Fair judgment.

John 7.19-24.

Earlier in John 7, the Jerusalemites found Jesus teaching in temple during the feast of Tabernacles, and wondered where he got his education, ’cause he didn’t study in any of their academies. Jesus pointed out if we pursued God instead of our own bright ideas, we’d realize exactly where he got his education.

Then Jesus took a bit of a left turn: He brought up the reason he didn’t really wanna go to Jerusalem in the first place. Jn 7.1 He bluntly called the Judeans out for wanting to kill him.

John 7.19 KWL

“Moses didn’t give you² the Law,

and none of you² follow the Law.

Why do you² seek to kill me?”

Bear in mind there’s no legal reason they’d have for killing him. He never broke the Law. He broke Pharisee customs, and Pharisee interpretations of the Law, like crazy; but never the Law. Occasionally some preachers will claim Jesus did break the Law, because these preachers don’t know their bible. They’ve been busy teaching human-made “biblical principles” based on cherry-picked proof texts, instead of what’s actually in the bible. They’ll teach dispensationalism, and claim the Law was void by the time Jesus came around, so it’s okay if he violated it. Of course whenever they talk about “laws” Jesus supposedly broke, they don’t realize they can flip right to the Old Testament, look for these supposed “laws,” and find out they’re not laws; they’re Pharisee inventions. If Jesus ever did break the Law, that’d be sin. 1Jn 3.4 And Jesus didn’t sin, He 4.15 ergo Jesus never broke the Law. Never. You’re defying your own bible if you say so.

So they had no legal leg to stand on when it came to killing Jesus. But they wanted him dead just the same—because he defied their customs. In John, the reason they wanted him dead was he cured the man at the pool on sabbath. Their custom was to do nothing on sabbath; so much nothing, they didn’t even help the needy. In contrast, Jesus teaches it doesn’t defy sabbath to help the needy, and curing people on sabbath is not only fine, but righteous. It’s why our hospitals don’t close on the weekend!

Of course, teaching this just exposed the whole hypocrisy behind the Pharisee teaching: They forbade helping the needy on sabbath because they didn’t wanna help the needy. And hypocrites hate getting exposed like that. So they wanted Jesus dead.

And when Jesus straight-up called them out about that, they fell right back to hypocrisy. Even tried to gaslight him.

John 7.20 KWL

The crowd answers, “You¹ must be demonized!

Who seeks to kill you?”¹

More precisely, δαιμόνιον ἔχεις/demónion éheis means “You have a demon.” I remind you ancient Greeks believed demons are lesser gods, meant to help people; but the Jews rightly recognized they’re evil spirits and are no help at all. In fact they usually drove people insane, so their accusation doesn’t really mean Jesus has the devil in him; more like, “You’re crazy.”

Yeah, certain Christians claim the Judeans really did think Jesus literally had the devil in him. In the synoptic gospels, the Jerusalem scribes decreed Jesus’s exorcisms were done by devilish power. Jesus never performs an exorcism in John—and this isn’t that kind of accusation. It’s the culture’s presumption about how madness works. Nowadays we’d leap to the conclusion you’re off your medication (or really need some). Back then they’d think you had a critter or two, or a thousand, in you. Anyway we can dismiss the Judeans’ comment as mere hyperbole… for now.

But Jesus wasn’t crazy. He knew they wanted him dead, and had known it since they first started plotting. They’d eventually succeed. But he didn’t want them to think they cleverly slipped anything past him; he knew. They weren’t in control of the circumstances; he was.

“Moses didn’t give you the Law.”

Most translations of verse 19 take the form we find in the KJV, “Did not Moses give you the law?” Jn 7.19 KJV But the Greek isn’t interrogative. It’s a statement: οὐ Μωϋσῆς δέδωκεν ὑμῖν τὸν νόμον/u Moÿsís dédoken ymín ton nómon, “Moses didn’t give you the Law.”

The reason it gets changed to “Didn’t Moses give you the Law?” is because Moses had given the Law to their ancestors and their progeny… so didn’t Moses give the Law to the Judeans? But Jesus phrased it this way because the Law clearly hadn’t made their way to his accusers: If it did, they’d be following it, right? But they weren’t. They followed Pharisee loopholes instead of the Law. They couldn’t see past Pharisaism to recognize Jesus accurately teaches the Law: They didn’t know the Law.

Yeah, Jesus made an antagonistic statement here. Doesn’t matter how kindly you say it—and of course Jesus said it kindly; he’s nothing but kind. (Kindness is the Spirit’s fruit, remember.) But kindly or not, it’s really gonna frost some people when you state matter-of-factly they’re not following God. It hits ’em right in their pride. Everybody, even the most depraved sinner, likes to imagine they’re good people and God’s okay with them. It’s how they salve their consciences. They just reimagine God as a big benign fuzzball who expects nothing of anyone, and lets us all into heaven no matter how much we constantly want nothing to do with him on earth. The Judeans weren’t that delusional, but they were just as guilty of reimagining God: They depicted him as a Pharisee just like them, who handed down Pharisee traditions as an “oral Law” of equal weight to the written Law. But they followed that oral Law instead of the written Law.

In their oral Law, you didn’t have to help the needy on sabbath. But in the written Law, clearly you do. Jesus even pointed to precedents set in that Law for his activity.

John 7.21-24 KWL

21In reply Jesus tells them, “I do one thing,

and all of you² are astounded.

22This is why Moses gave you² circumcision

—not that it’s from Moses, but from the ancestors—

and you² circumcise people on sabbath.

23If a person gets circumcised on sabbath

so the Law of Moses might not be broken,

why are you² angry with me?

I make a whole person well on sabbath.

24Don’t judge by face value,

but judge a fair judgment.”

Dispensationalists claim Jesus totally broke sabbath because he was inaugurating a new Law of grace. But Jesus never used any “new Law” bushwa to defend himself. His defense was always that good deeds are totally permissible on sabbath, as demonstrated in the Law. We’re never to take a break from doing good!

Ritual circumcision is an example of one of those good deeds. Eight days after a boy is born, the Hebrews were required to slice off his foreskin, as a indication this boy was to have a lifelong relationship with his LORD. Lv 12.3 The LORD never declared an exception for sabbath, so the Hebrews never observed one: If they eighth day happened to be sabbath, they still performed the circumcision. Their relationship with the LORD took precedence. Pharisees still recognized this, and it was one of their few exceptions to their utter ban against working on sabbath.

Following the Pharisee logic of קַל וְחֹמֶר/qal v’khomér, “light and weighty”—if a light biblical principle is true, a heavier one oughta be true—Jesus pointed out if you can “cure” a baby on sabbath by removing his foreskin, what’s wrong with curing an entire sick human being on sabbath as well? If Pharisees rescued livestock on sabbath, surely humans are more important! Mt 12.11

And by the time the Talmud was composed, Pharisees wound up adopting Jesus’s point of view:

Just as this priest, about whom there is uncertainty whether there is substance to his words of testimony or whether there is no substance to his words, is taken from the Temple service in order to save a life, and Temple service overrides Shabbat, so too, a fortiori, saving a life overrides Shabbat. Rabbi Elazar ben Azarya answered and said: Just as the mitzva of circumcision, which rectifies only one of the 248 limbs of the body, overrides Shabbat, so too, a fortiori, saving one’s whole body, which is entirely involved in mitzvot, overrides Shabbat. Yoma 85b

It’s just commonsense. But the Judeans weren’t seeing sense at the time. They were so anti-Jesus, they couldn’t accept anything he taught, and couldn’t recognize their particular sabbath customs were actually violating the Law.

Yeah, if you were a first-century physician, and saw patients as usual on sabbath, that’s blatantly ignoring God’s command to rest. But if someone just broke their leg, you drop everything and set the leg, right? And with Jesus, curing the sick was likewise performed on an ad hoc basis. If the Spirit empowered him to cure people, he’d do it. If the Father cures people every day of the week, Jn 5.17 what’s wrong with Jesus doing likewise?

Use your head, Jesus concluded: “Judge a fair judgment.” A superficial judgment tends to be based on knee-jerk prejudices, crowd-pleasing, and emotion—usually anger. A proper judgment is based on what’s truly fair, what helps the needy, what defends the weak, and ultimately what honors and pleases God. It’s not what the flesh wants; not what people tend to selfishly pursue, and invent harebrained arguments to defend. Same as the Judeans did, God is just the excuse they use to do as they wish, regardless of what God wants. They don’t use their heads—and God forbid we follow the crowd.