John 8 - CSB Spurgeon Study Bible

8:12 “Jesus spoke to them again: ‘I am the light of the world. Anyone who follows me will never walk in the darkness but will have the light of life.’” That Jesus is the light of the world is to be seen in all parts of his blessed history. Look at him in his cradle. To the eye of faith, what radiance emanates from the newborn baby. Behold the mystery of the incarnation. God is manifest in our nature. He dwells among us. The light is clear and dazzling.

He shone in his growing up years as his increasing wisdom kept pace with his increasing stature. His baptism throws a wonderful light on consecration to God; and the dire temptations that quickly followed, wherein he defeated the tempter, have thrown a brilliant light on the path of all Christians. As a preacher he was luminous. He expounded the spirituality of the law of God. Light penetrated the precept through and through as he made the essence of purity apparent. His light cleared the law of the mists and fogs that the religious teachers had gathered around it. He shed light, too, on the covenant of grace. He promulgated the gospel of peace among the people. He told of God the Father, willing to receive his prodigal children back again into his heart. His parables threw wondrous light on the kingdom of heaven. His counsels and his cautions brought the final destinies of the righteous and the wicked into full view. Eternity dawned on his hearers while he spoke. His own life exhibited the power of love, the value of sympathy, and the virtue of forgiving injuries. His death gave yet more palpable evidence of unfaltering submission to the will of God and unflinching self-sacrifice for the welfare of people.

8:32 “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” Our Savior later explains that he means free from sin. He who lives in sin is the slave of sin. Sincere belief in the word of Christ leads to emancipation from the tyrannical power of the evil that dwells in our members and from the dominating power of the sin that rules in the customs of the world. We will be free from our own prejudices, prides, and lusts. We will be free from the fear of others. If we have sunk so low as almost to ask of the great one’s permission to breathe, we will break that irksome fetter. The truth known within our spirits will make a free man of us. Up to now we may have been the bondsman of self. We have inquired, “What will this thing profit me?” and thus the desire of self-aggrandizement has ruled everything, but when Jesus is our Lord, we will be free from this sordid motive.

8:58 “Jesus said to them, ‘Truly I tell you, before Abraham was, I am.’” They had asked him, “Who do you make yourself out to be?” And now they have his answer! It is the name by which God revealed himself to Moses at the burning bush, “I AM.” Yet Jesus takes this title to himself! “I AM,” as if his life was one continued present existence, as indeed it is, for with God there is no past or future, but all things are ever present to his infinite mind. Jesus’s statement claimed the Godhead. He declared that he was certainly God, self-existent from all eternity. Then they took up stones to cast at him. They counted him a blasphemer, and so he was if he was not all he claimed to be. If he was not really God, he led men to think he was. If he was not God, he was the biggest impostor who ever visited this world. But he is God and nothing less.