Today's Devotion

Tuesday, June 9, 2026 - John 12:36b-50

In the name of + Jesus. Amen.

“Though He had done so many signs before them, they still did not believe in Him.” And what’s more, this should have been expected based on the prophetic Word of Isaiah (53:1, 6:10), written seven centuries before. Their disbelief in the face of overwhelming evidence is not a matter of reasonable skepticism of the many people claiming to be Messiahs, but is rather an unreasonable belief in their own blinded eyes and hardened hearts over and against the reality confronting them. And this willful unbelief stands in the way of their own understanding and of God’s healing them of the sinful condition that causes all men to die.

And though this sinful faithlessness of the self-centered will is the norm – as our Lord has revealed to us the narrowness of the way to salvation (Matt 7:13-14) – the way of faith is received and takes root among some nonetheless (Matt 13:1-23). And this faith in Jesus – which is itself a miracle – even happened in some cases among “the authorities” who “believed in Him.”

But faith in Jesus and everlasting life in eternity is not without a cost in this temporal and dying world of temporal and dying things. The “fear of the Pharisees” was a very real motivator. For the powerful Pharisees were Jesus’ sworn enemies. Even as our Lord is preaching in Jerusalem in this third year of His ministry, having just entered the Holy City for what will be the very last Passover (the pinnacle and fulfillment of all Passovers), the Pharisees have already been shamelessly plotting His demise.

People feared being “put out of the synagogue” as a consequence of confessing with their mouths what they believe in their hearts (Rom 10:9), not because the synagogue was the place for the reading, preaching, and hearing of God’s Word unto eternal life, but rather because excommunication from the synagogue bore a steep social and monetary cost in this temporal world. It was, in a sense, to become a leper: unclean, cast out, cut off from society, reduced to begging for one’s daily bread from the very people who hate you. And this fear was used by the Pharisees for control. When it comes to confession of Jesus, we are very often given a choice between the comfort of this temporal world and the glory of the eternal world to come. We are called to both believe and confess (Rom 10:9).

“I have come into the world as light, and that whoever believes in Me may not remain in darkness,” says Jesus. For our Lord does not come bearing His own words, speaking by His own authority. Rather, God the Son speaks the Word of God the Father, armed with a commandment that fulfills the commandments of Moses, a commandment reflected in our Lord’s commandment to Lazarus to come out of his tomb (John 11:43). And this is the Word, the commandment of the Father, that Jesus (the Word Made Flesh) has broken into our flesh-and-blood world to speak: “I know that His commandment is eternal life.”

Amen.

In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.