Jesus' Gospel Is Much Bigger Than You Were Taught...
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One winter afternoon, while Jesus was in the temple, he looked at the crowd of men holding stones to execute him and quoted a psalm at them. "You are gods," says that psalm. Not you were loved or you were forgiven, you are gods. And here's the thing, Jesus didn't quote that as a warning to them about pride, he quoted it in his own defense. And I promised you I'd make a video covering this topic. In the last three videos I've pointed to this moment on that winter afternoon. Men standing ready to kill Jesus, offended by the truth he was telling them.
Then he says this thing in his defense that's so shocking that the church has been at odds with itself on what to do with it ever since. Well, I'm here to make good on my promise of covering this. I saved it for last because without a solid foundation, it's easy to misunderstand the verse where Jesus said that. That's why I spent the last three videos laying the foundation for this one. My background, being raised in a cult, is why I've been so careful to build up to this topic. It's easy to find a verse, ignore its context, and use it to prove a point that just isn't being made. The Bible's a big book.
You can find a verse that sounds like it supports just about anything if you take it out of context. So, let's go to those temple courts on the afternoon it happened because where and when that happened matters more than you may realize. We'll cover the Hebrew word the psalm Jesus quoted turns on. I'll cover the objections I'm sure you'll be thinking of at that point, too. Then I'll show you a verse where the Bible's translators couldn't agree on how to render it because it sounded impossible to believe if taken literally. And And we're done, the most influential theologian the Western church has ever produced is going to say something about you so startling that you might think I'm making it up, which is why I'm going to prove it to you. The story starts in John chapter 10 verse 22.
Then came the Festival of Dedication at Jerusalem. It was winter, and Jesus was in the temple courts walking in Solomon's Colonnade. The Festival of Dedication, what we know by its Hebrew name, Hanukkah. It's the feast that celebrates the Maccabees cleansing and rededicating the temple after it was defiled by a pagan king. Across Jerusalem, people are burning lamps in the winter darkness. Each small flame is a little declaration that God's light outlasts any empire that might try to destroy it. It's through that lamp-lit city that Jesus walks.
Remember, at the beginning of his gospel, John identifies Jesus as the true temple, the word who tabernacled among us. And now he's walking in the temple's eastern portico, Solomon's Colonnade. That's where the rabbis of the time taught and theology was argued over. A feast about a temple being reconsecrated. It wasn't an accident that John made sure those details were recorded in his retelling of what happened. We'll see why that matters so much in a bit. The crowd in the colonnade doesn't gather around Jesus the way an interested group of people would.
No, the Greek there says they encircled him, ringed him in to try and prevent his escape. Then they demand an answer from him. "How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly." And Jesus, as calm as winter's light, does answer them. "I did tell you, but you do not believe. The works I do in my Father's name testify about me.
And then he makes the famous statement that sends the crowd into a fit of rage. He says, "I and the Father are one." Now, a note on the Greek here because it really matters. The word for one is hen. It's neuter, neither male nor female. One thing, not one person. Jesus isn't saying that he and the Father are the same person, rather he's claiming unity.
That unity would eventually be spelled out by the church as one essence or nature. One light, the perfect mirror and the perfect light source as it were. Those men understood instantly what Jesus was saying. You see, they weren't wrong about what Jesus was claiming. They were just wrong in the verdict that they rendered about it. John continues. Again, his Jewish opponents picked up stones to stone him.
And when Jesus asks, and I love this part, "I have shown you many good works from the Father. For which of these do you stone me?" They answer with this. "We are not stoning you for any good work, but for blasphemy because you, a mere man, claim to be God." You, a mere man. That's the whole issue right there. To that crowd, for a man to claim what Jesus was claiming was blasphemy.
And blasphemy was punishable by death. Now, if they expected Jesus to either soften his claim or just repeat it louder, he doesn't do either of those things. Instead, he asks them a Bible trivia question.
"Is it not written in your law, 'I have said, you are gods?'" That's a quote from Psalm 82:6. That Psalm is only eight verses, and it's one of the strangest scenes recorded in the Old Testament. In it, God stands up in a courtroom and calls all the beings there Elohim. Then, he prosecutes them. "How long will you defend the unjust and show partiality to the wicked? Defend the weak and the fatherless. Uphold the cause of the poor and the oppressed."
And then the part Jesus quoted, "I said you are gods. You are all sons of the most high, but you will die like mere mortals. You will fall like every other ruler." The word there in Hebrew, gods, that's Elohim. That's the same word the Old Testament uses thousands of times for God himself. "In the beginning, Elohim created the heavens and the earth." It's the same word.
The Greek translation that Jesus hears knew rendered that passage using the word theoi, gods. It's not a softer word. The God of Israel in Israel's own songbook looks at somebody and says, "I have set up myself, you are Elohim. All of you are sons of the most high." Who's God talking to there? Well, the psalm tells us what they do. They're judges.
They're supposed to defend the weak and helpless, the fatherless, the poor, but they failed to do that. The traditional reading is that these are human beings that carry God's delegated authority, the judges, the rulers, people appointed to represent God's justice on earth, but aren't doing so. Some of the later rabbis got more specific. They read this psalm as looking back at Israel at Sinai, the whole people standing at the mountain receiving the word of God. That reading fits Jesus' own words perfectly, and I'll show you why. Now, were these Elohim being called the almighty? Well, of course not.
The line between creator and created is absolute and unpassable. It doesn't move, not in this Psalm or anywhere in this series of videos. I made that clear at the start of the series. But God's word had come to them. His authority was placed on their shoulders. They were supposed to be mirrors of heaven's light, its justice here on earth. And so that title, heaven's own title, in a participatory lowercase G sense, is applied to humans.
Not because they worked to attain it, but because it was conferred onto them by God. The title came down to them. They didn't go up and earn it or take it. Once you understand that, the Psalm makes sense. Now look at what Jesus does with it. To that crowd, stones in hand, ready to strike, Jesus says this. If he called them gods, to whom the word of God came, and scripture cannot be broken, what about the one whom the Father set apart as his very own and sent into the world?
Why then do you accuse me of blasphemy because I said I am God's son? Three things are happening in that statement. First, to whom the word of God came. Like we covered, these gods are people that received the word of God, people addressed by God. Jesus' point here is that if their own law could apply the word Elohim, God, to flawed humans just because God's word came to them and authority was conferred onto them, well then how is it blasphemy for Jesus, the one the Father consecrated and sent, to call himself God's son?
He's making what's known as an argument from the lesser to the greater. If the title Elohim, God, could be conferred onto them, then how much more should it belong to Christ himself? Second, and scripture cannot be broken. Jesus is staking his life quite literally on the fact that one syllable of that one Psalm can't be set aside or ignored. He's telling them that the verse is true. You can't change that, so you got to deal with it. And third, here's your Hanukkah payoff.
The one whom the Father set apart. The Greek word used for set apart here means consecrated, sanctified, dedicated. It's what you do to a temple. It's the same word the book of Maccabees uses for the day they consecrated the temple after taking it back. It's what Hanukkah celebrates. Jesus says that while standing in the rebuilt consecrated courts at the festival of dedication, Hanukkah, with the whole city celebrating. Those men holding those stones came to celebrate the rededicated temple.
Meanwhile, the true temple is standing right in front of them telling them his father had already performed the dedication ceremony upon him. Now, back up, zoom out, and look at Jesus' whole argument here because it's wonderful. When Jesus gets accused of blasphemy, a mere man claiming what he shouldn't, he doesn't defend himself by saying, "I'm not a man, so the rules don't apply to me." What he does is say, "Your scriptures never taught that mere man is all a human being is." He defends his divine sonship by pointing out a verse showing humanity's capacity to carry divine things to the point of that Psalm calling them gods. The religious leaders' error wasn't that they thought too highly of God, but that they thought too little of what God intended for humans. Their reverence had a massive gaping hole in it.
You. And if you're picking up a stone to throw into the comments here, let me handle some of the objections you might be thinking of. Because if what I'm saying is true, then it can withstand examination. So, let's examine it. Objection one. Isn't this exactly what the serpent said, "You will be like God." Genesis chapter 3, the original lie, the one that caused the whole mess Jesus came to deal with in the first place?
If you've seen the other videos in this series, you already know the answer to that. But in case you haven't, I'll give you a summary. But I suggest you go back and watch the others to get the full understanding.
In that colony, Jesus quotes the psalm the serpent in the garden counterfeited. The serpent's offer was for Adam and Eve to seize likeness to God, to take it, steal it on their own terms. Psalm 82 makes it clear the title is conferred.
"I have said, you are gods." That's God talking right there. The lie wasn't the claim that they could be like God. The psalm clearly states they are gods, and Peter wrote that we are partakers of the divine nature. The lie was how that was achieved. The serpent said, "Take it, it's yours." But God grants it freely.
You receive it, you don't seize it. It's a gift. The proof is also in the psalm. The psalm doesn't just grant the title, it also pronounces judgment. "You will die like mere mortals." it says. That's the end of anyone who tried to use the God-gifted position to serve their own self-interest.
The title comes with a courtroom. Nobody gets to wave this psalm around as a license. Objection two. That is what Mormons teach. This is new age. No, it isn't. Again, I suggest that you watch the whole series if you haven't so this is very clear to you.
The Bible talks about participation not promotion. Mormonism teaches that human beings can become beings of the same class as God, gods by nature on a ladder God himself once climbed. The Bible absolutely does not teach that. Before me no God was formed nor will there be one after me. There's only one uncreated God and there will never be another. Psalm 82 describes creatures remaining creatures carrying by grace what God possesses by nature. The iron never becomes the fire that's infused within it.
The mirror never becomes the sun whose light it reflects. Lowercase g, never capital G. Objection three. I've heard scholars say that Elohim of Psalm 82 aren't humans at all. That's true and I want to discuss that because some of y'all will go research and after this video which I seriously applaud you for doing, you absolutely should. There is a serious scholarly reading that the Psalm is God in heaven judging rebellious spirit beings. But even if that's correct, it doesn't break this teaching.
Jesus' argument runs downhill either way. Whoever that word Elohim is describing, that title traveled down from God to created beings. Beings the same Psalm says will die. So the point stands. If scripture can use the word God on created beings without it being blasphemy, then the one the Father consecrated and sent isn't a blasphemer for saying I am God's son. And the word still reaches you. John's about to tell us how.
Objection four. Wasn't Jesus just scoring a debate point here? Some people claim that John 10 is just Jesus being clever. He's outmaneuvering his accusers by quoting the Psalm, but he's not implying anything about human dignity. But John's gospel won't let you read it that way. In the opening chapter of his gospel, John says, "Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God." John records Jesus "You are gods" defense in the same book he wrote to announce the word became flesh so that flesh could become children of God.
And what's the second half of the verse Jesus quotes say? "You are gods, you are all sons of the Most High." This wasn't some random proof text Jesus was using to try to win an argument. He quoted the verse that says over Israel what John says the word came to make true in us.
Now, real quick, if I got you to put the stone down and this series has helped you, would you hit that subscribe button for me? I started this channel to show the treasures in the text that I was never shown, but matter more than words can say. >> [snorts] >> And let me know in the comments what your first reaction was when you read "You are gods" in your own Bible. Was it confusing, liberating, or something else? Or if this is the first time you ever even thought about it, let me know that, too. And if you want the full version of what I'm talking about here, the Hebrew, the guardrails, all of it, I cover it in depth in chapter 8 of my book The Broken Mirror: Rediscovering Our True Nature in Christ. The chapter's titled "Ye Are Gods."
One reviewer wrote, "Just a fantastic book. You will feel yourself discovering your identity in Christ." The link to that is in the pinned comment in the video description.
All right, stay with me because there's a verse in your Bible where one Hebrew word reached for something so lofty that English translators have never agreed on how to render it. Yes, Psalm 82 has a sister verse and translators have been arguing about it for centuries. It's Psalm 8. David is looking up at the night sky. He feels so small, a feeling you can relate to if you've ever done the same. His response to that feeling is to cry out, "What is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them?" And then verse 5.
Now, if you group reading the King James or the NIV, it says, "You have made them a little lower than the angels." But the word they render the angels is a word you already know, Elohim. English translation committees have never agreed on how to render it. King James says angels. The English Standard Version says heavenly beings. But some modern translations, including the New American Standard, which is about as cautious a Bible as you can get, takes it all the way and says, "You have made him a little lower than God." Capital G God, "and crowned him with glory and honor."
To be fair here, translating it as angels isn't some kind of scandal. That's what the Greek version says, and Hebrews quotes it that way, too. So, it's not like the translators were simply hiding something or too afraid to render it correctly. A little lower than the angels tells you your place in the pecking order. A little less than Elohim, God, crowned with glory and honor? That's a whole different thing, isn't it? That tells you that David, writing centuries after Eden, looked at human beings and set their created dignity just beneath the divine himself.
So, now we have two Psalms. One where God made you just short of Elohim, and the other where God addresses people as Elohim. And standing between them both in the winter light of the Feast of Dedication is Jesus telling his accusers that scripture cannot be broken. The pattern was never hiding from us. It's right there in the text. We've just been preaching around it, afraid of accepting what it says at face value. But the answer to a dangerous truth isn't to make the truth smaller.
Truth is truth, whether it makes your hand shake in awe or fear or whatever. You don't guard the truth, you accept it come what may. If you've watched this series, then you know how I handle these things. First, I give you the claim, and this is a big one for sure. Then we check it against somebody close to the beginning. Now, for this one, rather than return to the early church fathers we've already met in this series, I'm going to pull from the most influential theologian in the history of the Western Church. Both Catholics and Protestants claim him as their own.
Augustine of Hippo. If there's anyone you can't claim heresy about, it's the man who spent his life fighting heretics at every turn. Here's what Augustine in his work Expositions on the Psalms had to say about Psalm 82:6.
He who justifies is the same who deifies, because by justifying he makes the sons of God. If we have been made sons of God, we have also been made gods, but this is by the grace of him who adopts, not by nature. If we have been made sons of God, we have also been made gods. That's Augustine talking, not some mystic on the margins. This is the architect of Western theology reading the same Psalm Jesus quoted and taking it at face value. But notice that he also puts the limit on it that I've talked about in this series, by grace of adoption, not by nature. It's a gift from God, not something we take, not something we earn, it's something freely given to us.
So, if anybody tells you this teaching is some modern invention or new age or pulled from the Latter-Day Saints or anything other than what it is, the clear ungarded truth of God's word, now you know it's not any of those other things. It's Psalm 82, John 10, the pen of Augustine. The early church had no problem teaching the clear truth about this. It's the modern church that got nervous about it. Why it stopped being taught is a different topic for a different video. What matters is in all 40 years of my Bible study and church going, I never heard it said even once. Maybe you didn't, either.
So, what did Jesus actually leave us with that winter afternoon in Solomon's Colonnade? Let's walk through what this video series has demonstrated. You were created an image bearer, created in the imago Dei, the image of God. You were crowned with glory, a little less than Elohim. The mirror was broken. You know that story all too well. And the whole gospel from the manger to the cross to that empty grave and the fire Pentecost, all that was God refusing to accept the shattering of that mirror as the end of the story.
Christ in you, partakers of the divine nature, transformed from glory to glory, Genesis again. Put all of that next to Psalm 82, and there's two things being said at the same time. The first is a warning. That conferred glory can be misused or squandered. Remember who God is addressing there, judges that were supposed to defend the powerless, and they didn't. The verdict of their failure was included. I said, "You are gods, but you will die like mere mortals.
The title they were given was real, but they spent it on themselves instead of to help others. God called them out on that in court. So, if anybody tells you that you are gods, it's just a way to claim you don't answer to anybody, that person needs to read the full song. The higher the calling, the harder that gavel lands on the bench when it's abused. That's the warning, and it's also proof that this isn't about inflating your ego or self-importance.
You are gods is a gift, but it's a gift that comes with heavy responsibility for how to care for it. But, here's what that warning also proves, that dignity was never something you earned. [clears throat] God didn't say there to perform well and become Elohim. He said, "I have said you are gods." The appointment comes first, the accountability after. Glory only travels in one direction, down from God's mouth, by God's word, to you. The question you need to ask about your standing was never, "Have I been good enough to be called this thing?"
The question is, "Has the word come to you?" And the answer to that is a resounding yes, the word has come to you. That was Jesus' whole point. "Those to whom the word of God came," he said. You're watching a video about that word. The word himself, what John calls Jesus, came to you, put on human nature, carried the cross, and now lives in you. Christ in you, the hope of glory, so says the verse.
The Gospels and New Testament are clear on this point. John said that to all who received him, he gave the right to become children of God. That's not you earning anything, that's adoption. What the judges squandered, the son restores.
Now, you might be thinking, "John, if you saw the week I had, you would not put this verse anywhere near me. I promise you that." And look, I get it. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. But the title being conferred on you doesn't depend on what kind of week you've had. That's what adoption means. Being someone's child isn't a job that you get fired from, not in God's eyes.
You're family forever. The fact that you recognize your mistakes says so much about you. You don't pretend to be perfect. You're not self-righteous or self-justifying. You know you need Christ. We all do. You're not gods by nature.
We're children of the Most High by grace. Bearers of his authority, reflectors of his light with an assignment: protect the weak, help the poor, shine light into the world. The men threatening Jesus with those stones, they couldn't stomach that. It wasn't that God was too big for them, it's that his plans for human beings were. They didn't like that because it took power away from them and returned it to who God conferred it to, all of us in Christ forever.
So, here's your practice for this week. Every week has had a small practice as a way for you to polish the mirror. Here's the last one. I call it the second glance. You see your reflection a dozen times or more every day without even noticing that you're doing it, whether it's in the bathroom mirror or the phone screen with the power's off or a shop window, whatever. Every one of those glances is an opportunity. You can look at yourself and you can see the flaws, the age, the failures, the mere man.
We tend to do that a lot. But this week, stop and look at yourself again in that reflection and say, "The word came to me. I am a child of God." You're not feeding your ego or trying to manifest anything when you do that. All you're doing is agreeing with the Psalm that Jesus staked his life on for you. That reflection is a temple of the Holy Spirit where in Christ dwells, an image bearer being restored, somebody the judge of the universe conferred glory upon. If the first glance shows you the flaws, stop and look again, and let the second glance tell you who you really are, who God says you are, who Jesus said you are.
That's not vanity, that's scripture, which cannot be broken. Those men picked up stones to throw at Jesus because he dared to speak out loud the truth told in the Bible. The gap between God and humanity is not what those accusers would have you believe. They might have been sincerely trying to guard God's honor, perhaps, but God's honor doesn't need protection from his own generosity. Jesus slipped through their hands, John says, and went back across the Jordan to the place where his own father had once torn the sky open to say, "This is my beloved son." And that voice, that voice is the one that he shares with you.
If this is the first video of mine that you've seen, I suggest you go back and watch the whole series. There's so much more to this, and it will change the way you view yourself, the world, and the gospel. We've been given a gospel much smaller than what God intended for us. And if this one helped you in some way, send it to the person who's only ever been told what they're not. Their friends still sit in a religion every week hearing how worthless and broken they are, rather than the truth that they are an adopted child of the Most High. You know exactly who I mean. Send them this.
And let this be our prayer. Abba, Father, we come to you having put down the stones we once lifted to fight against your truth. Thank you that when some religion said mere men, your son spoke out, you are gods, and staked it in your unbreakable word. We confess that we thought far too little about who we are, what you made us to be, too little of what you bought and what you intended. The gospel we were taught was much too small to accomplish what you held out for us. Forgive us for guarding your honor against your own generosity, and teach us to carry the glory you've given us the way Jesus carried it. We kneel, we serve, we defend the weak, and we reflect your light into every room we enter.
Keep us small g humble and big G yours. We love you, we reflect you, we are yours. In Jesus' name, amen.
