Click here for the reading schedule for 2023 to see today’s reading, with links to the text and video of the reading.
To see my past posts on today’s reading or anything else, see the right-hand margin or click here.
John 7
This chapter begins by saying that Jesus stayed out of Judea (“Jewry”) because the Jews there wanted to kill him. However, it then was time for the Feast of Tabernacles, which was a required feast in the Law of Moses. Jesus’s brothers seem to taunt Him, when they tell Him to go up to the feast to show Himself to the world. Jesus demurs because He knows it is not His time to go to the cross, and tells them to go on. But then after they leave, He went up in secret.
V8 in the KJV has Jesus saying, “I go not up yet unto this feast.” Many old manuscripts do not contain the word “yet”, and it appears that it was added by a scribe that thought that the lack of it made it sound like Jesus was lying by saying He wasn’t going and then He ended up going. However, it seems like “going up to the feast” was a saying at that time, referring to what we might call the “pilgrimage” that the Israelites would do, so Jesus was just saying He was not joining the mass of people going to Jerusalem, not that He would not go at all. We have many such idiomatic expressions in English, but we just don’t think of it that way. It would be like saying, “Billy gave up drinking”, then almost immediately afterwards, saying that Billy drank a glass of water. It sounds like a contradiction, but only if you don’t know that the first sentence was meaning, “Billy gave up drinking alcohol“, and was never intended to convey that Billy stopped consuming any and all liquids.
At the feast, the people were talking about Jesus, arguing whether He was a good man or a deceiver, and wondering where He was, but they were afraid to talk openly, for fear of the Jewish leaders. Then in the middle of the feast, Jesus taught publicly at the Temple, which made many of the people marvel, asking how Jesus “knew letters, having never learned”. This sounds like it’s talking about Jesus being able to read without having learned, but it’s possible that they were just talking about formal education, not absolute literacy. [Even in English, in the past it was said that someone was “illiterate” even if he could technically read, but was just not well educated, and/or read poorly.] Many of the people believed He was the Messiah, because of what He had taught and had done, but others still doubted, with some of the rulers saying that no prophet comes from Galilee. But here they were wrong, because Jonah did, and other prophets might have also come from Galilee.
Yet, notice that v42 says that the Messiah would come from Bethlehem. While John doesn’t have a birth narrative for Jesus, the fact that he puts this in his gospel shows that he knew Jesus came from Bethlehem, otherwise he wouldn’t have put it in. The reason I’m highlighting this, is that some skeptics say that because John doesn’t include a birth narrative like Matthew or Luke that this means he (and the author of Mark) were ignorant about where Jesus was born. Some skeptics even go so far as to say that Jesus being born at Bethlehem was a late addition to the gospel story. But three of the four gospels have this, and there is no hint in any historical source that early Christians believed Jesus was born elsewhere, and then only later was Bethlehem backdated in as his birthplace.
Taking a slight step back, in v37-38 Jesus says, “If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink. He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.” The first part definitely sounds like Isa. 55:1, “Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money; come ye, buy, and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.” While I know of no single scripture that speaks of living water flowing out of a believer’s belly, we do see that throughout the Scriptures, from beginning to end, many motifs of flowing water. In Eden, there is a fountain that comes out of the ground and flows in four directions (presumably north, south, east, and west — i.e., “everywhere”), then in the Prophets and Psalms the same sort of things are mentioned (such as Psalm 1 speaking of the blessed man who is “like a tree planted by the rivers of water“), and in the last chapter of Revelation, we read in v1 of “a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb.” So in one sense, we might say that it is all throughout the Scriptures! [And if a Mormon wants to say that the particular Scripture that Jesus was referencing was one of those “plain and precious truths” that were lost from the Bible, I’d have to ask why JS or a later Mormon prophet never restored it.] It’s also possible that “as the scripture hath said” might refer to “He that believeth on me”, so that Jesus is saying, “Everyone who believes in Me like the Scriptures say to do, will have a (spiritual) river of water issuing from him.” [I like this implication, but am not sure if the Greek would allow that undesrtanding.]
John 8
This chapter starts with the story of the woman taken with adultery, and this is a favorite NT story for many people, with Jesus showing great compassion and mercy to this woman. The oldest manuscripts do not contain this section, so many people believe it is not authentic. But, taking the view that it’s authentic, some find it problematic that Jesus would apparently break the Law, since adultery was a capital offense. However, note that the men claim that they caught the woman “in the very act” of adultery, yet where was her partner? It’s impossible to commit adultery alone. The Law of Moses required both parties be equally punished, so it would actually have been an injustice to stone one and let the other go free. Note also that at the end, Jesus tells the woman, “Go and sin no more”; many people who focus on the “mercy” aspect of this story often “forget” to include that part, and almost make it sound like Jesus only chastised the men and let the woman off with nothing, but that’s not the case.
The next section completely undermines any possibility of Modalism (that is, the belief that there is one person of God, and that Jesus is both Father and Son). Here, the Pharisees claim that Jesus’s testimony is insufficient (“not true”) because He’s only one witness, and the Law requires a minimum of 2-3 witnesses to establish the truth of any matter. In v18, Jesus says that He is one witness, and the Father is another witness. If they were both the same person, they would be only one witness.
V23 is important to know when speaking to Mormons: “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.” Mormons have the view that Jesus is basically the same as us — we were all literally begotten by Heavenly Father and Mother in the premortal existence — and that Jesus was the firstborn, which is (the only reason) why He has preeminence over us. However, all throughout the gospels, and especially in John, much distinction is made between Jesus and other humans. This verse in particular shows this, by distinguishing Jesus who is “from above” and the people he’s talking to who are “of this world”. If the LDS view were correct, Jesus should have told these people that they were also “from above” but were just going through “mortal probation”.
Jesus also tells them things like, “if ye believe not that I AM, ye shall die in your sins” (the KJV adds “he”, and in my opinion weakens what Jesus was saying, since second-Temple Judaism had “I AM” as a term for YHWH/Jehovah/God — see also v58, “Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am.“), and “If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free“, and “If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.” The Jews were upset at being told they were not free, protesting that they were “Abraham’s seed, and were never in bondage to any man” — even though the Jews at that time were living under Rome’s thumb, and they date their beginning as a nation to the time when they were under bondage to the Egyptians, which they memorialized every year at Passover!
Starting in this section and continuing on, there is an important section about spiritual fatherhood. What makes it so important, is that LDSs use whatever passages they can from the Bible to bolster their belief that all humans (and angels and devils) are spirit offspring of Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother, and that we were all begotten by them in the premortal existence. This passage undermines many of the “proof-texts” they use. The relevant section starts with v38, with Jesus saying, “I speak that which I have seen with my Father: and ye do that which ye have seen with your father.” His opponents say they are the descendants of Abraham (which is true, in the physical sense), but Jesus rejoins that if they were indeed Abraham’s children (i.e., in the spiritual sense), they would do what Abraham did. He also says, “If God were your Father, ye would love me: for I proceeded forth and came from God“, and continues by saying that they are the children of the devil (implying that this is shown by the deeds they do). The thing is, Mormons typically accept and go along with the Christian view of Satan being the spiritual “father” of wicked people, taking it in a metaphorical or non-literal sense, but then they turn around and take similar passages of God being the spiritual Father of righteous people, and insist that those be taken in a literal sense, and are actually speaking of the premortal existence. [This also has uncomfortable implications for LDSs, that 100% of humanity plus angels and demons have God as a literal father, but then wicked people also have Satan as their spiritual father, and then when someone is “born again” he gets God back as his spiritual and literal father. It gets complicated, doesn’t it?]
The chapter ends with Jesus declaring that “Abraham rejoiced to see my day: and he saw it, and was glad“, with the Jews protesting that Jesus couldn’t be even 50 years old, so there’s no way He could have lived at the same time as Abraham (who had died well over a millennium before). Jesus’s response (v58) was, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am“, to which the Jews take up stones to kill Him, because they recognize this as a claim to deity (including using a name/title of God, “I AM”), and believe that Jesus was blaspheming, being a mere man claiming to be God. [This is a good passage to point out to Jehovah’s Witnesses — to ask them why the Jews wanted to stone Jesus, unless they believed Him to be committing blasphemy.]
To be continued in Part 2 on Sunday.
Click here for all my posts on this curriculum and here for the MRM posts on the NT Come, Follow Me curriculum for 2023;
click here for the 2023 CFM curriculum at LDS.org, and here is the 2019 NT CFM curriculum.
TOYBOM: The One Year Book of Mormon 
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