Being With Jesus:
John 10:34-35 (NLT)
Jesus answered, “Is it not written in your Law, ‘I said, You are gods’? So men are called gods [by the Law], men to whom God’s message came—and the Scripture cannot be set aside or cancelled or broken or annulled…” (Amplified Version)
The more Jesus’ life and ministry—including his undeniable, verifiable miracles—conflicted with the traditions of the Jewish elites, the more the Pharisees hated Jesus and wanted to kill him. In this case, his healing of a blind man on the Sabbath had fueled their murderous rage.
And the more Jesus exposed their spiritual blindness, the crazier they got. Aware of that, Jesus didn’t back down, but only sucked them more deeply into the quicksand of their own absurdity.
The Pharisees began to look for ways, any way, to justifying killing Jesus, finally settling on blasphemy—a catchall crime in that day, as it is in many religiously intolerant and hate-filled cultures in our day. They accused Jesus of claiming to be God—anathema in the Judaic tradition. Now to be sure, not only did Jesus clearly indicate in his preaching that he was God, he demonstrated that claim beyond any doubt by his miracles.
Set that aside for now and notice how Jesus used their selective outrage and their selective use of the Scripture against them. They accused him of claiming to be God, but he pointed out in the law that God has said of those men to whom he delivered his word, “you are gods.” Now there is a simple explanation for what otherwise might seem as though the Almighty was conferring of divinity upon certain men. Jesus’ scriptural reference came from Psalm 82:6, and it is a warning to the judges in Israel who had received the words of God that in turn were to be delivered through their judgments to the people. Warning is, that in this sense, the judge is commissioned by God to be god (godlike, a representative of God) to men in his adjudication.
Again, set that aside and notice something else. Jesus doesn’t refer to this psalm as “the writings” (a reference to the division of Scripture that included the books of Wisdom), but as “law” (what we would refer to as the books of Moses): “Is it not written in your Law, ‘I said, you are gods’?” What does Jesus intend when he includes the Psalms with the Law? Simply, that to Jesus, the eternal Word of God, there were no artificial and arbitrary divisions in the written Word of God. We divide Old Testament Scripture (the Bible Jesus read, by the way) into Law, History, Wisdom and Prophets. But to Jesus, it was all Scripture, and as such, it was to be treated equally and obeyed fully.
The Pharisees were great at obeying some parts of Scripture, but ignoring others. They were guilty of selective allegiance to the Word of God and selective obedience in applying in their lives. And in that, though they feigned love for the Word, they were as far from it as you can get.
What about you? Either the Bible—all of it—is your all-sufficient rule for faith and practice, or it is not. Either you love all of it—even the parts that make you uncomfortable, even the rebukes that sting, even the commands that demand radical, personal change—or you don’t love it at all. Either you are willing to submit to all of it—even the call to risky faith and generous giving and costly sacrifice—or it is a spiritual menu from which you pick and choose what you will nibble on. Either you are willing to allow all of it to absorb into your being, or you are closer to being a Pharisee than you care to admit. As Leonard Ravenhill points out, “the Bible is either absolute, or its obsolete.”
One of the ways to avoid the selective allegiance of the Pharisees is to commit to allowing God’s Word, all of it, to treat you in whatever way is needed—even if that means roughly.
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