Your Death and Christ’s Death
John 8:21-30
This is Easter, the day we especially celebrate the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. He is alive. He is not merely a memory or a myth. Jesus of Nazareth is back from the dead with a new glorious body. He is alive and reigning as the King of the universe, and He gives eternal life to all who believe in Him.
I know that some think I am assuming a lot when I say that. So let me give you a quick review of why we believe this. We Christians believe that what the 27 books of the New Testament record about Jesus is true. These books uniformly teach that Jesus lived in history, died as a substitute for sinners, and rose again on the third day; that He ascended to heaven; and He rules the world as the very God of very God.
The Bible is filled with references to the physical resurrection of Jesus from the dead. For example, here in the Gospel of John 20:27–28, the Lord appears to Thomas, one of his disciples who had refused to believe that Jesus was raised, and says, “Reach your finger here, and look at My hands; and reach your hand here, and put it into My side. Do not be unbelieving, but believing.” And Thomas answered and said to Him, “My Lord and my God!”
These accounts of what happened in the life of Jesus are completely different from legends or myths like Greek or Roman mythology shrouded in a distant past that does not connect with real history. The New Testament books are real history. Pilate, the Roman governor; Herod, the king from Galilee; Caiaphas, the High priest; these are not mythical figures. These people are known from history even outside the Bible.
The New Testament books were all written by eyewitnesses like John or by those who knew the eyewitnesses while they were still alive. Paul’s letters were written fifteen to thirty years after the death of Jesus. In one of them, he mentions the fact that 500 people had seen the risen Jesus at one time and that most of them were still alive (1 Corinthians 15:6). Most of the books were written before AD 70, forty years after the death of Jesus. The latest New Testament books were written by the apostle John around AD 90 or earlier. The point is, the time is short. This is history. Eyewitness history.
The enemies of Christianity would have loved to prove that the resurrection of Jesus was all a hoax, but they couldn’t. The tomb was empty, and there was no dead body. The best excuse they could devise is that the disciples of the Lord stole the corpse, and created the story of the resurrection. Really? The thought that these fearful disciples who abandoned Jesus for fear of their lives, the thought they should suddenly agree among themselves to create a hoax, and then die for it, is ludicrous.
No, these apostles of Jesus were not conspirators; they were witnesses. What we have in the New Testament is not mythology, but Jesus as eyewitnesses remembered Him. The message they proclaimed not only transformed their lives, but millions of people through the ages who have believed this truth including many of us who worship the Lord Jesus here today.
If you have more unanswered questions about the historicity of Jesus and the reliability of the scripture, we are giving you free today a wonderfully documented and easy to read book that discusses all these issues. I encourage you to read it and consider the truth of Jesus Christ in the scriptures of the New Testament. Josh McDowell has recently updated his classic book, More Than a Carpenter. Read it, and give it to someone who has yet to believe in Christ.
The point of all this is simply to say that when we Christians say Jesus is risen from the dead, we are not speaking mythically, or by blind faith. We are not speaking merely spiritually or emotionally. We are speaking historically and factually. In the end, the decision is yours.
I say all that because my aim in this message is that you would experience Jesus, the living Savior, the risen Lord who gave His life for you—died in your place—so that you could live with God forever. If the Bible presents the true Jesus, and if Jesus claimed to be God in the flesh and the only way to heaven, then your eternal soul depends on what you do with this message.
Up to this point of John’s gospel, John has been presenting the self-manifestations of Jesus, which gave to the Jews, and us, sufficient evidence to prove that He was the Messiah and the Son of God. And wherever there was a willingness to believe, there was plenty of evidence. But for those like the Pharisees who were not willing, there was never enough evidence. As Jesus told them in John 5:40 “But you are not willing to come to Me that you may have life.” And in John 7:19 He said, “If anyone wills to do His will, he shall know concerning the doctrine, whether it is from God or whether I speak on My own authority.”
The question is, are you willing to consider the claims of Jesus? Are you seeking to do God’s will, or like the Pharisees are you seeking your own selfish will?
Remember that in John 8, Jesus is interacting with the Pharisees at the end of the Feast of Tabernacles. As He taught in the temple during the feast Jesus had claimed to be able to give living water that flows out of the innermost being of those who believe in Him (7:37-38). He also claimed to be the light of the world and promised that the one who follows Him will not walk in the darkness, but will have the light of life (8:12). These were astounding claims that you can’t just shrug off. They grab you by the lapels and demand that you respond.
But, sadly, the Pharisees responded with hostile challenges, not with faith in Jesus. By now, so settled is their rejection and opposition to Jesus that His enemies are determined to see Him killed. Jesus had challenged the teaching of the Pharisees because it added the traditions of men to the commands of God. He exposed their hypocrisy because although they appeared righteous on the outside, inwardly they were full of wickedness and spiritually dead. They want to be rid of this troublemaker for good. Well, in our passage Jesus tells the Pharisees that a time is coming when God will give them exactly what they want. But He also warns them saying that when they get what they want, they won’t like it at all.
John 8:21-30
21 Then Jesus said to them again, “I am going away, and you will seek Me, and will die in your sin. Where I go you cannot come.”
22 So the Jews said, “Will He kill Himself, because He says, ‘Where I go you cannot come’?”
23 And He said to them, “You are from beneath; I am from above. You are of this world; I am not of this world.
24 Therefore I said to you that you will die in your sins; for if you do not believe that I am He, you will die in your sins.”
25 Then they said to Him, “Who are You?” And Jesus said to them, “Just what I have been saying to you from the beginning.
26 I have many things to say and to judge concerning you, but He who sent Me is true; and I speak to the world those things which I heard from Him.”
27 They did not understand that He spoke to them of the Father.
28 Then Jesus said to them, “When you lift up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am He, and that I do nothing of Myself; but as My Father taught Me, I speak these things.
29 And He who sent Me is with Me. The Father has not left Me alone, for I always do those things that please Him.”
30 As He spoke these words, many believed in Him.
I want to point out just two main points today in John 8:21-30. Both are centered around two “I AM” statements of Jesus, and both deal with the subject of death.
1. The truth about us and our death (21-24).
After hearing what Jesus claimed about Himself and seeing the commotion He caused during the feast, the Pharisees were surely sick and tired of Jesus and would be, as we’ve said, very happy to be rid of Him. In 8:21 Jesus speaks up again and says that they are about to get their wish, “I am going away, and you will seek Me, and will die in your sin. Where I go you cannot come.” He was going back to the Father in heaven and they would not and could not go there as long as they remained in their proud self-righteousness.
He had said something similar back in 7:33-34, but here He ‘raises the bar’ of what it means to reject Him. Jesus had said He was the Light of the world, and promised that all those who follow Him wouldn’t walk in darkness but would have the light of life. As wonderful a promise this is to those who follow Him it is also a dreadful warning to those who don’t. We see something of this dreadful warning in v21. Those who reject His claims and His Person will walk in darkness and will not have the light of life. Jesus is leaving soon, and the time will come when those who now reject Him will want to seek Him and find Him, but they won’t be able to. The result of this vain search will be death, and not just any death. Jesus says, “… you … will die in your sin.”
To die in your sin is to die condemned, judged guilty and punished eternally for your sin. The week before they kill Him Jesus will warn these Pharisees, “How can you escape the condemnation of hell?” (Matthew 23:33).
They hear His warning of judgment, but they don’t get it. Instead, probably in a deliberate put-down, they wonder if He’s speaking of suicide by saying, “Where I go you cannot come.” They think this because at that time suicide was believed to be the sin of “mad hands” that sent you to the “lowest levels of hell.” They were likely thinking, “If Jesus is going to kill Himself and be sent to hell, of course we won’t be there with Him and won’t be able to find Him, because we’ll clearly be in heaven.” But O how deceived this religious crowd is! Jesus isn’t going to kill Himself and go into hell while they go to heaven. No, they’re going to be the ones who kill Him and while He’s being exalted in the heavens they’ll be sent to hell where they’ll wish they could seek Him and embrace Him and go to Him…but they’ll find that impossible.
So Jesus explains in 8:23, “You are from beneath; I am from above. You are of this world; I am not of this world.” As heaven is to earth or light is to darkness, so too is Jesus Christ in comparison to man. All of us are born in sin on this earth, but Jesus is not from earth. He is from above. He is not of this world. He has come down from heaven as the perfect, sinless Son of God. These Pharisees refuse to believe this. In John 8:15 Jesus told them “You judge according to the flesh…” There is a humanly unbridgeable chasm between the holy God in heaven and all of us who were born in sin on this earth.
After reminding them of this great gulf Jesus repeats what He said earlier in v24 but with a very powerful addition. Again He gives the frightful warning, “Therefore I said to you that you will die in your sins; …” but now He adds more, “…for if you do not believe that I am He, you will die in your sins.”
Jesus will go on to explain to the disciples (John 16:8) that one role of the Holy Spirit is to convict the world of sin. What sin does he have in mind? In John 16:9 Jesus explains, “of sin, because they do not believe in Me.” The supreme sin, the one sin that condemns us forever is to reject Christ. That is the sin.
We must face the truth about ourselves. We are from below and of this world. Christ is from heaven above and in our sin we cannot go where Christ goes. If we reject Jesus Christ we will die in our sin, condemned forever.
That is the truth about us and our death. Let’s now consider the truth about Christ and His death.
2. The truth about Christ and His death (24-29).
Look again at verse 24. Jesus says, “for if you do not believe that I am He, you will die in your sins.” You see what He’s saying? The ‘he’ is in italics, meaning it is added in the English to give us the sense of what Jesus is saying. The legitimate sense may be, “I am who I claim to be,” but literally it reads “…unless you believe that I AM you will die in your sins.” The Greek words are two in number – “ἐγώ εἰμι” – I am. In other places Jesus says things like “I am the bread of life” or “I am the light of the world.” But here, and again in verse 28 and verse 58, it is simply “I am.”
As I said last week, these words are a clear and unmistakable allusion to the name of God given to Moses at the burning bush, “I AM WHO I AM.” And He said, “Thus you shall say to the children of Israel, ‘I AM has sent me to you.’ ” In the Greek translation of the Old Testament which the early church used, these words are identical to what Jesus claims here–that he is the Ἐγώ εἰμι.
And this is without a doubt where John chapter 8 will lead us. As Jesus reveals His true identity we will hear Jesus exclaim in verse 58, “Most assuredly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I AM [Ἐγώ εἰμι].” The Jews understood that Jesus was claiming to be God. So verse 59 tells us, “Then they took up stones to throw at Him…” thinking that He guilty of blasphemy.
The prophet Isaiah uses the words of the Lord God, “I am He” in the same way that Jesus uses them here in John 8. John seemed to be particularly fond of the prophet Isaiah and frequently alludes to his prophecies. Isaiah 40-55 is a section that speaks comfort to Israel and promises to send the “Servant of the Lord” who will save them from their sin by His death and resurrection.
In Isaiah 41:4, the Lord God says, “Who has performed and done [it], Calling the generations from the beginning? ‘I, the LORD, am the first; And with the last I [am] He.’” That is the same Greek phrase, “Ἐγώ εἰμι,” that Jesus uses here. In Isaiah 43:10, the Lord says, “‘You [are] My witnesses,’ says the LORD, ‘And My servant whom I have chosen, That you may know and believe Me, And understand that I [am] He. Before Me there was no God formed, Nor shall there be after Me.’” (It’s more than ironic that the Jehovah’s Witnesses take their name from Isaiah 43:10, but deny the deity of Jesus.) Jesus is claiming to be the Lord God of Isaiah 43:10!
Then in Isaiah 43:13 the Lord adds, “Indeed before the day [was], I [am] He; And [there is] no one who can deliver out of My hand; I work, and who will reverse it?” In 43:25 the Lord says, “I, [even] I, [am] He who blots out your transgressions for My own sake; And I will not remember your sins.” Isaiah 48:12, the Lord says, “Listen to Me, O Jacob, And Israel, My called: I [am] He, I [am] the First, I [am] also the Last.” (In Revelation 1:17 & 2:8, Jesus claims to be the first and the last, a clear assertion of His deity.) In a chapter where God speaks about sending the gospel and of His sin-bearing Servant, the Lord says, “Therefore My people shall know My name; Therefore [they shall know] in that day That I [am] He who speaks: ‘Behold, [it is] I.’” (Isa. 52:6).
So when Jesus tells the Pharisees, who knew Isaiah well, “I am He,” using the same phrase that the Lord repeatedly uses in Isaiah, He was claiming to be both the eternal God, and the Messiah. He is the suffering servant who “… was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities,” (Isa. 53:5) and of whom the Lord said, “All we like sheep have gone astray; We have turned, every one, to his own way; And the LORD has laid on Him the iniquity of us all,” (Isa. 53:6).
When Jesus says in John 8:24, “for if you do not believe that I am He, you will die in your sins”, He is insisting that we understand Him to be the Savior who is God Himself, and yet a man.
This statement is of massive importance to them and to every reader of John 8:24 in all of history. You can believe Jesus to be an inspiration, believe Him to be a great example, a great teacher, the founder of the largest movement in history, a unique person, a perfect person, truthful, honest, compassionate, loving, a prophet of God even…and still die in your sins. True faith in Christ embraces the weight of Christ’s deity.
Many people wonder how it could be possible that Jesus was raised from the dead as we believe He was. How often we labor to convince others that it was possible for our Lord to rise from the dead. But the truth is, because of who He is, it was impossible for Him not to be raised up. Our Lord came down from heaven, and this is the place to which He will return. Even His death on the cross of Calvary cannot change this. Because He is God, and because He is the source of life, death does not have dominion over Him. He would lay down His own life, and so He would take it up again (John 10:18). No wonder the Apostle Peter claims that it was impossible for death to claim the body of our Lord:
[Act 2:22-24] 22 “Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a Man attested by God to you by miracles, wonders, and signs which God did through Him in your midst, as you yourselves also know– 23 “Him, being delivered by the determined purpose and foreknowledge of God, you have taken by lawless hands, have crucified, and put to death; 24 “whom God raised up, having loosed the pains of death, because it was not possible that He should be held by it.
Jesus had to be raised from the dead. It was impossible for death to keep its hold on Him because He is God in the flesh.
What happens next in this dialogue reveals much about this Jewish crowd. They surely didn’t understand all of His words, but they did catch enough of it, probably from the I AM statement, to know Jesus was making a massive claim. So being a bit provoked they ask in v25, “Who are You?” I think the sense of their question is more life, “Who do You think You are?” or “Who are You to tell us we will die in our sins?” They were challenging Jesus, not seeking to know the truth about Him.
And so Jesus replies, “Just what I have been saying to you from the beginning.” “Have you not paid attention? Have you not witnessed the miracles and signs? Have you not heard My teaching?” They should know who He is by now. But their question reveals their blindness. So Jesus keeps on in v26, “I have many things to say and to judge concerning you, but He who sent Me is true; and I speak to the world those things which I heard from Him.” Jesus being the Judge of all men knows He cannot stand by and leave their sinful unbelief unaddressed. But now is not the time to do so. That judgment day will come, and on that day they will not be happy to meet Him in the courtroom of heaven. They’ll know firsthand then what Jesus knows firsthand now: that the Father sent Him, that the Father is true, that what Jesus spoke to them did not come from Him but from His Father.
But notice v27, as He’s sharing these heavenly realities with them He sees their unbelief and confusion. This brings Him to a climactic moment in this passage where He makes the second I AM statement. Recall the first was about our death. If we do not believe that He is the I AM we will die in our sins. Now, its not our death in view, its His. “When you lift up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am He, and that I do nothing of Myself; but as My Father taught Me, I speak these things. And He who sent Me is with Me. The Father has not left Me alone, for I always do those things that please Him.”
We know this ‘lifting up’ is a reference to the crucifixion. Jesus had earlier told Nicodemus in John 3:14, “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up.” Later in John 12:32 Jesus will say, “And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all [peoples] to Myself.” Then John explains in verse 33, “This He said, signifying by what death He would die.”
John intends some irony here, in that the verb usually means “to exalt.” To be put on the cross as a public spectacle was the most degrading and humiliating thing that could happen to a man. But the cross above all else revealed Jesus’ glory. The cross reveals the holiness and justice of God, who cannot allow any sinners to go unpunished. But it also reveals His abundant love and mercy, in that through the death of His Son, He can save sinners and clothe them with Jesus’ righteousness.
What does Jesus mean when he says, “you will seek me and not find me”? I think the meaning is this – if the Jews to whom Jesus was speaking decided to finally reject him as the Christ or Messiah, they would go on searching for the Messiah, but none would be found. Jesus is the only Savior there is! For the just Jews to pass on him would mean that had passed on their only hope for salvation. They would not have another opportunity – they would never come across another, for Jesus is the only one.
It’s a sad story indeed that these Jews who refuse to identify Him as He truly is now, will identify Him correctly after they kill Him on the cross. When they see His exaltation in the irony of His humiliation…when the skies darken, when the curtain tears in two, when He hangs lifeless on the cross, when He is raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, when they stand in judgment before Jesus and know they’ve killed the Messiah … they’ll know He was nothing less than the I AM, and they’ll be filled with dread.
Conclusion (v30)
Martin Luther once commented on this passage saying, “This is a dreadful sermon, an appalling and dreadful word of farewell.” He’s right. So much in these words makes us uncomfortable with hard realities. There is coming a time when people who once rejected Christ will look for Christ, find that He is not there to save, that He is there to condemn, and they will die in their sins, with no hope. But as hard as it is to face these things, this frightful passage turns wonderfully fantastic in v30. “As He spoke these words, many believed in Him.” In the unlikeliest of moments, after some of the darkest and hardest teaching from Christ, many believed.
Will that be you today? Will you believe that Jesus is Who He claimed to be? Will you trust in His death on the cross to save you from sin? Will you embrace the risen Savior and call Him “Lord”? If you believe in Jesus, that He died for your sin, then you will not have to die in your sin. You can live forever with Him in heaven. Believe in Him today, before it is too late.
