offered a principle, pointed in the right direction, but the full disclosure of its content is only found in one’s personal experience. The whole gospel message suggests that perfecting includes a maturation of character, a thorough inculcation of honesty, and a motive of kindness directed at service to others. Matt 5:48 summarizes this as becoming more like the heavenly Father. This saying is not a departure from, but a fulfillment of, the rest of the Lord’s teaching as found in the New Testament.
We found that the Lukan saying of a kingdom within draws attention to God’s activity within the believer’s mind, values (“treasure”), and experience. Matt 5:48 goes further, implying the perfecting of behavior, character, and faithfulness. The Lukan passage alerts us to where it all begins, the Matthean passage tells us where it all is headed.
You are gods
John 10:34–35, where Jesus quotes a psalm that says “you are gods” and affirms that this is said of “those to whom the word of God came,” needs to be considered contextually. Jesus is being challenged for claiming to have divine power, and his comeback is to draw attention to a unique and startling passage in the OT that seems to say that people have divinity, can even be called elohim, “gods” (translating literally). Many hundreds of years before Jesus, when the psalm was composed, the elohim were an “an assembly of gods” over whom Yahweh ruled.16 This would not, however, be the view of Jesus or of any first century Jew. He may have had the notion of a council of angels or heavenly beings who assist the Lord, but that is not relevant here, because Psalm 82 and John 10 both refer to humans in connection with elohim.
More relevant than the antique history of elohim would be the views of the midrashim (closer to Jesus’ time) on this passage, so we turn to Jerome Neyrey’s study of midrashic comments on Psalm 82. The midrashic authors understood elohim to refer to deathlessness and holiness. God wanted to give deathlessness to the Israelites (“that the Angel of Death should have no dominion over them”17), but they lost this offer by sinning: “you have corrupted your conduct: ‘SURELY YE SHALL DIE LIKE MEN’ (Ps 82:7).”18 Although the midrashim understand God to be speaking the words of the psalm at Sinai, the “doctrine of the relation of sin and death” that underlies it comes from Gen 1–3; it is Adam who was deathless and holy, and who lost this status when he sinned.19 Neyrey sees the Johannine Jesus assuming the Sinai setting, as well. “Those to whom the word of God came” (John 10:35) refers to the Exodus generation. Neyrey thinks that, for Jesus as for the midrashim, holiness implied deathlessness. Holiness provides “the ground for calling someone, Israel or Jesus, god.”20 Further, deathlessness is an essential teaching in John: “anyone who hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life” (John 5:24).
Neyrey’s analysis illuminates some aspects of this passage quite well. The application of elohim to human beings ceases to be incomprehensible when it is understood as a label for people who receive the divine quality of deathlessness. In John, Jesus always had that divine quality; he was with God in the beginning, and was in fact the co-creator of “all things” (John 1:1–3).
But, while Neyrey demonstrates a midrashic connection of the elohim label to deathlessness, and discusses the Christology of 10:36 (the one sent by God is divine), he cannot connect these two points—because they are not connected in this passage, even though deathlessness is a major Johannine teaching. In John 10, people are not called elohim because of deathlessness. Jesus’ point is much more bold; he is making a divinity connection. When he connects “those to whom the word of God came were called ‘gods’” to the “one whom the Father has sanctified and sent” (10:35–36), he is using a lesser-to-greater argument: if even they to whom God spoke could be called gods, how much more can the one actually sent by God be called “Son of God”? These are assertions of different levels of divinity, and behind them lie some important statements about revelation.
A reason for divinity is given for each side of the pair. They were called divine because the Word of God came to them; their proximity to the self-revealing God enabled them to be called elohim. It is the Son’s divine sentness that qualifies him for divinity. This does not imply sentness for the Exodus people, just the opposite. If they could be called divine (who were not sent, but only had the Word of God sent to them), how much more could the one who was sent be called divine? Revelation occurs on both sides of the comparison.
While the deathlessness connection is intriguing, it is marginal for this passage. Revelation makes the connection between the two parties who can be called elohim. The one sent by God to be the Revealer is certainly divine, but the people who received revelation could also legitimately be called elohim. What is the content of revelation, but divinity, God-quality? The Revealer is already divine, while the people receiving revelation are divinized, transformed. This notion is reflected in the OT, as well. Moses’ face shone, as a result of being “with the Lord” and writing down the Lord’s commandments (Exod 34:28–30, 35; 2 Cor 3:13). All of this implies that the people who listen to the Son may also be called elohim.
Divinization and the Sonship of Believers
Of course, scholars have recognized a strong Christology in John 10:30–36, but they underestimate the passage’s boldness when they overlook the deification teaching (however brief) that the people who received the Sinai revelation could be called elohim. This is a deification teaching: the action of God transforms humans. This transformation can be described as being or becoming children of God: “See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are” (1 John 3:1). Unknown transformations are still to come (1 John 3:2). Matthew is the exception in saying sonship with God is achievable through selfless love (Matt 5:41–45, just preceding the perfection mandate). Most NT authors who speak of sonship refer to it as a new status: “in Christ you are all children of God . . . no longer a slave but a child” (Gal 3:26; 4:7). For Paul, “the freedom of the glory of the children of God” changes creation itself (Rom 8:21); sonship causes the removal of class and sex divisions (Gal 3:26–28; cf. Rom 9:24–26).
In John, sonship is not just a status, but a “power”: “To all who received him . . . he gave power to become children of God” (John 1:12). Faith has transformed believers into children of God, and this was God’s doing (John 1:13). The same teaching is probably implicit in John 10:34. The psalm that Jesus is quoting says, “You are gods, children of the Most High, all of you” (Ps 82:6). Although the reference to children or sons [huioi] is elided in John, the words of the original text would have resonated in the minds of many hearers or readers. And if they read on in the Gospel, they would find that Jesus came to “gather into one the dispersed children of God” (John 11:52).
No single passage in John affirms divinization to the same degree as 10:34–36, but a series of later passages can be seen to suggest, or at least allow, divinization, starting with the promise “that where I am, there you may be also,” and that “the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these” (14:3, 12). Not ontology, but works, are emphasized, but it certainly is suggestive, especially if linked with some later promises: “The Spirit of truth . . . will be in you” (14:17); “The Spirit of truth . . . will guide you into all the truth” (16:13). “If you ask anything of the Father in my name, he will give it to you” (16:23). “As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us . . . The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one” (17:21–22). What is the sequence of deification themes seen here?
•those who received revelation in the past could be called elohim;
•those who receive revelation from me will do greater works than I have done;
•they will have the Spirit of Truth and will be guided into all truth;
•they will receive spiritual things for which they ask, will receive God’s and Jesus’ glory, and will have spiritual unity.
This
