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.
Part 1, covering John 7-8, is here.
John 9
This chapter is entirely about Jesus healing a man who was born blind (one of the 3 Messianic signs in Second-Temple Judaism), by making clay, anointing the man’s eyes, and telling him to go wash in the pool of Siloam (one of many Biblical locations we know of — this one was found in 2004 — unlike any location in the BOM). There is a unique LDS angle to this miracle, because the disciples ask Jesus “who did sin, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” It may seem an innocuous enough question, but LDSs take this as a support for their view of a premortal existence, with people having had the potential to commit sin at that time, which would cause them to have a problem on earth, such as being born blind like this man. There are, of course, several problems with trying to make this support the LDS view, and top of the list must be that Jesus said that neither the man nor his parents had sinned to cause the man to be born blind. Thus, the best the LDS can say is the “argument from silence” that Jesus didn’t say that there could be no premortal existence; but nothing He said could be adduced to be in support of the LDS view.
Other things to consider is whether there is any evidence from this time period to support the LDS view. As far as I know, there is none, so there is no reason to think that that is what the disciples had in mind. However, I think there is support — perhaps in Josephus — that some Jews of that era believed in at least some form of reincarnation, so it is possible that that is what the disciples had in mind with this question — that in a past life, the man may have committed some sin. [There is no support for the idea of reincarnation in the Bible; not only does Jesus say nothing in support of it here, but elsewhere the Bible never even hints of it, and instead speaks against it with passages such as Hebrews 9:27, “And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment” — men die once, not repeatedly, going through multiple reincarnations. Also, Romans 9:11 diminishes if not completely contradicts the idea of premortal sin, speaking of Jacob and Esau before birth as not having done any good or evil.]
Going back to discussing the miracle itself, once again the Pharisees are mad at Jesus for having “worked” on the Sabbath day (by mixing a bit of spit in dirt to make clay to put on the man’s eyes), rather than rejoicing that the man could now see! They asked the healed man about Jesus, but he didn’t know anything about Jesus (couldn’t identify Him in the crowd, because, of course, he hadn’t seen Him); but despite pressure from the Jewish religious authorities to denounce Jesus as a sinner (for working on the Sabbath), he still proclaimed that Jesus must be a prophet, since He was able to heal him. Then they called in the man’s parents, and they didn’t know anything, except to affirm that, yes, that was their son, and yes, he had been born blind. It appears that they could have possibly said more in favor of Jesus, but were afraid to acknowledge Jesus as the Messiah, since the religious leaders said that all who did were to be put out of the synagogue (excommunicated, disfellowshipped). The parents having deferred to their son, the Jews pressure him, but he points out (in what I think must be a sarcastic or at least disbelieving tone) how astonishing it is for the religious leaders to have not known where Jesus was from, considering this wonderful miracle.
The very end turns this into a spiritual lesson, with Jesus saying that had the Pharisees actually been blind (at least, in a spiritual sense — that is, if they had not been properly taught), they would have not been charged with sin, but because they claimed they could see, “therefore your sin remaineth”.
John 10
Remember that there were no chapter divisions in the original gospels, so this chapter, which is about Jesus as the Good Shepherd, is right on the heels of and thus contextually linked to the blindness of the Pharisees and the healing of the man born blind. All throughout the OT, God is said to be like a shepherd (most prominently known in the famous Psalm 23, “The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want”, but also throughout the prophets), and here Jesus claims to be the Good Shepherd. While that by itself is not sufficient to say that Jesus is claiming to be God (especially since there are many OT passages that call the leaders of those days “shepherds” — often wicked or lazy shepherds, if they were doing wrong), in concert with other, stronger passages, this certainly supports the deity of Jesus. There are a lot of analogies in this passage that may not be clear in our day, since we typically don’t know sheep and shepherding, but the people of that day would have felt them forcefully.
Of particular note is the section on v16, with Jesus speaking of “other sheep” who “are not of this fold”. The BOM says that the disciples wrongly thought that this was speaking of Gentiles, but it was actually speaking of the BOM people — in short, saying that Jesus’s “sheep” were Israelites, so there must be Israelites there with Jesus and other Israelites in the Americas that Jesus had to visit. I discuss this more thoroughly here — Mormon problems with “other sheep” in John 10.
V22 tells us that this happened at Hannukah — “the feast of the dedication” — and that it was winter. [I include this because some people have a problem with celebrating “holidays that aren’t prescribed by God”, but Jesus apparently didn’t have that view, since He attended this Hannukah celebration, though it wasn’t prescribed by the Law of Moses, and indeed didn’t even appear in the Jewish Scriptures, but was first celebrated in the inter-testamental time.]
V24 has the Jews demand that Jesus announce that He was the Christ, with Jesus saying He already had told them, by virtue of the miracles He had performed, but that if they refused to believe the works, why should He tell them in words? (I think it is implied that they would not have believed Him had He said it, but I’ve also heard that at that time, because of the tenuous situation between the Roman Empire and Judea, and the high level of “Messiah fever”, that Rome took a dim view of anyone who claimed to be the Messiah, so it’s entirely possible that they were trying to bait Jesus into a public announcement, just so they could go run to the Roman leaders and tell on Him to them.)
This chapter is very Calvinistic, and thus causes a problem for the anti-Calvinistic Mormons. Passages such as v26-28 are particularly problematic, since it says that the unbelievers don’t believe in Jesus because they are not His sheep (Mormons need this to be the reverse — that they are called “not His sheep” because they are not believers), but that those who are Jesus’s sheep hear and follow Him, and they are the ones who receive eternal life.
The chapter ends with Jesus announcing, “I and my Father are one”, which caused the Jews to want to stone Him “for blasphemy; because thou, being a man, makest thyself God”. This is of course one of many places where the NT teaches that Jesus is God (and if Jehovah’s Witnesses or somebody wants to argue about that, ask them why Jesus didn’t tell them that they were mistaken in thinking He was making that claim! He doesn’t, which indicates that He was agreeing with them when they said that He, a man, was making Himself God).
In v34, Jesus quotes Psalm 82, “ye are gods”, and LDSs take this in support of their views of “the council of the Gods” (sometimes called “the Godhead”, made up of all humans who have become Gods living and working in unity), that God and man are the same “species”, and that humans are “Gods in embryo”. At first glance it appears that that argument holds water, but upon closer inspection, it actually fails, because, among other reasons, that psalm points out that these “gods” under discussion were unjust or even wicked, and would “die like men”, so this cannot be about deified humans. (For a more in-depth look, see my past post here and a more authoritative piece here.)
The curriculum
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.
After some preliminary leadup, the curriculum then says, “When the Jews asked Jesus to “tell us plainly” whether he was the Christ, He revealed a principle that can help us distinguish truth from error: “My sheep hear my voice,” He said, “and I know them, and they follow me” (John 10:24, 27).” I strongly disagree with this, and don’t think the context bears it out. Instead, the curriculum seems to be presenting a tautology (I’m not sure that’s the correct word; if you know a better one, please tell me), because it sounds like it fits this: “A logical combination of sentences that is always true, regardless of the truth or falsity of the constituent sentences“. See, both LDSs and non-Mormons alike can claim to be the sheep who are hearing Christ’s voice — yet we believe completely different things, and both of us believe the other to be wrong! So, I can say, “I listen to Jesus and follow His words, which is why I reject JS as a prophet and Mormonism as true”; but a Mormon would say, “I listen to Jesus and follow His words, which is why I accept JS as a prophet and Mormonism as true”. How can “this principle” help us in this situation, to “distinguish truth from error”? It can’t! This is why I call it a logical fallacy and a tautology. The next section is extremely similar, saying, “According to John 7:14–17, how can you come to know that the doctrine Jesus taught is true?” This passage includes Jesus saying, “If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself.” Again, the way it’s being used here is useless because both Mormons and non-Mormons will claim that they are doing God’s will (by either accepting or rejecting Mormonism) and thus know that what they believe is correct!
It might be tempting for non-Christians to look at passages like that and then accuse Jesus of using tautological statements, but I disagree. Rather, I think that Jesus was primarily pointing to already-accepted Scripture and showing how the Jews of His day had misunderstood and/or misused it, and showed what was the right way of understanding it. For example, they were mad that Jesus healed on the Sabbath, calling it “working” and thus claimed that Jesus was breaking the Sabbath by making people whole. Jesus brought them back to the Scriptures, to the actual Law that Moses gave, and showed how their extra-Scriptural traditions were actually adding to and obscuring the Scriptures, and even violating them!
While the curriculum conveniently stops in v17, I found the first part of v18 most instructive: “He that speaketh of himself seeketh his own glory….” This very much applies to JS, who actually wrote himself into parts of the Bible so that they would predict him and his work.
Most of the curriculum is identical in the 2019 and 2023 versions, but after the section on the woman taken in adultery, there are major differences. The 2023 version continues on to talk in a non-controversial way about Jesus healing the man born blind and Jesus being the Good Shepherd, before ending with “Ideas for Family Scripture Study and Home Evening” — activities for families to do to help engrain the lessons in their children’s minds. The 2019 curriculum, instead, goes into talking about Jesus claiming to be “I AM” (and, for the record, I fully agree with what they say here, as you see from what I wrote above; they just don’t realize the full implications of it! — ““I am” is the term Jehovah used to identify Himself to Moses, as recorded in Exodus 3:14. So when Jesus said, “I am,” He identified Himself as Jehovah, the God of the Old Testament. The Jews considered this blasphemy, and under the law of Moses, the penalty was death by stoning.“). Then when speaking of the man born blind, the 2019 version adds that “the disciples’ question in John 9:2 revealed that they believed in the premortal existence, a doctrine that was lost to Christianity during the Great Apostasy but restored through the Prophet Joseph Smith (see D&C 93:29; Moses 4:1–4; Abraham 3:22–26).” The 2019 version also includes a sentence on “the other sheep” of John 10:16 before moving onto the “Ideas for Family Scripture Study and Home Evening” (teaching similar concepts as the 2023 version, but using different activities).
TOYBOM: The One Year Book of Mormon 