You love God. I know that. I'm not here to take that away from you. In fact, I think I'm here to give you more of what you already have.
You love a God who is good. A God who forgives. A God who sent His Son. A God who is love. You pray to a Father in Heaven and you mean it. You read the words of Jesus and something in you knows they're true – not because someone told you, but because you feel it.
I'm not going to argue with any of that. I think you're right about all of it.
I just want to ask you one question, and I want you to sit with it before you answer.
The question nobody asks
When Jesus said "your father the devil" in John 8:44 – who was He talking about?
Not in general. Specifically. Who was the father the Judeans actually worshiped? Who did they go to temple for? Who did they offer sacrifices to? Who did they keep the Sabbath for? Who did they circumcise their sons for?
They worshiped Yhwh. That's not controversial. Every scholar, every pastor, every seminary professor agrees: the Judeans in John 8 were devout worshipers of the god of Israel.
And Jesus looked at them and said: your father is the devil. He was a murderer from the beginning. He does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks from his own character, because he is a liar and the father of lies.
The standard answer is that Jesus was speaking "spiritually" – that the Judeans had drifted from God and were now unknowingly serving Satan. That they worshiped the right God but with the wrong heart.
But read the conversation again. All of it. Start at John 8:12 and read to 8:59 without stopping.
Jesus doesn't say they've drifted from their god. He says they don't know His Father. "If you knew me, you would know my Father also" (8:19). They say, "We have one father – even god" (8:41). They are claiming that their god – Yhwh – IS the Most High. IS the Father Jesus keeps talking about.
And Jesus says no.
"If God were your father, you would love me" (8:42). You don't love me. So God is NOT your father. Your father is someone else.
And then He names that someone: a murderer, a liar, from the beginning.
A note What just happened in your chest
A tightening. A resistance. Maybe anger. That's okay. I felt it too, the first time.
Here's what I want you to notice about that reaction: it didn't come from reading the text. It came from what you were taught the text can't mean. You were told, before you ever opened John 8, that Yhwh is God. That the God of the Old Testament and the Father of Jesus are the same being. You received that as an axiom – an assumption so deep that it feels like bedrock.
But Jesus didn't share that assumption. And He spent 47 verses explaining why.
What Jesus actually said
Let me show you. And I want you to watch for a pattern.
Now here's the question no one asks.
If the Judeans were wrong to identify their god with Jesus' Father – if that was the very thing Jesus was correcting across 47 verses of sustained argument – then why does Christianity make the same identification?
Why do we say Yhwh is the Father, when Jesus spent an entire discourse saying He isn't?
The answers you've been given
I know the responses you've been trained to reach for. I held them too. Let me walk through them honestly.
What about "Jesus was talking about Satan, not Yhwh"
Yes. But who do the Judeans worship? Not Satan. They worship Yhwh. Jesus says their father is the devil. Either the Judeans worship Satan without knowing it – which means their god is not who they think he is – or Jesus is identifying the god they worship with the devil. Both options lead to the same place.
What about "The Judeans had corrupted true worship"
But Jesus doesn't say "you've strayed from your god." He says "you've never known my Father." That's not corruption. That's misidentification. They think their god is the Father. Jesus says He's not. Two different claims.
What about "The Old Testament clearly shows Yhwh is God"
The Old Testament shows Yhwh is powerful, real, and in charge of Israel. No argument there. But does it show he's the Most High?
Deuteronomy 32:8–9 says the Most High – Elyon – divided the nations among the sons of God, and Yhwh received Israel as his portion. Yhwh is a son of the Most High. Not the Most High himself. That's what the text says before the later scribes changed "sons of God" to "sons of Israel" in the Hebrew manuscripts. The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Septuagint both preserve the older reading.
What about "But I've experienced God through the Old Testament"
I believe you. And here's the thing I'm not taking away from you: every moment you felt loved, forgiven, called, drawn, comforted – that was real. That was the Father reaching you.
Abba has always been reaching people, even through texts that were attributed to someone else. The shepherd's voice gets through even inside the wrong fold. That's literally what John 10 is about.
What opens up
Let me show you what changes if you let this in.
The contradiction disappears
You've always had to hold two things in tension: a God who says "love your enemies" and a God who orders the slaughter of Canaanite children. A God who runs to embrace the prodigal son and a God who sends plagues on Egypt's firstborn. A God who says "I desire mercy, not sacrifice" and a God who built an entire religion on sacrifice.
You were told this is a "mystery." That God's ways are higher than ours. That we can't understand how genocide and grace come from the same heart.
But what if they don't?
What if the voice that said "love your enemies, because that's what your Father does – He makes the sun rise on the evil and the good alike" (Matthew 5:44–45) – what if that's one person? And the voice that said "now go and strike Amalek and devote to destruction all that they have, do not spare them, kill both man and woman, infant and nursing child" (1 Samuel 15:3) – what if that's a completely different person?
Suddenly the Bible isn't contradictory. It's a story about two different beings, operating by two different principles, and one of them sent His Son to get people out of the other one's system.
Jesus makes more sense
Your love for God is validated, not threatened
Everything in you that responds to the words of Jesus – the love, the mercy, the forgiveness, the radical inclusion, the Sermon on the Mount, the Father who gives good gifts, the shepherd who lays down His life – all of that is Abba. You've been in love with the Father this whole time. You just didn't know His name.
And the things that always bothered you – the genocide, the jealousy, the wrath, the impossible laws, the endless sacrifice, the weight that never lifts – those belong to someone else. The cognitive dissonance you've felt your whole Christian life isn't a failure of your faith. It's your spirit recognizing that two different voices are being attributed to one person.
I'm not asking you to leave your faith
I'm asking you to follow Jesus more closely.
Read what He actually said. Not what you were told He meant. Not what the system trained you to hear. What He said.
He said His Father is different from their god. He said the world has a ruler who is about to be cast out. He said "my kingdom is not of this world" – not as a denial of kingship, but as a statement of origin. His kingdom comes from somewhere else. From someone else.
Jesus said "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." Not through the law. Not through the temple. Not through the system. Through Jesus.
And on the night before His death, in the garden, stripped of everything, He prayed one word that tells you everything you need to know about who He belongs to.
Abba.