Therefore
Jews took up stones again to stone him. Jesus answered them, “I have shown you many good works from my Father. For which of those works do you stone me?” The Jews answered him, “We don’t stone you for a good work, but for blasphemy: because you, being a man, make yourself God.”
John 10:31-33
John 10 [25.] Jesus answered them, “I told you, and you don’t believe. The works that I do in my Father’s name, these testify about me. But you don’t believe, because you are not of my sheep, as I told you. My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give eternal life to them. They will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all. No one is able to snatch them out of my Father’s hand. I and the Father are one.”
John 10 [31.] Therefore Jews took up stones again to stone him. Jesus answered them, “I have shown you many good works from my Father. For which of those works do you stone me?”
John 10 [33.] The Jews answered him, “We don’t stone you for a good work, but for blasphemy: because you, being a man, make yourself God.”
John 10 [34.] Jesus answered them, “Isn’t it written in your law, ‘I said, you are gods?’ If he called them gods, to whom the word of God came (and the Scripture can’t be broken), do you say of him whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world, ‘You blaspheme,’ because I said, ‘I am the Son of God?’ If I don’t do the works of my Father, don’t believe me. But if I do them, though you don’t believe me, believe the works; that you may know and believe that the Father is in me, and I in the Father.”
Meaning:
Jesus had just said, “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30). His hearers understood him perfectly, and they reacted with fury. These verses record a moment of great danger, a calm question from Jesus, and an accusation that, without meaning to, states the central claim of John’s Gospel.
- “Took up stones again”:
The word “again” recalls the end of the previous discourse at the Feast of Tabernacles, when Jesus said, “before Abraham came into existence, I AM,” and “They took up stones to throw at him” (John 8:59). Stones lay ready to hand in the temple area, perhaps from the building work that was still going on. The law commanded that a blasphemer be stoned: “He who blasphemes Yahweh’s name, he shall surely be put to death. All the congregation shall certainly stone him” (Leviticus 24:16). But this was meant to follow a proper trial with witnesses, not a sudden act of mob anger. Later Stephen would die in this way, when his hearers “threw him out of the city, and stoned him” (Acts 7:58).
- “Many good works from my Father”:
Jesus does not run, and he does not respond with anger. He asks a question that exposes the injustice of what they are doing. His works were good: healing the sick, feeding the hungry, giving sight to the blind. Peter later summed up his ministry: he “went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him” (Acts 10:38). Jesus calls them works “from my Father,” because everything he did was done in union with the Father. To attack him for such works was to attack the goodness of God.
- “For blasphemy”:
The leaders reply that their quarrel is not with his deeds but with his words. Blasphemy meant speaking in a way that dishonoured God, and above all claiming for oneself what belongs to God alone. The same charge was raised when Jesus forgave sins: “Why does this man speak blasphemies like that? Who can forgive sins but God alone?” (Mark 2:7). At his trial the high priest tore his clothes and said, “You have heard the blasphemy!” (Mark 14:64).
- “You, being a man, make yourself God”:
Here is the irony. The accusation is false in one sense and true in another. Jesus did not make himself God, as if a mere man were grasping at divinity. But he is God, the eternal Word who “was God” and who “became flesh” (John 1:1; John 1:14). Earlier the leaders had already sought to kill him because he “called God his own Father, making himself equal with God” (John 5:18). Paul describes the truth the other way round: Christ, “existing in the form of God,” emptied himself and took the form of a servant (Philippians 2:6-7). He was not a man who made himself God, but God who became man.
The leaders were right that Jesus’ claims were either blasphemy or the truth. There is no middle ground. At the end of John’s Gospel, Thomas will confess what they refused to accept: “My Lord and my God!” (John 20:28).
The Significance of John 10:31-33
- Answering hostility with truth:
Faced with stones, Jesus answered with a question and pointed to his works. He did not return violence for violence. His followers are called to respond to hostility with patience and truth.
- Who is Jesus?
These verses make clear that the people who heard Jesus understood him to be claiming equality with God. Christian faith rests on this: Jesus is not only a great teacher or prophet but God the Son, come in the flesh.
- Good works that bear witness:
Jesus’ good works pointed to the Father. Believers, too, are called to live in such a way that their deeds honour God and draw others to him, even when they are misunderstood.
Cross-References:
Leviticus 24:16: "He who blasphemes Yahweh’s name, he shall surely be put to death." The law the leaders appealed to.
John 8:59: "They took up stones to throw at him, but Jesus was hidden, and went out of the temple" An earlier attempt to stone him.
Acts 10:38: "who went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him." The good works of Jesus.
John 1:14: "The Word became flesh, and lived among us." God became man.
Conclusion: When the crowd took up stones, Jesus asked for which good work they wanted to kill him. They answered that it was for blasphemy, because he, a man, made himself God. Their charge unknowingly stated the truth of the gospel: Jesus is not a man who made himself God, but the eternal Son who became man, and he calls us to confess him as Lord and God.
PIB Scriptures are derived from the World English Bible