Commentary on the Gospel of John

                                  Chapter Eight

                                                                                                                                              Verses 13-18

The Pharisees accused Jesus of being the kind of person who desires only to glorify Himself, not God. So often, people who falsely accuse others of doing wrong happen to be guilty of that same offense. As Jesus clearly pointed out to them, the Pharisees and the scribes used the name of God to glorify themselves and to justify their oppression over those over whom they had authority. Matthew 23:1-36.

Jesus admitted that He spoke about Himself, but He spoke with confidence that He knew the truth because He came from Heaven, and He would return to Heaven. Jesus knew that deep in their spiritual natures His enemies knew that Jesus came from Heaven, but their excessive pride engendered in them by their evil natures would not allow them to become spiritually conscious of the fact that Jesus came from God and would return to God. Jesus knew that the image of God which He creates and puts into every human recognizes the Word of God when they hear it or read it. The men who would have stoned the woman taken in adultery dropped their stones and walked away because of the conviction of the Holy Spirit that awakened their spiritual natures. Humans become very uncomfortable and often very angry when anyone speaks about Jesus because their evil natures cause them to desire to get rid of God and to go their own ways. But Christ holds the power to eventually purge the evil natures from all living humans and return them all to reconciliation with Him. John 12:31-32; Colossians 1:15-23; I John 3:8. Jesus came to utterly destroy all the evil works of the Devil, not living humans whom He creates and loves.

The Devil cannot abandon his rebellion against God because he has become excessive pride itself. He has become totally evil. The Devil knows that the spiritual death that he injects into the inner beings of all humans has the power to engender an excessive pride that will often cause humans to stubbornly reject spiritual truth when they hear it or read it. The Devil desires to murder God so that he can invent his own nasty, moral code, and so do many humans. Nietzche understood that. John 8:44.