In John 10:31-42, the Hebrew religious authorities are about to stone Jesus because of the blasphemy, as they put it, of “making yourself God” even though he is “only a human being.” He responds as he often does by referring his critics back to the Hebrew scriptures in a way that highlights their duplicity while elevating a new, more wholistic way of understanding God’s message to us.
“Is it not written in your law, ‘I said, you are gods’?” Jesus asks. Indeed it does, in Psalm 82:6. “I say, ‘You are gods, children of the Most High, all of you,’” the psalmist writes. But that verse is set in a broader context of condemnation. While they enjoyed the status of God’s children, they were in fact not following God’s mandate to practice justice and to care for those in need. Instead, the psalmist said they “walk around in darkness” and “show partiality to the wicked.” And even though they may think themselves superior, “you shall die like mortals and fall like any prince.”
They were not gods worthy of the name, and Jesus’s critics were in that same mold. Jesus told them, “If those to whom the word of God came were called ‘gods’—and the scripture cannot be annulled—can you say that the one whom the Father has sanctified and sent into the world is blaspheming because I said, ‘I am God’s Son’?”
That response did nothing to convince his opponents, who would have arrested him on the spot had not Jesus escaped and crossed the Jordan River into Jordan. But here’s what Jesus left us: The ability to really be “children of the Most High, all of you.” But that comes with a responsibility to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God (Micah 6:8). When we live life in that way, we literally become the embodiment of God moving through the world—not perfect embodiments so long as we are in the flesh, but nonetheless small-g “gods” that are the ambassadors of God and Christ bringing love, grace, healing and reconciliation to the world.
That is both powerful and humbling.