John 10:34-37 -"I said you are gods"

10:34

This is a very interesting response of Jesus. One would have expected Him to say something like “I am God”, or “I am the Son of God”. Instead Jesus quotes from Psalm 82:6. So what is this Psalm about? Remember chapter and verse numbers were a much later addition to the Bible, so Jesus may well have the whole Psalm in mind, and the subsequent words would seem to bear this out.

Psalm 82 is a Psalm where God castigates the leaders for not administering justice and not looking after the poor and the weak. It then says they have neither knowledge nor understanding and that they walk about in darkness.The phrase “you are gods” is declaring what they should be like (we were created in the image of God), but instead they would die. It closes with a call for God to judge the earth and to inherit the nations.

10:35-37

So Jesus asks them why they have a problem with Him saying He is the Son of God. Now this is interesting. The Jews were very fastidious about not using the name of the Lord, considering it too holy. Here we see that Jesus is not that concerned about this at all, what He is concerned about is leaders being the good shepherds God intended them to be, and in them recognising their need of a saviour. We need to be very careful if we get all high and mighty about some issue, for we can often use this as an excuse for neglecting what is really important.

Jesus then focuses their attention on what He was doing. Was He doing good works or not? So the Jews were not focusing on their own lack of good works, and neither were they focusing on Jesus’ manifestly good works.