John 10:35 and the Canonical Reading of Scripture
“And the scripture cannot be broken.”
The Charge at Solomon's Porch
The words appear in the midst of an encounter where lives are immediately at stake. Jesus is walking in Solomon’s porch during the feast of the dedication when His opponents gather round Him demanding a plain declaration of whether He is the Christ. When He answers by appealing to His works and declaring, “I and my Father are one” (John 10:30), they take up stones to stone Him. Their charge is specific: “for blasphemy; and because that thou, being a man, makest thyself God” (John 10:33).
Jesus does not withdraw the statement, nor does He offer an abstract discourse on divine nature. He turns directly to the written text of the Old Testament:
“Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods? If he called them gods, unto whom the word of God came, and the scripture cannot be broken; Say ye of him, whom the Father hath sanctified, and sent into the world, Thou blasphemest; because I said, I am the Son of God?” (John 10:34–36).
The defense rests upon Ps 82:6, but the pivot of the entire reply is the brief clause, “and the scripture cannot be broken.” These words are often cited in isolation as an abstract proof-text for inspiration. Within John 10, however, they perform an immediate, practical function. Jesus’ accusers seek to condemn Him for using language that transcends ordinary human limits. He answers by confronting them with a passage from their own Scriptures where God Himself addresses those who received His word with the title “gods.” His point is that an inconvenient line of sacred Scripture cannot simply be set aside to preserve an accusation. What stands written remains an active, authoritative part of the divine witness.
Ps 82 is a judgment scene in which God stands in the divine assembly, rebukes those who judge unjustly, commands justice for the fatherless and afflicted, and announces their mortal end: “I have said, Ye are gods; and all of you are children of the most High. But ye shall die like men, and fall like one of the princes” (Ps 82:6–7). The precise identity of these figures remains debated; interpreters have seen them as unjust human judges, Israel at the giving of the law at Sinai, or heavenly rulers appointed over nations. Jesus does not pause to settle that historical question. His argument fastens upon an undeniable fact of the written record: Scripture uses the designation “gods” for those “unto whom the word of God came.” If the written text could apply such language to those who received it, how can the One whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world be condemned for saying, “I am the Son of God”? The argument works because the text cannot be annulled or dismissed when its wording proves difficult.
The Starting Point for Biblical Interpretation
This principle establishes the starting point for biblical interpretation. John 10:35 supplies the negative boundary: Scripture cannot be set aside. The Sermon on the Mount supplies the positive counterpart: “Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil” (Matt 5:17). Fulfilment does not mean that earlier Scripture was defective and required replacement, nor does it mean that every Old Testament passage relates to Christ in the same manner. A legal commandment, a historical narrative, a covenantal promise, and a psalm of lament are not all direct predictions awaiting identical realization. Rather, the entire witness of the Law and the Prophets moves toward its intended goal in the mission of the Son. At Gethsemane, when Peter draws a sword, Jesus submits to His arrest with the question: “How then shall the scriptures be fulfilled, that thus it must be?” (Matt 26:54). The written word is not a passive archive of past thoughts; it carries a divine claim that governs subsequent history.
The Fourth Gospel consistently reflects this pattern. The disciples do not grasp the meaning of Jesus’ words concerning the temple of His body until after the resurrection, an event that sends them back to believe “the scripture, and the word which Jesus had said” (John 2:22). When confronting those who scrutinize the text yet reject Him, Jesus declares: “Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me” (John 5:39). Their error was not diligence, but failure to perceive the testimony running through Moses’ writings. In John 12, the Evangelist joins the question of Isa 53:1 with the judicial hardening of Isa 6:10 to explain the tragedy of widespread unbelief. At the cross, the dividing of garments (Ps 22:18), the thirst of the sufferer (Ps 69:21), the preservation of unbroken bones (Exod 12:46; Ps 34:20), and the looking upon Him who was pierced (Zech 12:10) converge around Jesus’ death. The earlier passages had their own literary and historical settings, yet their witness was not exhausted by them; their enduring testimony reached toward the cross.
Canonical Reading vs. Proof-Texting
This dynamic reveals why reading Scripture as a whole is legitimate, and how it differs from arbitrary proof-texting. Proof-texting detaches isolated phrases from their historical surroundings to support conclusions imported from outside the text. Sound canonical reading, by contrast, begins with the discipline of historical exegesis. Ps 82 must first be heard as a real judgment upon unjust rule. Isaiah must first be heard within the crises of the eighth century before Christ. A psalm of lament must first be understood as genuine human grief. Historical context asks what the text said within its immediate setting; canonical reading asks what becomes of that testimony as the self-revelation of God continues. The later reading does not erase the earlier meaning; it follows that meaning forward.
The apostolic preaching in Acts demonstrates this method with singular clarity. At Pentecost, Peter quotes Ps 16: “For thou wilt not leave my soul in hell, neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption” (Acts 2:27; Ps 16:10). Peter does not ignore the historical reality of the author; he makes it the very hinge of his argument: “Men and brethren, let me freely speak unto you of the patriarch David, that he is both dead and buried, and his sepulchre is with us unto this day” (Acts 2:29). Peter grounds his exposition in the observable fact that David underwent corruption, while the psalm explicitly speaks of one who would not see corruption. Because David’s own mortal end did not match the terms of the text, Peter reasons that David spoke as a prophet, looking forward to God’s promise to raise up the Christ to sit upon his throne (Acts 2:30–31). Historical reality establishes the textual problem, and the apostolic reading follows that problem forward to its resolution in the resurrection of Jesus.
For a fuller study of the Davidic oath and its fulfilment in Peter’s sermon, see The Oath in the Ruins.
The culmination of this approach appears on the road to Emmaus. Grieving disciples, convinced that the crucifixion had shattered their hope of Israel’s redemption, are met by the risen Christ. He addresses their dilemma not by introducing a replacement for Israel’s Scriptures, but by rebuking their fragmented belief: “O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken: Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into his glory?” (Luke 24:25–26). Beginning at Moses and all the prophets, He expounds to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself. Later, in the presence of the gathered disciples, He reiterates: “all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms, concerning me. Then opened he their understanding, that they might understand the scriptures” (Luke 24:44–45).
John 10 and Luke 24 belong together. John 10 establishes the boundary: Scripture cannot be broken, annulled, or set aside. Luke 24 displays the living reality: the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms are opened together in the light of Christ. Canonical reading does not flatten the diverse human voices, genres, and historical epochs of the Old Testament into uniform predictions, nor does it treat earlier meaning as an illusion. It recognizes that no inspired word becomes disposable as revelation moves forward. The arrival of Jesus Christ does not silence the earlier witnesses of the Old Testament; it reveals how their testimony belongs within the unified purpose of God. We cannot claim to honour Christ while setting aside the very Scriptures He declared could not be broken, and which He opened for His church to understand.
The unity of Scripture’s witness and the disclosure of the one God in Jesus Christ are explored further in No Other Beside Me: The Disclosure of the Single Subject.