Conversation Points for John 8:31-36

Study Format:
1. Read passage aloud. What did you notice in the reading? What words or phrase caught your attention?
2. Read passage aloud a second time. What questions would you ask the text?
3. Read passage aloud a third time. What do you hear God calling you to do or be in response to this text?

Interesting Ideas to Consider:
• This section of John’s Gospel, 8:31-59, forms the central theological basis of Johannine theology. These are the theological ideas that set Christianity apart.
• What do we do with the harsh language surrounding Jews in John’s Gospel, like here in verse 31, “the Jews who had believed in him.” John’s Gospel functions on two levels, the level of the story of the life of Jesus and the level of the community for which the gospel was written. Within the level of the life of Jesus, the controversy was not between Jesus and Jews, as Jesus was Jewish, but between Jesus and the leaders (political and religious) whose power was threatened by Jesus’ presence. On the level of the Johannine community, some scholars have posited that the Johannine community was dealing with a split in the religious community that had forced them out of the synagogues. So for them, these references to the “Jews” helped the Johannine community connect Jesus’ persecution to their own experience of suffering.
• Meno (here translated “continue in”) is a uniquely Johannine word. It means to abide deeply, and connotes the permanent relationship between Jesus and his followers.
• Logos (translated “Word”) is a phrase often used for Jesus in John’s Gospel. More than word, it means active communication.
• Truth, aletheia, and freedom, eleutheroo, are other loaded words that show up throughout John’s Gospel. What does Jesus mean by truth? Or freedom? Both are not abstract concepts, but, like life and light, are bound to the Word. Truth and freedom cannot be known apart from relationship in Jesus.
• The idea of freedom connects to the exodus tradition, of God leading God’s people from slavery in Egypt to freedom. Jesus is reinterpreting the exodus tradition to freedom not just from physical slavery, but from slavery to sin.
• The rebuttal of Jesus here is a common technique in John, where Jesus says something and the listeners misinterpret what he said. The audience understands, but the characters in the story do not. Those listening to the Gospel would hear have been familiar with Jewish religious history and know the Jewish history of God freeing God’s people. In their eagerness to disagree with Jesus, those listening to him distance themselves from their own history.
• Freedom is a gift, it is not a right of inheritance.
• The son/slave parable would have been familiar to the audience. Both a son and a slave would have been under the control and the protection of the father in the patriarchal society, but only the son could inherit.

Works Sourced:
O’Day, Gail. “The Gospel of John.” The New Interpreter’s Bible Volume IX. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1995.