John 19:24,25 - Tell us plainly

10:24

“How long will you keep us in suspense?” seems to be a rather strange question and is worth looking at further. I will take “the Jews” as referring to the Jewish leaders, which seems to fit better with the context. Carson seems to think that John uses the term in various ways, flipping between the Jewish leaders and a more general reference to the Jews. However, it seems to me that in most cases taking it as referring to the Jewish religious leaders makes perfect sense. So the Jewish religious leaders are demanding “If you are the Christ tell us plainly.” There are two points to note. One is that, apart from the private meeting with the woman at the well, Jesus has stated the actual words “I am the Christ”. However, His words and His actions seem to clearly state that He is indeed the Messiah.

10:25

Jesus replies “I have told you”. Now, as noted in my comments on v24 Jesus has not made the explicit statement, but His teaching and actions have made a clear statement. So why not just say the words? If Jesus had said “I am the Messiah” people would have interpreted it through the lens of their own understanding. So their interpretation would have involved a political or military Messiah, whose primary role was to set them free from the oppression of their enemies, namely the Roman Empire. This was not what Jesus came to do. Instead Jesus, while not saying “I am the Christ”, did say who He was. He spoke plainly about His relationship with the Father, He spoke plainly about our need to be born again, and about His relationship with us as the Good Shepherd.  There is an important lesson here. We should look at the word of God and let the word of God interpret itself. There is a danger that if we come to the Scripture through a particular doctrinal stance, e.g. Calvinism, then we can be blind to something of what the Word is actually saying, or at least miss parts of what it is saying. I am not saying that doctrinal statements or theological frameworks are wrong nor that we should not use them. They can be very helpful, but the word of God itself must be our primary guide. Remember that the Jewish religious leaders were learned men, yet they missed it completely.