Jesus Is the Light for Your Life, Part 4

TEXT: John 8:12-20

C.S. Lewis said, "When God becomes a Man and lives as a creature among His own creatures in Palestine, then indeed His life is one of supreme self-sacrifice and leads to Calvary."

In light of the Jews' disbelief of Jesus' testimony regarding Himself, Jesus points out that He is fulfilling their requirement regarding having at least two witnesses to support a testimony -- himself and his Father. He says, "I am one that bear witness of myself, and the Father that sent me beareth witness of me."

Naturally, the Jews want to question Jesus' father, so they ask, "Where is thy Father?" They are, of course, talking about His earthly "father." Some scholars say that this is not just an innocent question. Rather, it is an attempt to shame Jesus because of the controversy surrounding Jesus' birth. They would have likely done research into Jesus' background and discovered the fact that Mary had become pregnant before her marriage to Joseph. Of course, Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit and thus virgin born. But, on paper, it didn't look that way. It appeared that Mary had a relationship with someone else before her marriage to Joseph, thus raising the possibility that Joseph was not Jesus' real father (in the human sense of the word).

This kind of situation would have been scandalous not just for the parents, but for the child as well because the child would not know who his real father was. A child who could not trace his paternal lineage could not receive an inheritance when that father died and thus had a rough life. He was treated as a person who was illegitimate because he could not prove which family he belonged to. As Merrill C. Tenney notes, "In the East, to question a man's paternity is a definite slur on his legitimacy."

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