in our sin. The expression to die in one’s sin is an Old Testament expression, it means dying under God’s curse. With death the great impassable gulf will separate them because there is obviously a gulf between them and Christ. This is a gulf that words cannot bridge because words only reveal the moral gap rather than bridging it. Too many people have an unwarranted faith in words. A little more talking or a little more nagging is held to be the means of changing others whereas essential change is a religious not a verbal matter. Because of the moral gulf between them where Jesus goes the religious leaders cannot go. These leaders chose to misunderstand Jesus when He said He was going where they could not go they said ‘will he kill himself?’ They were trying to confuse it to everyone around them.

Suicide is a sin so by raising this question they were stressing their perspective as the true one. This man is a sinner because He is not on our side. We cannot follow Him because this would lead us to hell. Our Lord in verses twenty three and twenty four tells them that the division between them is moral and religious. They are of the world, of the race of the fallen Adam, they therefore hate God and His moral order. However much they claimed to be the true religious leaders they were still of the false religion and the false humanity. Their focus was humanistic, God’s purpose as they saw it was to ratify their faith and to support them. There are two worlds and two moral orders, the one is God centered the other is man centered. The two worlds do not merge one into another although men seek to blur the division. They are moral contraries and yet in every age there have been sometimes more, sometimes few, sometimes all too many, religious leaders who want to blur the distinction between the world and Christ. This is not a new idea. If you go back to scholasticism one of its key ideas was the donum superadditum, in other words, you were outside the faith you’re okay, all you need is this extra thing, to believe in the Christ and then your life will be perfect. And that’s the thesis of too much evangelism and too much modernism, in fact all of it. The refusal of the religious leaders to believe the I Am means that they shall die in their sin. In the text verse twenty four our Lord says in the latter part of the text:

“for if ye believe not that I am he, ye shall die in your sins.”

He has been added usually where in the King James Version the word is in italics, it is understood except in one instance, in the verb or the noun. When we say ‘shut the door’ you is understood. Well, it can be that it means ‘I am he’ but the context indicates that He declares Himself to be I Am, God. This is very, very important. God’s self-identification as the I am, He who is, the internal, the self-existent one, is most clear in Exodus 3:14 where Moses when asks Gods to define Himself, who is He, who art Thou, we haven’t heard from you in a long time, we’ve lived in slavery, how shall I tell the people about you, who are you? God simply answers I am that I am. I am the eternal one, the creator, the self-existent one, I can be defined by nothing because all things else are my creation. God is the source of definition but is Himself beyond definition. So what God tells Moses is that I cannot be defined but I can be known by my self-revelation. I am the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Exodus 3:14-15 is basic to the doctrine of God and therefore basic to the doctrine of Christ. Jesus cannot be understood naturalistically nor can He and His teachings be reduced to an aspect of the first century’s configuration of events. He is in history but His origin is in eternity. He is not of this world as verse twenty three makes clear.

By rejecting Him they would die in their sins, by refusing to know Him as God Incarnate they would know eternal death instead. In verse twenty five ‘who art thou’, our Lord does not answer them directly, they have rejected His every self-identification and they deserved nothing more. He is the same as from the beginning. Their question ‘who art thou’ is contemptuous, He had just told them who He is and they rejected it with contempt. His answer is that He has hid nothing from the beginning, He has been open, He has been plain spoken, He has much to speak about to them and they will not hear and His coming is becoming one of judgment. God who sent Him is true and what has taught them has come from God. Because what He has to say comes from God the Father it is true, moreover as judge over all creation He is mindful of the conduct of these religious leaders. For the present He speaks as the Father would have Him to speak. At this point, we are told, verse twenty six, they understood not that He spoke to them of the Father but earlier He had clearly told them of God the Father and of Himself as the I Am, one with the Father. Why now did they so obviously fail to understand Him? He had just spoken to them about having many things to say and to judge of you and they failed to grasp His meaning. Now this is very, very critical because this is what we face today. If God is simply at best a great idea and you believe in that great idea then judgment becomes an absurd concept.

Men then administer this great idea, it cannot judge in any active sense. And that’s why whenever you have this kind of thinking judgment goes out of the picture and law goes out of the picture. The church becomes antinomian because the law is a form of judgment. It says this is the way, walk ye in it, and if you do not you shall be judged. So naturally judgment is dropped and the idea takes its place. The idea inspires you. It can motivate you to love, it can do a number of things but it’s an idea and so you see God has no hands but mine to use, one of the most common statements in modern evangelism. Which means that God is not the absolute person but the great idea. For Jesus to speak of Himself as potentially their judge was impossible for them to grasp. In our time also many can believe in an afterlife, in the advisability of having a moral code and to instruct the people in it, but they cannot see God as an active person. He is simply the great idea, man does the acting. A bad actor we’d have to say. For Jesus to speak of being their judge was to baffle them because the term to them implied a human office, not God. Our Lord’s response was when they lifted Him up, meaning on the cross, then they would know who He is. This would not change them; it would instead deepen their guilt. Our Lord says further that they would know the Father, that the Father has taught Him and that He does nothing of Himself. The cross will be a revelation.

Whether openly acknowledged to be so or not it will bring them knowledge even as it hardens their hearts. In verse twenty nine our Lord goes on to say that He is never alone and that He does only those things that please the Father. He can therefore speak as He does because He and the Father are one. Our Lord has answered their question very clearly, who art Thou, but it had only lead to ignorance on their part because God was never the living God for them. For too many then and now God is the greatest idea in history, He is somehow something vague out there that inspires us but the action belongs to men supposedly. John’s prologue, chapter 1:1-18 tells us that God is He who works in history, He is the transcendent God who created all things but He does not hesitate to incarnate Himself in flesh, to walk the dirt roads of Palestine, to mingle with the crowds and to heal and to teach them. The question who art Thou is therefore always pertinent. The great modernist illusion has been the search for the historical Jesus. It assumes that Jesus is entirely a product of history because no personal active God exists, only the great idea is at best a vague spirit. An idea can do nothing outside of men and so it is held God has no hands but mine to use, a blasphemous and pharisaic concept. That’s why the evangelicals who so commonly use that are no different than the modernists. It’s the key concept to both. On the other hand others see only the activity of the Spirit, a charismatic act that affects persons but not history. So the great idea has a nebulous spiritual impact on people. But the living God made all things, governs all things, decrees all things and judges all things.

He is the Lord. Let us pray.

Our Father we give thanks unto Thee that Thou art the living God, the absolute person, the mover and maker of all things and the Father of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Wean us oh Lord from the spirit of our age, grant that we see Thee in all Thy power and majesty. Know that Thou art ever active and it is Thy will because it is the supreme will, the only absolute determining will in all of history that shall be done. And because Thou have ordained it Thy kingdom shall come. Oh Lord our God we thank Thee that Thou hast made us members of Thine eternal kingdom. In Christ’s name, Amen.

Are there any questions now about our lesson?

With respect to God as an idea it is interesting to know that one of the key figures in American history, one of the top Unitarian leaders about a hundred and fifty years ago saw God as the spirit of the age. So if you wanted to know what God was go out into the streets, you will know the spirit of the age and that is God. Now I feel that this particular text is so essential because here our Lord challenges their inability to see who God is or that He can be incarnated.

Over and over again throughout history men have wanted to see the spirit of the age as the god of the age.

[Unintelligible Question]

[Rushdoony] Yes very definitely because who creates the spirit of the age, people do. So in a way it’s a form of God making. The people who represent the spirit of the age are the ones who are the determiners. Now, if you want to understand this in a very practical working way look at the people in arts and entertainment who represent the spirit of the age and the people in politics. They act as though it is blasphemy to question them! Because even though they’ve never heard of Frothingham or know anything about his books his idea which was also that of Hagel and many another is so thoroughly in every atom of their being that you are really questioning the spirit of the age, the God of our time when you question their integrity and what they do. And if you want to be a part of that you have to be politically correct. Now the politically correct PC idea is one in a long series of ideas that have come out of this kind of thinking: the spirit of the age incarnating itself or representing the people, the trends, everything in the age. If you want to get a good contemporary example of that Andy Warhol. He carried it to the point where he said everyone can be for fifteen minutes be famous, that is, if you really work at it you can incarnate the spirit of the age and shine forth briefly.

And this is why he produced the kind of art he did, totally ephemeral, expressive of the moment. If you looked at his private apartment, not the public one where all the meetings were held, it was because a periodical showed the interior full of antiques, classical art and the like. He would have said if you criticized him, well this is just a matter of taste. In my studio I’m expressing the spirit of the age. So we have a great deal of that and it is interesting that the museum of modern art which is trying to preserve all this modern art is having a problem because it was all done with such shoddy materials. The paintings, the sculpting’s, everything is disintegrating and they are continuing spending a fortune trying to preserve them. Well the spirit of the age should lead to ephemeral art because it expresses only the moment. Yes?

[Question]

[Rushdoony] Yes very well put. Excellent. I think you ought to write an article about that because that point is exceptionally telling.

Well if there are no further questions let us conclude with prayer.

We thank Thee oh God that Thou art the living God. That it is not an idea we have to do with or deal with but the absolute living person, the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. Thou hast made us, redeemed us, and Thy hand is upon us all the days of our life and for all eternity. Make us joyful in Thee and in Thy service. And now go in peace, God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost, bless you and keep you, guide and protect you, this day and always, Amen.