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John 8:43

In the context of this passage, Jesus is chastising some of His Jewish audience for not comprehending His message. He then asks the question about why they do not understand, and His answer is that they do not understand because they are not able to listen to what He is saying. Since Jesus talks about their inability, this text is a favorite text for the Calvinistic idea of total inability (cf. John 8:47). However, is this really what Jesus is saying?

First of all, it should be pointed out that an inability to hear and understand the message of Jesus is not necessarily the same thing as an inability to believe in Jesus for eternal life. Nowhere in this chapter does Jesus say that the people to whom He speaks cannot believe. He says they cannot hear, which means they do not grasp, comprehend, or understand the truth of what He is saying.

But even this inability to understand Jesus was not a permanent condition. The Jewish people to whom Jesus spoke had developed this condition, and in John 8, Jesus warns them about it, inviting them to reject the lies they had come to accept, and believe in Him instead. The real issue, then, is how they had come to believe the lies in the first place. To understand this, we must understand what had happened during the ministry of Jesus up to this point.

Jesus had come as the fulfillment of Jewish Messianic hopes, but since Jesus challenged many of the traditional Jewish teachings and traditions and refused to engage in a military campaign against the Romans, many of the Jewish people rejected Him as the promised Messiah (cf. John 1:11; 2:18; 5:31-47; 6:41-42; 7:25-31, 40-44). The consistent message of Jesus to the Jewish people is that if they continued to reject Him as the Messiah, they would eventually become completely blind to His message and ministry. As they continued to reject the clear teaching and the accompanying signs of Jesus which proved He was the Messiah, they sank deeper and deeper into darkness (cf. Matt 12:31-45). Along the way, Jesus continued to warn them and plead with them, but they refused to repent and believe.

What this means is that the condition of being unable to understand what Jesus is saying is not something that the Jewish people began with from birth, but is a condition that developed over time as they continued to deny the truth they had heard and ignored the signs they had seen. Rather than believe the truth about Jesus, they had chosen to believe a lie. In John 8 and other similar texts, Jesus warned them that although they had made their choices, they were coming to the point where their choices were making them. They had denied the truth about Jesus for so long, they were now at the point where they were completely blind and deaf to the truth when it was presented to them.

This self-deception was not permanent, and could be reversed if only the people who listen to Jesus and believe in Him. Even in this very chapter, Jesus tells them the truth and invites them to believe (John 8:24, 45-46) before their unbelief become permanent. “From a not wanting to hear develops a not able to hear, an incapacity of giving a hearing to the message of Jesus. Unbelief has become an attitude of life.”⁰

Interestingly, one famous Calvinist agrees with this explanation:

Jesus does not say they fail to grasp his message because they cannot follow his spoken word, his idiom, but that they fail to understand his idiom because they cannot “hear” his message. The Jews remain responsible for their own “cannot,” which, far from resulting from divine fiat, is determined by their own desire (theolusin) to perform the lusts (tas epithumias) of the devil (8:44). This “cannot,” this slavery to sin (8:34), itself stems from personal sin.⁰

So John 8:43 is not a statement about the lifelong inability of some people to believe in Jesus for eternal life, but is a warning to those who reject the Gospel, continuing instead to deceive themselves. The longer we reject the truth, the harder it becomes to believe it. Jesus wanted people then (and now) to believe in Him for eternal life so that they did not die in their sins.

John 15:4-5

The teaching of Jesus in John 15 about the vine and the branches is sometimes used by Calvinists to support the idea of total inability, especially when Jesus talks about how without Him, people can do nothing.

Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me. I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing (John 15:4-5).

Calvinists focus on the statements in these verses that a “branch cannot bear fruit of itself” and that without Jesus “you can do nothing” and claim that these statement prove that people cannot do anything on their own, including believe in Jesus for eternal life.

[Jesus] used the illustration of a grapevine and its branches. In speaking of the inability to do good works, He said: “Just as the branch is not able by itself to bear fruit—unless it abides in the vine—so neither can you unless you abide in me. … Apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:4-5). That’s total inability.⁰

So how can we understand John 15:4-5? First of all, it is important to note that this chapter is part of the “Upper Room Discourse” of John 13–15. It takes place in the upper room of a house in Jerusalem where Jesus and His disciples shared their last supper together, which was a Passover meal. After the meal, Jesus washed the feet of His disciples (John 13:1-17) and then proceeded to give them some final words of instruction and encouragement. So when Jesus spoke the words which are recorded in John 15:4-5, Jesus was not speaking to people who did not have eternal life, but to those who did. That is, He was speaking to His disciples, to those who were already regenerate.

Among many other things He told His disciples during the Upper Room Discourse, John 15:1-8 is about how the disciples can be productive and fruitful as followers of Jesus. He basically tells His disciples that they must not try to engage in ministry on their own strength, but must abide and remain in Him. They must stay attached to Jesus. They must look to Him for guidance, wisdom, and strength. If they try to work in the world under their own power, they will not get very far. They will accomplish nothing.

The illustration Jesus uses for this lesson is the vine and the branches. Just as a branch cannot bear any fruit unless it remains attached to the vine, so also, the disciples of Jesus will not be able to accomplish anything for the kingdom of God unless they remain connected to Jesus by looking to Him for guidance and direction.

So when John 14:4-5 is studied in context, it quickly becomes obvious that these verses have absolutely nothing to do with the inability of unbelievers to do anything. Jesus isn’t talking about unbelievers at all! Instead, Jesus is talking to believers, and specifically to His disciples, telling them (and all future disciples as well) that if we want to minister faithfully within the kingdom of God as followers of Jesus, they must abide in Jesus. That is, they must look to Him for guidance, seek to follow His example, learn to listen to His voice for wisdom, and depend upon Him for strength. John 15:4-5 is talking about total inability, but not the total inability of unbelievers. Instead, Jesus is teaching about the total inability of disciples to do anything in the Kingdom of God by their own strength and resources.

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