<p>8:44- see on Hos. 6:7.</p><p><i>You are of your father the Devil, and your will is to do your father's desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and has nothing to do with the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies</i>- The Jewish religious leaders were &ldquo;of your father the Devil&rdquo; (Jn. 8:44). This would explain the Lord&rsquo;s description of Judas as a Devil (Jn. 6:70) because the Jewish Devil had entered him and conceived, making him a &lsquo;Devil&rsquo; also. In the space of a few verses, we read the Lord Jesus saying that &ldquo;the Devil&rdquo; is a &ldquo;liar&rdquo; &ndash; and then stating that His Jewish opponents were &ldquo;liars&rdquo; (Jn. 8:44,55). These are the only places where the Lord uses the word &ldquo;liar&rdquo; &ndash; clearly enough He identified those Jews with &ldquo;the Devil&rdquo;. If the Jews&rsquo; father was the Devil, then &lsquo;the Devil&rsquo; was a fitting description of them too. They were a &ldquo;generation of (gendered by) vipers&rdquo;, alluding back to the serpent in Eden, which epitomized &ldquo;the Devil&rdquo;; &ldquo;that old serpent, called (i.e. being similar to) the Devil and Satan&rdquo; (Rev. 12:9). In the same way as Judas became a Devil, the &ldquo;false prophet, a Jew, whose name was Bar-Jesus&rdquo; is called a &ldquo;child of the Devil&rdquo; (Acts 13:6,10), which description makes him an embodiment of the Jewish opposition to the Gospel. There are many other connections between the serpent and the Jews; clearest is Isaiah 1:4 &ldquo;A people laden with iniquity, a seed of evildoers, children that are corrupters&rdquo;. This is describing Israel in the language of Genesis 3:15 concerning the serpent. Thus the Messianic Psalm 140:3,10 describes Christ reflecting that His Jewish persecutors &ldquo;have sharpened their tongues like a serpent; adders&rsquo; poison is under their lips... let burning coals fall upon them: let them be cast into the fire&rdquo; (referring to the falling masonry of Jerusalem in A.D. 70?). It is quite possible that Christ&rsquo;s encouragement to the seventy that &ldquo;I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy&rdquo; (Lk. 10:19) has a primary reference to their ability to overcome Jewish opposition during their preaching tour.</p><p>We all personally struggle to accept basic Bible teaching about generosity, materialism and money. Think of what the Hebrew word &ldquo;Cain&rdquo; means- for he is alluded to by the Lord as the epitome of the &ldquo;devil&rdquo;, the &ldquo;murderer from the beginning&rdquo;, the archetypical sinner (Jn. 8:44- perhaps because Adam and Eve&rsquo;s sin was forgiven, whereas Cain was the first impenitent sinner). &ldquo;Cain is defined on the basis of a double Hebrew etymology, as &lsquo;possession&rsquo; (from <i>qana</i> = acquire) and &lsquo;envy&rsquo; (from <i>qana</i> = be envious)&rdquo;. Personal possession is almost- almost- inextricably linked with envy, and led to the lies and murder for which Cain was noted by the Lord. To have a strong sense of our personal &lsquo;possessions&rsquo; will lead us into the same sins. Indeed, it&rsquo;s the epitome of &lsquo;the devil&rsquo;. The concept of &lsquo;private property&rsquo; is indeed a myth. For we die, and leave it all behind.</p><p>Ensure that all you are saying to yourself, even if it&rsquo;s not about spiritual things, is at least truthful. This is where this great theme of truth starts and ends. Ideally, our self-talk should be of Jesus, of the Father, of the things of His Kingdom. Of anything that is just, true, of good report... Yet our self-talk is closely linked to what Scripture would call the devil- the constant fountain of wrong suggestions and unspiritual perspectives that seem to bubble up so constantly within us. The devil- the Biblical one- is &ldquo;the father of lies&rdquo; (Jn. 8:44). And untruthfulness seems to begin within our own self-talk. I would even go so far as to almost define the devil as our own self-talk. And it&rsquo;s likened to a roaring, dangerous lion; a cunning snake. And it&rsquo;s there within each of us. The control of self-talk is vital. And the Biblical guidance is to make sure it is truthful; for lack of truthfulness is the root of all sin. The account of the wilderness temptations is in my opinion a wonderful window into the self-talk of the Lord Jesus. He set the example there, of dealing with internal temptation by a self-talk based solidly on the truth of God's word. Sin is normally committed by believers not as an act of conscious rebellion, but rather through a complex process of self-justification; which on repentance we recognize was the mere sophistry of our own self-talk. This is why truthfulness is the epitome of the spiritual life. To deny ever being untruthful is to deny ever sinning. We all have this problem. It&rsquo;s why the assertion of Jesus that He was &ldquo;the truth&rdquo; was tantamount to saying that He was sinless. Only thus is He thereby the way to eternal life.</p><p>For those who believe in an orthodox devil, bear in mind that the use of the pronoun &ldquo;he&rdquo; does not indicate that the Devil is a person. &ldquo;Wisdom&rdquo; is personified as a woman house&ndash;builder (Prov. 9:1) and sin as a paymaster paying wages (Rom. 6:23). Human lust is personified as a man who drags us away to enticement. If it is accepted that sin and sinful tendencies are personified, there should be no problem in imagining that persona being given a name &ndash; &ldquo;Satan&rdquo;, the adversary. There is no specific reference here to the serpent in Eden. We sin because of the lusts that begin inside us (Mk. 7:21&ndash;23; James 1:14; Jer. 17:9). Our evil heart &ndash; the real Devil &ndash; is the father of our lusts and sins. &ldquo;The lusts of your father&rdquo; the Devil, are thus the same as the lusts of our evil heart &ndash; the Devil. The Devil is a murderer. But &ldquo;no murderer has eternal life abiding in him&rdquo; (1 Jn. 3:15). The Devil must, therefore, die &ndash; but as angels cannot die (Lk. 20:35,36) they are therefore immortal, and have eternal life abiding in them. As noted on Mark 4:15, the children of the Devil are those who obey their evil desires &ndash; the real Devil. The Jews had not literally seen a person called the Devil; the Lord was clearly using figurative language. They were <i>of</i> the Devil in the sense that &ldquo;you do the deeds of your father&rdquo; (:41), i.e. they continued the family likeness. If the Devil is a murderer then he isn&rsquo;t immortal, for in commentary on this verse John later explained as if there had already arisen misunderstandings in the time between John&rsquo;s Gospel and epistles: &ldquo;No murderer has eternal life abiding in him&rdquo; (1 Jn. 3:15). Angels are immortal (Lk. 20:36), so therefore this &ldquo;murderer&rdquo; wasn&rsquo;t a &lsquo;fallen Angel&rsquo;.</p><p>The Devil, the desires which are in our heart forming and stimulating an evil inclination, has the characteristics of the serpent, but it does not mean that the serpent was the Devil itself. The serpent was &ldquo;subtil&rdquo; (Gen. 3:1; 2 Cor. 11:3); this may well be behind the description of the Jews consulting &ldquo;that they might take Jesus by subtilty, and kill him&rdquo; (Mt. 26:4). The serpent in Eden was the prototype of the Jewish system; their killing of Jesus was the fulfilment of the prophecy that the seed of the serpent (sin manifested in the Jews, Mt. 12:34; Lk. 3:7, in its primary meaning) would wound the seed of the woman, Christ, in the heel (Gen. 3:15).</p><p>John 8:44 is also a reference to Cain, the first murderer &ndash; &ldquo;he was a murderer from the beginning&rdquo; (Gen. 4:8&ndash;9). He &ldquo;abode not in the truth&rdquo; as he was the father of the seed of the serpent who corrupted the true way of worshipping God. The letter of John often alludes to the Gospel of John, and 1 John 3:12,15, is an example; it confirms this interpretation: &ldquo;Not as Cain, who was of that wicked one (i.e. the Devil &ndash; Mt. 13:19 cp. Mk. 4:15) and slew his brother...Whosoever hateth his brother (as Cain did) is a murderer&rdquo;. However, it is also true that John 8:44 alludes to the serpent as well. The serpent told the first lie, &ldquo;Ye shall not surely die&rdquo; (Gen. 3:4); he did not abide in the truth; he was a murderer in the sense that he brought about the death of Adam and Eve. &ldquo;He is a liar, and the father of it&rdquo;. Cain was not a super&ndash;human person called the Devil, but an ordinary man. He characterized sin, the Devil. The way in which the fire consumed Abel&rsquo;s offering but not Cain&rsquo;s is paralleled by the fire burning up Elijah&rsquo;s offering but leaving those of the apostate Jewish Baal worshippers (1 Kings 18:19&ndash;40). This would associate Cain with apostate Jews, i.e. the Jewish Devil.</p><p>Note: &ldquo;...he is a liar, and the father of it&rdquo;. The Lord Jesus does not say &ldquo;he was a liar&rdquo;. If we tell a lie, it is a result of the Devil, in the sense of our evil desires prompting us &ndash; not due to any force outside of us. Lying is one of those things that Jesus lists in Mk. 7:15,21&ndash;23 as not entering a man from outside him, but originating from within him. The Devil is the &lsquo;father&rsquo; of lies in the sense that they originate from within us &ndash; which is where the Biblical Devil is located.</p><p>&ldquo;When he speaks a lie&rdquo; &ndash; when someone lies, it is not a super&ndash;human person called the Devil standing in front of him, it is the Devil, in the sense of the man&rsquo;s evil desires speaking to him. &ldquo;Deceit&rdquo; &ndash; i.e. lies &ndash; proceed &ldquo;from within, out of the heart of men&rdquo; (Mk. 7:21&ndash;22).</p>