I and the Father Are One

Today’s Passage: John 10:22–39

It is winter in Jerusalem, and Jesus is walking in the temple courts during the Feast of Dedication, the holiday that remembers the day God’s people won their temple back. A crowd gathers around Him with one blunt question: are You the Christ? Jesus answers them with His works, and then with one short, staggering claim.

As you read, hold this: Accused of claiming to be God, Jesus does not deny it. He defends it.

Context The Feast of Dedication

The Feast of Dedication is also called Hanukkah. About a hundred and sixty years before this day, a foreign king had seized the temple and made it unfit for worship, until God’s people took it back and gave it again to Him, and this feast remembers that rescue. Solomon’s Colonnade was a covered walkway along the temple where people gathered to get out of the winter wind. The crowd there wants a plain answer, and Jesus gives them one.

John 10:22–30 (BSB)

²² At that time the Feast of Dedication took place in Jerusalem. It was winter, ²³ and Jesus was walking in the temple courts in Solomon’s Colonnade. ²⁴ So the Jews gathered around Him and demanded, “How long will You keep us in suspense? If You are the Christ, tell us plainly.” ²⁵ “I already told you,” Jesus replied, “but you did not believe. The works I do in My Father’s name testify on My behalf. ²⁶ But because you are not My sheep, you refuse to believe. ²⁷ My sheep listen to My voice; I know them, and they follow Me. ²⁸ I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one can snatch them out of My hand. ²⁹ My Father who has given them to Me is greater than all. No one can snatch them out of My Father’s hand. ³⁰ I and the Father are one.”

They asked for a plain answer, and Jesus gave them one plainer than they expected. He points first to His works, and then to His sheep, the ones He knows and keeps and holds so that no one can snatch them out of His hand. Then comes the claim itself: I and the Father are one (ἕν) hen, pronounced hen. Strong's G1520, one, a single unified thing. Jesus is not saying He and the Father are the same person. He is saying they share the same nature: one God, not a team of two. . In the plainest words He can find, Jesus is saying that He shares God’s own being.

John 10:31–33 (BSB)

³¹ At this, the Jews again picked up stones to stone Him. ³² But Jesus responded, “I have shown you many good works from the Father. For which of these do you stone Me?” ³³ “We are not stoning You for any good work,” said the Jews, “but for blasphemy, because You, who are a man, make Yourself out to be God.”

The crowd does not misunderstand Jesus. They understand Him exactly, and that is why they reach for stones. The word they use, blasphemy, means claiming to be God when you are only a man, and they say the charge out loud. He was not speaking in riddles. He was claiming to be God.

John 10:34–39 (BSB)

³⁴ Jesus replied, “Is it not written in your Law: ‘I have said you are gods’? ³⁵ If he called them gods to whom the word of God came—and the Scripture cannot be broken— ³⁶ then what about the One whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world? How then can you accuse Me of blasphemy for stating that I am the Son of God? ³⁷ If I am not doing the works of My Father, then do not believe Me. ³⁸ But if I am doing them, even though you do not believe Me, believe the works themselves, so that you may know and understand that the Father is in Me, and I am in the Father.” ³⁹ At this, they tried again to seize Him, but He escaped their grasp.

Jesus does not back away from the charge. He defends it, straight out of their own Scriptures. In Psalm 82, God calls human judges “gods,” because they carried His authority here on the earth. So Jesus asks a question back: if Scripture can call mere judges “gods,” why is it blasphemy when God’s own Son says that He is the Son of God? Then He points back to His works one more time. Believe the works, He says, even if you cannot yet believe the words, and let what He does show you who He is.

The crowd tries to seize Him again, and Jesus walks away, because His hour has not yet come.

Study notes He does not take it back

Jesus never says, “You misunderstood Me.” He answers as though they had understood Him exactly, and under the threat of stoning He says it again and will not take it back.

"The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of His nature, upholding all things by His powerful word. After He had provided purification for sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high." Hebrews 1:3 (BSB)

Accused of claiming to be God, Jesus does not deny it. He defends it.

Personal Application

Jesus never took the claim back, even with the stones raised against Him. Where is it still hard for you to say plainly that He is God?
What would change in your day if you simply took Him at His word?

Today’s decision: Say one true thing about who Jesus is, out loud, to at least one person today.

Pray to Close

The central truth: Accused of claiming to be God, Jesus does not deny it. He defends it.

Give thanks: thank God that Jesus never backed down, so that we could know exactly who He is.

Ask: ask Him for a faith that takes Jesus at His word, even in the hardest parts.

Confess: tell Him about any moment you have stayed quiet about who Jesus really is.

Worship for Today

Song: This I Believe (The Creed), by Hillsong Worship

This song sets the church’s oldest confession to music, that Jesus is fully God and fully man. It does not hedge on the very claim Jesus makes today. Sing it as your own answer to the crowd’s question.

Listen: