8:24 I am he. The word “he” is italicized in the Authorized Version, for Jesus actually said, simply, “I am,” thus again claiming to be none other than Jehovah (note John 8:58, referring to Exodus 3:14). Thus, belief that Jesus is God is essential to salvation.

8:29 always. The Lord Jesus thus claims here to be sinless, always doing fully the will of God. This sounds real and right coming from Him but would be arrogant and insane on the lips of anyone else. Contrast Romans 3:11.

8:31 continue in my word. Thus, true dedication to following Christ (i.e., discipleship) is measured by ongoing obedient belief in His Word (i.e., the Scriptures).

8:32 know the truth. This could be read, literally, “come to know.” True freedom results from continued study of the Scriptures and obedience to them.

8:44 your father the devil. Just as those who receive Christ become children of God (John 1:12), those who do the will of the devil are called “children of the wicked one” (e.g., Matthew 13:38). The age-long conflict between the spiritual seed of the serpent and the spiritual seed of the woman was first prophesied in Eden right after the fall of Adam and Eve (Genesis 3:15).

8:44 murderer from the beginning. Evidently, the first child of Satan was Cain, who slew his brother Abel, no doubt at the instigation of Satan (I John 3:8-12). Since that first murder, the devil has been seeking to slay men and women before they can become children of God through faith in Christ, using his own children whenever he can to accomplish it.

8:44 father of it. As the father of lies, the devil deceived our first parents with the lie that they would become “as gods” through obeying his word rather than God’s Word (Genesis 3:1-5). This lie of “humanism”—that men and women, as the apex of the evolutionary process, are the true gods of the world—has been deceiving and drawing people away from the true God of creation ever since. It has assumed various forms in different times and places, but it is always essentially the same old lie of Satan, “which deceiveth the whole world” (Revelation 12:9). Thus, he is author of the great lie of evolution, seeking to understand and control the world without its Creator. He has thereby deceived himself first of all, convincing himself that both he and God had evolved out of the primeval chaos (as in all the ancient mythical cosmogonies which he must have taught his own earliest human children).

8:46 convinceth me of sin? Jesus could challenge His enemies to find any sin in Him, because He was, uniquely of all men, without sin. He, as man, has demonstrated to all men what God intended man to be.

8:56 he saw it. Abraham evidently saw the “my day” of Christ when “the word of the LORD came unto Abram in a vision” (Genesis 15:1). On that occasion, the Lord had said, “I am thy shield, and thy exceeding great reward,” and this was the very first of the great “I am’s” of the Bible. This vision of the Word of the Lord was Christ, of course, in a pre-incarnate theophany.

8:58 I am. This is probably the most unmistakable claim of deity yet made by Christ, and the Jewish leaders clearly understood what He was saying. He not only was referring them back to Abraham’s vision (see note on John 8:56), but also to Exodus 3:14, when Moses asked God His name, and received the reply: “I AM THAT I AM.” That is, God told Moses (and Jesus told the Jews) that He was the eternally existent One, the Creator and Sustainer of all things. “Before Abraham was [i.e., ‘was born’], I am.”