John 10:24–25
Introduction
This past year studying through Trinity Bible College and Graduate School in the USA has been gruelling. Amazing. Yet alarming.
I have been exposed to systems that shape who we think we are, ideological and philosophical architectures I never thought to question. When I became a Christian 21 years ago, at age 30, I struggled to accept God as Father. My own experience of fatherhood was fractured. Disappointment, absence, distortion, these became the unspoken glasses through which I viewed God. I didn’t realise that I was filtering divine revelation through the trauma of human failure.
But the Holy Spirit began to teach me: you cannot see God through the lens of your earthly disappointments. That healing had to go deep. I had to learn what trust is, what it means to believe not just with cognition but with surrender. Today, I can say without hesitation: Yahweh has my heart. Not because someone convinced me philosophically, but because I have experienced the truth of Jesus Christ, and the life that flows from trusting Him.
It is this very tension, between expectation and disappointment, between belief and self-deification, that lies at the heart of John 10:24–25:
“Then the Jews surrounded Him and said to Him, ‘How long do You keep us in doubt? If You are the Christ, tell us plainly.’ Jesus answered them, ‘I told you, and you do not believe. The works that I do in My Father’s name, they bear witness of Me.’”¹
This is not a gentle inquiry; it is an ambush. Jesus is not teaching in the Temple; He is walking in Solomon’s porch, and they surround Him, demanding clarity. But their question is a mask. It is not the clarity they lack; it is the willingness to believe what has already been revealed.²
How often do we do the same?
Like traffic violators blaming the absence of a speed limit sign every 100 metres, these leaders blame their unbelief on Jesus’ supposed ambiguity. But He had already told them, repeatedly. He declared that He came from heaven (John 3:13), that He gives eternal life (John 3:15), that He is the Light, the Door, the Good Shepherd, and the I Am. His miracles affirmed His divine Sonship. His words exposed hearts, revealed the Father, and redefined what it means to truly live.
So what stopped them?
Belief is Not Just Thinking. It’s Obedience
The Greek word for “believe” (pisteuō) is not just mental agreement, it involves trust, allegiance, obedience. As James reminds us, even demons believe, and shudder.³ To truly believe Jesus is to relinquish sovereignty, to dethrone the self. And herein lies the problem: the crowd wasn’t asking for truth. They were asking for a messiah they could accept, on their terms.
What are the terms upon which you are willing to believe?
Disappointment With Humans Often Becomes a Theology of Resistance
Many reject God not because He has failed them, but because people have. Fathers wound, pastors fall, institutions disappoint, leaders lie, and over time, the human heart subtly replaces divine revelation with human frustration. “If this is what God looks like,” we reason, “then I want nothing to do with Him.” But this isn’t truth; it’s projection. It is building theology from trauma, constructing belief from abandonment.
Have you built your view of God on who failed you, rather than who saved you?
Enlightenment Gave Us the Self as God
The philosophical heritage of the Enlightenment feeds this resistance. By shifting authority from divine revelation to human reason, the Enlightenment enthroned the self as the arbiter of truth.⁴ Belief became assent to ideas, rather than allegiance to a Person. “I think, therefore I am” gradually became “I feel, therefore it’s true.”⁵ The modern Western mind, steeped in individualism, now approaches God with suspicion and demands, not surrender and wonder.
In this way, the Enlightenment birthed a generation conditioned to interrogate God rather than trust Him.
The Messiah We Want vs. the Messiah We Need
Their question, “Tell us plainly,” was a trap. If Jesus admitted to being the Messiah, they would accuse Him of sedition before Rome. But more than that, they were already disappointed in Him. He didn’t look like the Messiah they wanted. No military parade. No political coup. No public applause.
They wanted power; He came to die.
They wanted nationalism; He offered a Kingdom not of this world.
They wanted affirmation; He offered repentance.
And when Jesus still offers the same today, when He refuses to conform to our therapeutic expectations, our institutional solutions, our political hopes, many still reject Him. His identity is revealed, but not received.⁶
Are you rejecting the real Christ because He refuses to be the messiah you imagined?
This passage invites us to examine our own belief: is it faith in the Person of Jesus, or faith in the idea of a Jesus who agrees with us?
To believe is to obey. To follow. To trust. And to trust Jesus is to die to the idols of human self-determination, political saviours, wounded filters, and Enlightenment autonomy.
He has already told us. The works speak. The Word is clear.⁷
But do we want to believe?
Conclusion: The Voice That Still Speaks
The demand to “tell us plainly” was never about clarity, it was about control. Humanity still surrounds Christ with demands, not because He has failed to speak, but because we have refused to hear. In a culture shaped by disappointment, self-worship, and Enlightenment suspicion, belief becomes conditional, transactional, performative.
Yet Jesus remains unwavering.
He does not cater to our disillusionment, nor negotiate with our doubts. He calls us, still, to believe. Not merely to agree, but to obey. Not to invent truth, but to surrender to it. His words have not changed. His works still bear witness. And His voice still calls each of us by name.
Will you listen?
Will you believe, not on your terms, but His?
Because the imagined messiah we conjure up can never save us.
But the One who is, already has.
Practical Application
– If your faith has been shaped more by disappointment than by divine revelation, take time to trace those fractures. Where have human failures distorted your ability to trust God? Spend time in Scripture not looking for God to prove Himself, but listening to what He has already said. Ask yourself: Am I believing because I trust Him, or am I waiting for Him to fit my expectations before I surrender?
– Refuse the trap of Enlightenment religion, the one that makes you the judge and God the defendant. True belief is not assent to an agreeable idea, but surrender to a living Person. Read John 10 again. Write down what Jesus has already told us. And then choose: Will I follow the Christ who speaks, or the messiah I wish existed?
Prayer
Father,
I confess that disappointment has clouded my trust. I’ve let human failure speak louder than Your faithfulness. I’ve filtered Your truth through my wounds.
But today, I choose to listen again.
Teach me to believe not with conditions, but with surrender.
Forgive me for wanting a messiah made in my image.
Jesus, You are enough. You have already spoken. Help me to obey.
In Your Holy and Powerful Name Lord Jesus,
Amen.
Footnotes
1. John 10:23–25 (NKJV).
2. Adam Clarke, Clarke’s Commentary: John 10, accessed 25 July 2025, https://www.studylight.org/commentaries/eng/acc/john-10.html.
3. James 2:19 (NKJV).
4. Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), 542–543.
5. James K. A. Smith, How (Not) to Be Secular: Reading Charles Taylor (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2014), 37.
6. David Guzik, Commentary on John 10:24–25, Enduring Word, accessed 25 July 2025, https://enduringword.com/bible-commentary/john-10.
7. Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life in God (New York: HarperOne, 1998), 303.
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