The Bible for beginners for 11 December 2025

King James Version (en)

John, Chapter 10, verses 22-42

¹⁹ Diverse opinions of him, ²⁴ He proveth by his works that he is Christ the Son of God; escapeth the Jews, ⁴⁰ and went again beyond Jordan, where many believed on him

²²And it was at Jerusalem the feast of the dedication, and it was winter.

²³And Jesus walked in the temple in Solomon's porch.

²⁴Then came the Jews round about him, and said unto him, How long dost thou make us to doubt? If thou be the Christ, tell us plainly.

²⁵Jesus answered them, I told you, and ye believed not: the works that I do in my Father's name, they bear witness of me.

²⁶But ye believe not, because ye are not of my sheep, as I said unto you.

²⁷My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me:

²⁸And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand.

²⁹My Father, which gave them me, is greater than all; and no man is able to pluck them out of my Father's hand.

³⁰I and my Father are one.

³¹Then the Jews took up stones again to stone him.

³²Jesus answered them, Many good works have I shewed you from my Father; for which of those works do ye stone me?

³³The Jews answered him, saying, For a good work we stone thee not; but for blasphemy; and because that thou, being a man, makest thyself God.

³⁴Jesus answered them, Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods?

³⁵If he called them gods, unto whom the word of God came, and the scripture cannot be broken;

³⁶Say ye of him, whom the Father hath sanctified, and sent into the world, Thou blasphemest; because I said, I am the Son of God?

³⁷If I do not the works of my Father, believe me not.

³⁸But if I do, though ye believe not me, believe the works: that ye may know, and believe, that the Father is in me, and I in him.

³⁹Therefore they sought again to take him: but he escaped out of their hand,

⁴⁰And went away again beyond Jordan into the place where John at first baptized; and there he abode.

⁴¹And many resorted unto him, and said, John did no miracle: but all things that John spake of this man were true.

⁴²And many believed on him there.

NOTES

Today's reading returns us once again to the testimony Jesus gives about Himself. Apparently, the events in the evangelist's account took place on the day commemorating the dedication of the Temple (v. 22; the “feast of renewal” mentioned in the text could also be called the “feast of dedication,” in keeping with the meaning of the Greek word). For believing Jews, the day of the Temple's dedication was a day of God's triumph, and on that day the coming of the messianic Kingdom was awaited with particular feeling. It is no surprise that on such a day Jesus was expected to give a direct answer to the question of whether He was the Messiah (v. 24).

But Jesus' answer was quite unexpected by those who questioned Him. They apparently hoped He would tell them plainly when He would do what people expected of the Messiah in those days: raise a revolt, drive the Roman troops out of Judea by God's power, and restore an independent Jewish state there, establishing laws in full accordance with the Torah. Yet the Savior tells the people around Him something else. He says: you have already seen everything I do, and I have nothing more to tell you. This answer was entirely logical: Christ had no intention of doing any of the things His listeners expected. He could only reveal the Kingdom to them, as He had already done more than once (vv. 25-27). The Lord's chief gift, clearly, is not a restored Jewish state but the fullness of God's life, which He is ready to offer to everyone willing to receive it (v. 28).

Then comes the testimony about Himself that made devout religious people pick up stones (v. 31). Jesus says: I and the Father are one (v. 30). He reveals to His listeners the central mystery of His messiahship and His ministry: He shares one life with God. He is human, yet the fullness of God has entered the bounds of His human nature, and therefore so has the fullness of the Kingdom; He is ready to give both to everyone who thirsts for them. An ordinary human being, of course, cannot contain the fullness of God as Jesus Himself does. But thanks to Him—and through Him—this fullness, once wholly inaccessible to humanity, has in principle become accessible to everyone. It now depends only on each person whether he will partake of it.

This thought, it seems, was precisely what the people surrounding Jesus found utterly intolerable (vv. 32-33). And no wonder: to accept what He said, they would have to tell themselves and others honestly that the history of religion was over—the history of every religion, including the Judaism to which Christ's listeners belonged. The meaning of any religion lies either in the search for God, when pagan religiosity is concerned, or in maintaining a relationship with the God who reveals Himself to people, when a religion of Revelation is concerned. But the Savior offers something more: He offers the fullness of God's life in His Kingdom. There is nothing to seek here, because the essential thing has been revealed, and there is no need to make special efforts to maintain a relationship with God, a relationship that nothing threatens in His Kingdom. Here people live with God, simply and naturally, communing with Him and participating, according to their opportunities and abilities, in the life of the Kingdom. Here religion becomes unnecessary.

For a religious person, naturally, it is very difficult to accept this, because religion has formed the foundation, purpose, and meaning of his entire life. The Jews surrounding Jesus wanted the messianic Kingdom to be not so much God's kingdom as the kingdom of their religion. Now they had to choose between their own desires and God's revelation, and Jesus calls them to choose the Kingdom. But every person is free, and each makes his own choice.

As we can see, many of the Pharisees were still ready to acknowledge Jesus as the Messiah. They correctly understood His hints about His messiahship, and now they wanted only one thing from Him: that He finally declare Himself openly to be the Messiah. But He does not do this, because He knows perfectly well what "being the Messiah" means for these people, and He was not going to become that kind of Messiah - His plans did not include raising a rebellion, beginning a holy war against the Romans, or becoming the ruler of an earthly state.

Instead, He again and again explains to those around Him what the Kingdom He brought into the world is. And He speaks of the main thing that forms the basis of the Kingdom's life by His own example: to live in the Kingdom means to give one's life to God in order then to receive it back from His hands. And the Savior's own path, His death and Resurrection, is a remarkable example of this.

According to the laws of our untransformed world, even the Messiah, bearing in Himself the fullness of God and the fullness of the Kingdom, can die - although, unlike us, death is not a natural inevitability for Him. And when He is killed, He dies like any human being. But His life belongs to the Father; He lives not by His own life, but by the Father's life, which was given to Him by the Father in all its fullness. And in the Kingdom, where there is no place for death, He receives it again from the Father in all its fullness - completely unexpectedly for His enemies, who thought that now, once He had died, everything was over.

And the path of every Christian, every inhabitant of the Kingdom, resembles the path of the One who brought the Kingdom into the world. Of course, God has not given any of us, as He gave Him, the capacity to contain the life of the Kingdom in all its fullness. But the Kingdom is open to us, and one can enter it only by giving up the life that God gave us at birth, so that there in the Kingdom He may return it to us transformed. This new life will no longer be part of our world - a world being transformed but not yet transformed - but part of the Kingdom; it will become the first step on the path of our transformation, the first step on the path to salvation.

Today Jesus says to us: "My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all, and no one will snatch them out of My Father's hand." We know that there will be those who want to snatch them away. The father of lies and murderer from the beginning would very much like...

FAQ

Some believe that Jehovah God is the only Person who claims worship and trust, and that Jesus is the Son of God, also a Person, but does not claim worship, because Jesus is a creation of Jehovah; moreover, Jesus is not God, since He Himself often prayed to His Heavenly Father (He could not, after all, pray to Himself). The Holy Spirit is impersonal, an expression of the will of Jehovah God; the impersonality of the Holy Spirit is confirmed by the fact that during Pentecost, He descended upon those present, dividing into many flames. The point is that the Holy Spirit divided into many... but can a person divide and be considered the same person? Personally, I believe that judging the nature of God, considering that He is a Trinity or considering that the situation is as described above, is generally wrong. Who can comprehend the nature of God?

Who can comprehend the nature of God? Of course, only God Himself...

Who can comprehend the nature of God? Of course, only God Himself. But what is essentially important for our salvation, He reveals to us. Therefore, the Church has always tried to be precise in comprehending this Revelation, so it is necessary to clearly envision what is important for our coming to God.

The idea of the created nature of Jesus Christ was first expressed by the Alexandrian priest Arius at the beginning of the 4th century AD. The Church quite unanimously rejected this opinion as erroneous, because if it was not God who shared our life and our death with us, then there is no salvation from sin and death for us. Likewise, if the Holy Spirit is a faceless force (a sort of semolina porridge, God forgive me), then communion with a Personal God is impossible for us. In this case, again, there is no salvation, because the entire biblical faith collapses. After all, the Holy Spirit is precisely the One Who pours life into our hearts, and not in some Hellenistic "afterlife existence" (which is a non-biblical idea), but here and now. Thus, the Church believes that Jesus is the God-Man, consubstantial with the Father in His Divinity and consubstantial with us in His humanity, and the Holy Spirit is a Person, God, whom we worship together with the Father and the Son.

The arguments you write about do not seem convincing. Of course, Jesus prays—how else can a man (and God incarnate in a man as well) communicate with the Father? The manner of communion between the Father, the Son, and the Spirit in the Trinity is incomprehensible to us; but the God-Man Jesus Christ is humbled for our sake to such an extent that He also shares our manner of communion with the Father. As for the worship of Jesus Christ, the Holy Scripture says that it is precisely the belief that He is Lord that gives a person salvation. The Apostle Paul in his Epistles to the Romans ( 10:9), to the Philippians ( 2:6-11), and to the Colossians says that the will of God regarding our salvation is that we worship God in Jesus Christ, since "in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily" ( 2:9). Obviously, the opinion of Arius regarding the created nature of the Son of God radically contradicts these last words of the apostle.

The Holy Spirit, of course, can act in every person, and in many people at once, for He is Almighty! And the "divided tongues, as of fire" are only visible signs of His coming, not He Himself. Ultimately, I reply to letters from many people—does my personality thereby divide into separate pieces of paper?

It is truly important for us to know and accept what is expressed in the dogmatic teaching of the seven Ecumenical Councils, including the concept of the Trinity, first explicitly formulated by St. Theophilus of Antioch in the second half of the 2nd century. The Triunity of God means for us that He a) is not like us; b) transcends us and our understanding; c) has life in Himself; d) gives us the opportunity to share with Him the fullness of His life. This is in brief, of course. The Church's teaching on the Triune God is profound and significant enough to become acquainted with it through the Bible itself and specialized sources.

Everyone, of course, is free to choose their own confession. But it is important for Christians to remember that every dogmatic assertion has consequences in practical spiritual life, and these consequences must be seen and evaluated by their fruits.

Ecumenical council. What was the Arian heresy?

Arianism considered the Son of God, Christ, not equal to the Father. Arius and his followers believed that the Son was begotten by the Father, but a) did not exist before He was begotten (that is, He is not eternal); b) is not without beginning; c) is not equal to the Father and d) is not consubstantial with the Father, i.e., He has a different essence (nature) and, therefore, is not fully God...

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