1870 1 The same moral is continually exhibiting itself in the great action of human life. Distance of time makes no difference. The energies at work are still the same. There is the way of God and the way of Satan, the principles of light and of darkness.
It is instructive to mark this — to notice how the most distant scenes of action in the book of God are quickened by the same instincts and energies. Thus in John 8 we find Genesis 3 again; the great opposing elements of the garden of Eden taking their several course, and doing their different work, in the temple at Jerusalem four thousand years after.
The serpent, or the serpent's seed, is in this solemn scene, and exactly in the old character. The serpent had found a pure creature in the garden, and had corrupted and destroyed her, and then did what he could to destroy the one who had undertaken her cause. He had murdered the woman, and conceiving enmity to her Seed was to bruise His heel. After which pattern his seed, in John 8, seeks the full ruin of the poor adulteress, and then also the life of Jesus, because He had taken up her cause, and the cause of all such ruined sinners.*
[*He had been already acting as the life or as the woman's Seed. He had done the works of the Father — healing the poor cripple at Bethesda; He had now spoken the words of the Father — by His pardoning voice shielding the adulteress from the fiery anger of the law; but on these accounts they hated Him, and sought His life, accomplishing in themselves the way and character of the serpent.]
And, still further, the serpent who entered the garden had worked by a lie; the weapon in his murderous hand was a lie. And so here, the serpent's seed are found utterly destitute of truth. Jesus was speaking the truth, as He tells them again and again (ver. 14, 37, 45, 47), just as the Lord God was speaking it when, in the garden, He told of death upon the eating of the tree. But the Jews do not understand Jesus. They have no faculty to comprehend the language of truth. "Why do ye not understand my speech? even because ye cannot hear my words." So deeply, so thoroughly, so awfully, were they departed from the power of the light and truth of God. Thus do they indeed take the place of the seed of the serpent in his two characters expressed at the beginning, so that the Lord has only to say of them, "Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do; he was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him; when he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own, for he is a liar, and the father of it."
But, again, in the garden man destroyed himself, and then hid away from the presence of God. The voice of promise, the glad tidings about the woman's Seed, however, draw him forth, and Adam walked again in "the mother of all living," and receiving from God's own hand the pledge or seal of righteousness by faith. And so in John 8. The poor adulteress is a self-minded sinner. She is detected and sentenced to death. She hides herself and is silent. But she hears, like Adam, the voice of the Son of God, the woman's Seed, and she is at peace, and walks forth again in "the light of life." That voice had again overthrown the serpent, or the serpent's seed. There was enmity between it and them, between the woman's Seed and the serpent's seed, according to the promise. And, like Adam in the garden, the poor adulteress finds life, where she deserved and might have expected death.*
[*Adam and the poor adulteress overhear, as it were, the voice of mercy for them.]
In this also the scene in the garden of Eden stands revived or reflected in the scene in the temple at Jerusalem. Four thousand years have made no difference. The moral energies, the principles of light and darkness, are the same in the world's infancy or age, in the earth's eastern or western borders.*
[*It is the light of life the Son of God carries in Himself for us. "In him was life, and the life was the light of men." For that is the very thing we need. It is not merely the light of wisdom or of knowledge; that may do for us in its season, but it is life we need. We are dead, having destroyed ourselves, like Adam and the adulteress. Till we get life from the woman's Seed we get nothing. Adam used Him as his life, and so did the adulteress; and this was knowing and using Him aright.]
These similitudes are very exact; but so also in Jesus, the Son of God, the Seed of the woman: as we read of Him, as we see Him, "the same yesterday, today, and for ever."
In Genesis 3, the promised Seed of the woman is evidently from God, for the sinner and against the serpent. And such are most blessedly and most clearly the relationships which the Lord Jesus fills and assumes in all the action and argument of John 8. He is God's provision for dead and ruined sinners, in defiance of all the malice and wrath of the enemy.
And, further, He is this at all personal cost. The serpent was to bruise His heel, according to Gen. 3; and the serpent's seed, according to John 8, was "to lift him up," the very same thing as bruising His heel. (See ver. 28.)
But, further still, though bruised, He was to get the victory and bruise the head of the serpent, according to Genesis 3. And so in John 8. He lets the Jews know that continued resistance of Him would be their doom and final destruction; that it would prove, as another scripture expresses it, "a kicking against the pricks;" or a bringing of utter ruin on themselves by the very enmity they vented against Him.
And, finally, He was their only hope (see ver. 24); as in the garden fig-leaves were insufficient, and there was no return to life through the sword — all rested on the woman's Seed.*
[*But that our hope was all-sufficient as Adam and the adulteress show. (Ver. 51.)]
These similitudes are very marked, and it is interes[*ting to the soul to trace them. But there is another thing suggested to me. The words "I am" (ego eimi) occur three times in John 8. This expression is to be made definite, I judge, according to the force of the context. And it may, therefore, intimate different glories or characters in Christ. It is used in Mark 13:6. "Many shall come in my name," says the Lord, "saying, I am." But in this place it is properly defined by the italic word "Christ," the context very clearly showing it.
It is used in John 13:19, and there properly defined by the translators, "I am he," meaning to identify Himself with the One prophesied of in Psalm 41, against whom the companion's heel was to be lifted up.
So in our chapter (in John 8:24, 28) the words are found again, and again correctly defined by the italic word "he." Because the Lord was teaching the need of their believing now, and the certainty that they should know hereafter that He was the One whom He had been presenting Himself to be.* But in verse 58 the same words, "I am," are left as they are found, indefinite. And I judge most correctly so, because at the close of a long and trying conflict with the Jews, the Lord announces His high personal glory as Jehovah; and so they understood Him, because they immediately deal with Him as they would with a blasphemer of the unutterable name.**
[*See also John 18:5.]
[**I do not doubt that in John 8 the Lord identifies Himself both with the Seed of the woman, in Genesis 3, and with the "I am," the Jehovah of Israel, in Exodus 3. And very fine this kind of thought is — the Seed of the woman — the I am of Israel — Jesus — one and the same.
On verse 58 Bengel writes somewhat thus — "The words 'I am' are here put in opposition to the word 'was,' as connected with Abram. Each word is to be taken or understood simply and absolutely. Before Abram was, He who was then speaking was. It is a discourse upon age or time."
In Isaiah 43:10, ego eimi, "I am," is the true God. See ho hon in Exodus 3 and John 3]
All this is very distinct, and very simple too, when, by a little meditation, we get on the right track with the solemn words "I am."
But, again, in connection with Genesis 3, I ask, who is the "he," or the "I am" of John 8:24, 28? Plainly, from the whole discourse, "the light of the world," or the One who had "the light of life" for dead sinners. And then again I ask, who is He that carries "the light of life" for dead sinners, but "the Seed of the woman?" This we have seen. It was faith in that promised Seed which enabled Adam to walk again as alive from the dead in the divine presence; and it was faith in Jesus, the "light of life," which enabled the convicted adulteress to do the same.