<p>8:37 <i>I know that you are Abraham's seed. Yet you seek to kill me, because my word finds no place in you</i>- The Jews could be described as both Abraham&rsquo;s seed (Jn. 8:37) and not Abraham&rsquo;s seed (Jn. 8:39); as having Abraham as their father (Jn. 8:56), and yet also having the devil as their father (Jn. 8:39-41,44). This connects with the theme that the Jews on one level knew who the Lord was, and on another, did not. In John, one can see but not really see; believe but not really believe. The Lord Jesus described the unbelieving Jews as having Abraham as their father, and yet He also said that they weren&rsquo;t the real children of Abraham. They appeared to believe in Him, but effectively denied Him (Jn. 8:37,39,56). Like Israel, we can have an appearance of faith, an assumption that we believe because we are through baptism the children of faithful Abraham, when the real, house-on-the-rock faith is unknown to us.</p><p>The Jews thought that they were righteous because they were the descendants of Abraham. The Lord Jesus therefore addressed them as &ldquo;the righteous&rdquo; (Mt. 9:12&ndash;13), and said &ldquo;I know that you are Abraham&rsquo;s seed&rdquo; (Jn. 8:37). But He did not believe that they were righteous, as He so often made clear; and He plainly showed by His reasoning in John 8:39&ndash;44 that they were <i>not</i> Abraham&rsquo;s seed. So He took people&rsquo;s beliefs at face value, without immediately contradicting them, but demonstrated the truth instead. We have shown that this was God&rsquo;s approach in dealing with the pagan beliefs which were common in the Old Testament times. His attitude to demons in New Testament times was the same; His God&ndash;provided miracles made it abundantly plain that illnesses were caused by God, not any other force, seeing that it was God who had the mighty power to heal them.</p><p>The argument was that if they were Abraham's seed they would not be seeking to kill the pre-eminent seed of Abraham, Messiah. &quot;My word&quot; had no place in them; and that word was therefore His self-proclamation of Himself as the seed of Abraham, a proclamation made through His life and character rather than any specific statement that &quot;I am Messiah&quot;. &quot;My word&quot; therefore refers not to the whole Bible, nor to any specific spoken words of the Lord; but to His whole life and being, which was His word to men. His word was the Father's word (14:24), just as the prologue had declared the word, which was all about Jesus, to be God. His word was Him, His spirit, His life, His spoken words- which were to abide within them (:31).</p>