John 8:24: He Says It Twice

I told you that you would die in your sins; if you do not believe that I am he, you will indeed die in your sins.

John 8:24 (NIV)

He Says It Twice

She says it at the kitchen table, in the plainest words she has: he is going to lose the house, and she is not lending him anything else. He talks over the first half of it, so she waits and says it again the same way, with the same words, and does not take the edge off it the second time.

Her brother decided what she was before he came. She can watch him fit every sentence into it.

The men in front of Jesus have already made up their minds about him, and he doesn’t soften what he has to tell them. If they do not believe that I am he, he says, they will die in their sins. He says it twice.

The sentence turns on four words. That I am he. He isn’t asking them to take a warning seriously; he is telling them who is standing in front of them, and saying that everything after depends on what they do with it.

Dying in their sins is exactly as heavy as it sounds, and he doesn’t lighten it to keep the peace. He doesn’t leave either. “Who are you?” they ask him, straight out, and he answers them out of what he has been saying from the beginning. He has told these men they will die in their sins, and he is standing in front of them taking their questions.

The two halves of that are the hard part. Most of us can do one or the other. We can say the true thing and go, or we can stay and say something smaller.

I look forward to the ten minutes after I’ve finally admitted I was wrong about something, and I have never managed to get to them any sooner.

He stays until the six o’clock train. She makes him something to eat and he eats it, and they talk about a cousin, and she drives him down to the station and waits with him on the platform because it’s cold. Nothing has been taken back and nothing has been agreed.