Jesus declares His divine identity in the temple treasury, sparking fierce controversy. This chapter opens with the account of the woman caught in adultery, where Jesus demonstrates both mercy and moral authority. As the confrontation with religious leaders intensifies, Jesus makes bold claims about His relationship with the Father and His existence before Abraham. The chapter builds to a dramatic climax as the Jewish leaders attempt to stone Him for what they perceive as blasphemy.
The pericope adulterae is famously absent from the earliest and most reliable manuscripts of John (𝔓⁶⁶, 𝔓⁷⁵, ℵ, B, A, C, L, N, T, W, X, Δ, Θ, Ψ) and is omitted, marked with asterisks/obeli, or transposed in the witnesses that contain it (some place it after Luke 21:38, others after John 7:36 or John 21:25). Internal-style features—rare vocabulary like αὐτόφωρος, παραγίνομαι used absolutely, and the synoptic-flavored "scribes and Pharisees" pairing not otherwise found in John—reinforce the textual judgment that the pericope is almost certainly not original to the Fourth Gospel. Yet it is widely regarded as authentically traditional dominical material; Eusebius (HE 3.39.17) cites Papias as knowing a "story about a woman accused of many sins before the Lord" found in the Gospel of the Hebrews. The LSB retains it (typically with a textual note) because of its canonical reception and theological coherence with the broader Johannine portrait of Jesus.
The narrative architecture is a forensic trap. The scribes and Pharisees frame the question as a binary: agree with Mosaic capital-sentencing (Lev 20:10; Deut 22:22-24) and Jesus loses His reputation for mercy and his standing under Roman law (which had withdrawn capital jurisdiction from the Sanhedrin, cf. John 18:31); reject it and He places Himself outside the Law of Moses. The narrator's editorial parenthetical πειράζοντες αὐτόν, ἵνα ἔχωσιν κατηγορεῖν αὐτοῦ (v. 6) discloses the entrapment-purpose with the same language used of the wilderness-temptations (Mark 8:11; Matt 22:18). The accusers' procedural irregularity is also conspicuous: Deuteronomy 22:22 demands both adulterer and adulteress be executed, yet only the woman is produced—suggesting collusion or selective prosecution.
Jesus' silent stooping and writing (κάτω κύψας / κατακύψας) is the chapter's most enigmatic gesture. Patristic and medieval interpreters have proposed everything from the names or sins of the accusers to a citation of Jeremiah 17:13 ("Those who turn away from You will be written in the earth, because they have forsaken Yahweh, the fountain of living water")—the latter especially attractive given the water-libation backdrop of the preceding Booths discourse and the Greek τῷ δακτύλῳ that recalls the divine finger writing the Decalogue (Exod 31:18). What the narrative withholds, it withholds deliberately: the action's refusal of haste is the point. The accusers want a snap judgment; Jesus enacts a parable in body language, slowing the proceedings until the moral weight of the situation can settle.
The verdict in v. 7 is a masterwork of legal jujitsu: ὁ ἀναμάρτητος ὑμῶν πρῶτος ἐπ' αὐτὴν βαλέτω λίθον. The hapax ἀναμάρτητος shifts the framework without contradicting Moses—Deut 17:7 explicitly required the witnesses to cast the first stones. Jesus accepts the Mosaic procedure but adds a moral qualification (drawn from Deut 19:16-19's prohibition of malicious witnesses) that disqualifies these accusers in particular. The departure ἀρξάμενοι ἀπὸ τῶν πρεσβυτέρων is psychologically devastating: the older men—those with the most accumulated awareness of their own moral compromises—recognize the disqualification first.
The closing dialogue establishes a paradigm of grace-and-command. The double οὐδείς (v. 10–11) and the threefold κατακρίνω/κατέκρινεν (vv. 10–11) are forensic—Jesus exercises divine prerogative not to issue the verdict the woman's deeds merited. But the present imperative μηκέτι ἁμάρτανε ("stop sinning"; cf. 5:14) places the woman under a new obligation. Mercy is not the absence of moral demand; it is the condition for transformation. The pericope, even if textually a later interpolation, perfectly captures the Johannine paradox of grace and truth (1:14, 17): the Light who exposes does not destroy.
The accusers came armed with a verdict. They left disarmed by a question. Mercy that does not call to "sin no more" is sentimentality; commands that do not flow from "neither do I condemn you" are tyranny. Christ is the only One whose grace and demand belong to the same sentence.
The opening ἐγώ εἰμι τὸ φῶς τοῦ κόσμου belongs to John's "I am" sayings with predicate (ἐγώ εἰμι + complement), parallel to "the bread of life" (6:35) and "the resurrection and the life" (11:25). The setting is critical: the Feast of Booths (still ongoing or just concluded) featured the nightly torch-lighting in the Court of Women, where four giant golden lamp-stands illuminated all of Jerusalem (m. Sukkah 5.2-3). Jesus speaks ἐν τῷ γαζοφυλακίῳ (v. 20)—the Court of Women, the very location of those torches. As the festival's final brilliance fades, He claims to be the abiding Light. The contrast is engineered: the temple's nightly fire has gone out; the world's true Light is standing among them.
The promise οὐ μὴ περιπατήσῃ ἐν τῇ σκοτίᾳ employs the strongest Greek negation (οὐ μή + aorist subjunctive), guaranteeing absolute deliverance from the realm of moral and spiritual darkness. The participle ὁ ἀκολουθῶν (substantival, present tense) defines disciples by ongoing pattern, not isolated decision. The result-clause ἕξει τὸ φῶς τῆς ζωῆς collapses two metaphors—light and life—into a single possession. Following Jesus is not merely walking in the light but having it; the disciple becomes a luminary because Christ indwells. The phrasing echoes Isaiah 42:6 and 49:6 (the Servant as light to the nations) and Psalm 36:9 (LXX 35:10: "in Your light we shall see light").
The Pharisees' challenge in v. 13 invokes a procedural objection rooted in Deuteronomy 19:15 (one witness is insufficient). Jesus' response in vv. 14-18 develops with rhetorical precision. He first claims that even self-witness is true because His witness is grounded in unique knowledge of origin and destiny (πόθεν ἦλθον καὶ ποῦ ὑπάγω, v. 14). Knowledge of one's source and goal is the prerequisite of trustworthy testimony, and Jesus alone among humans possesses both with absolute clarity. He then concedes the two-witness rule formally (v. 17, "even in your law"—the slight distancing through ὑμετέρῳ is striking; the law is theirs in administration but not in their grasp) and satisfies it by adducing the Father as the second witness (v. 18). The structural inclusio of ἐγώ εἰμι (v. 12, v. 18) frames the section: Jesus' "I am" is the testimony itself.
Verse 15's antithesis ὑμεῖς κατὰ τὴν σάρκα κρίνετε / ἐγὼ οὐ κρίνω οὐδένα is qualified, not contradicted, by v. 16's καὶ ἐὰν κρίνω. Jesus is not currently exercising eschatological judgment-by-condemnation (cf. 3:17, 12:47), yet His self-revelation produces an inevitable judgment-by-light (3:19-21): those who reject Him are already self-judged. The κατὰ σάρκα/κρίνω contrast directly parallels Paul's anthropology in 2 Cor 5:16. Fleshly judgment relies on surface—origin, social standing, miracle-portfolio—while true judgment perceives the reality of the One sent.
The exchange in v. 19 (ποῦ ἐστιν ὁ πατήρ σου;) is acid mockery, possibly hinting at the contemporary slander that Jesus was illegitimate (the "born of fornication" jab at v. 41 makes this likely). Jesus refuses the personal indignity and turns it back theologically: not knowing Him is not knowing the Father; the Son is the only adequate epistemic access to God (cf. 14:9: "He who has seen Me has seen the Father"). The closing geographic/temporal note (v. 20) renews the chapter-7 refrain οὔπω ἐληλύθει ἡ ὥρα αὐτοῦ: even in the most public, well-policed space of the temple complex, the Father's chronology immunizes the Son.
Light makes its own witness. The festival torches were lit by men and burned for a week; this Light kindles itself, exposes the real darkness, and never goes out. To know where someone came from and is going is the only ground for trusting their testimony—and only One has that knowledge unbroken.
Isaiah 42:6 announces the Servant as a "light to the nations" (אוֹר גּוֹיִם, ʾôr gôyim; LXX φῶς ἐθνῶν), an identity reaffirmed in 49:6 with the salvation-extending-to-the-end-of-the-earth horizon Simeon will recall at the infant Jesus' presentation (Luke 2:32). Psalm 27:1 (Yahweh ʾôrî, "Yahweh is my light") collapses divine identity and illuminating presence into a single confession.
The two-witness rule of Deut 19:15 governs the courtroom subtext of vv. 13-18: μαρτυρία does not stand on a single voice. By naming the Father as His co-witness, Jesus frames every act of unbelief as a violation not just of His self-testimony but of the Mosaic procedure the accusers claim to defend. LSB preserves "Yahweh" wherever the underlying Hebrew has YHWH—worth noting at every Johannine ego eimi where the divine-name allusion is in play.
The opening ἐγὼ ὑπάγω (v. 21) recapitulates 7:33-34 but escalates the stakes: now departure is paired with the consequence ἐν τῇ ἁμαρτίᾳ ὑμῶν ἀποθανεῖσθε. The shift between singular ἁμαρτίᾳ (v. 21) and plural ἁμαρτίαις (vv. 24a, 24b) is theologically deliberate. The singular evokes the realm or condition of Sin—a sphere of existence under sin's dominion (cf. Pauline ἁμαρτία in Rom 6); the plural names the accumulated specific transgressions. Both are remedied by the same act of faith. Without trust in Jesus' divine identity, one dies under Sin's reign and with sins unforgiven.
The Jews' grim joke in v. 22—μήτι ἀποκτενεῖ ἑαυτόν;—is yet another instance of Johannine ironic misunderstanding (cf. 7:35). They imagine Jesus contemplating Sheol, the final destination of suicides considered most defiled (cf. Josephus, War 3.375 on suicide and exclusion from the netherworld). They are accidentally right that He is going to His death; they are catastrophically wrong about its nature. The cross is His glorification, and they—not He—are the ones unable to follow.
The dualistic anatomy of vv. 23-24 (ἐκ τῶν κάτω / ἐκ τῶν ἄνω; ἐκ τούτου τοῦ κόσμου / οὐκ ἐκ τοῦ κόσμου τούτου) is not Platonic two-storey ontology but apocalyptic-Johannine origin-language. To be "from below" is to belong to the world-system constituted by unbelief (cf. 1:10-11). To be "from above" is to participate in the heavenly reality the Son has come to make accessible. The condition for crossing the divide is given in v. 24's antiphonal ἐὰν γὰρ μὴ πιστεύσητε ὅτι ἐγώ εἰμι: faith in the absolute "I am" is the only translation-mechanism between κόσμος-of-darkness and ἄνω-of-light.
The Pharisees' question σὺ τίς εἶ; (v. 25) provokes one of the most disputed clauses in John's Gospel: τὴν ἀρχὴν ὅ τι καὶ λαλῶ ὑμῖν. Three readings have been defended: (1) interrogative—"Why do I even speak to you at all?" (taking τὴν ἀρχήν as the adverbial accusative "at all" attested in Plato and Demosthenes); (2) declarative—"I am from the beginning what I have also been telling you" (taking ὅ τι as the indirect form of "what"); (3) the LSB rendering "What I have been saying to you from the beginning"—reading ἀρχή as temporal-original and treating the syntax as an elliptical answer ("[I am] precisely what I have been saying to you all along"). The LSB's choice preserves both the temporal force of ἀρχή and the continuity with John 1:1 (ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος): Jesus' identity has been disclosed from His opening word in the Gospel; their failure to grasp it is a failure of perception, not of revelation.
The climactic v. 28 ὅταν ὑψώσητε τὸν υἱὸν τοῦ ἀνθρώπου, τότε γνώσεσθε ὅτι ἐγώ εἰμι is the second of three "lifting up" sayings (3:14; 8:28; 12:32-34). The aorist-subjunctive ὑψώσητε holds the Jewish leaders themselves accountable for the lifting—they crucify the Son of Man—while John's double-meaning makes the same act the Son's exaltation. The temporal-then (τότε) names a future moment of recognition: the cross-and-resurrection will retroactively unveil the absolute "I am" that the surface debate has obscured. Many indeed believed in that hour (πολλοὶ ἐπίστευσαν, v. 30), though John 8:31 ff. will immediately distinguish surface-belief from the abiding-discipleship Jesus seeks.
To die in one's sin is to die in the wrong story—still convinced one is from below while refusing the only word that can lift one from below to above. The cross does not first reveal Jesus' love; it first reveals His identity. Recognition lags revelation; even those who lift Him up will see, when it is too late to refuse, that He is.
The discourse opens by addressing τοὺς πεπιστευκότας αὐτῷ Ἰουδαίους (perfect active participle, v. 31)—Jews who had come to believe. The conditional ἐὰν ὑμεῖς μείνητε ἐν τῷ λόγῳ τῷ ἐμῷ immediately distinguishes this surface-belief (cf. 2:23-25) from genuine discipleship. Initial assent is not yet abiding; discipleship is constituted by μένειν. The verbal sequence (μείνητε → ἐστέ → γνώσεσθε → ἐλευθερώσει) traces a pedagogical pipeline: persistence in His word produces authentic discipleship, which produces knowledge of truth, which produces liberation. Each step rests on the prior; surface-belief that does not abide attains none of them.
The audience's protest in v. 33 (σπέρμα Ἀβραάμ ἐσμεν) is breathtaking historical denial. Israel had been enslaved in Egypt, Babylon, Persia, and (presently) Rome. Their "we have never been enslaved" therefore must be heard as covenantal self-understanding: Abraham's seed is constitutively free under God, regardless of political circumstance. Jesus accepts the genealogical premise (v. 37: οἶδα ὅτι σπέρμα Ἀβραάμ ἐστε) but redefines slavery in moral-spiritual terms (v. 34) and freedom in filial terms (v. 36). The double-amēn pattern in v. 34 marks one of the chapter's most weighty pronouncements: sin is not a misstep but a master.
Verses 35-36 deploy a domestic parable in compressed form. The slave (δοῦλος) does not abide in the house "forever" (εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα)—he can be sold, dismissed, expelled (cf. Hagar and Ishmael, Gen 21:10-12). The son (υἱός) does abide εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα by birthright. The conditional inference in v. 36 (ἐὰν οὖν ὁ υἱὸς ὑμᾶς ἐλευθερώσῃ) presupposes that the Son is the abiding One in the Father's house and therefore alone has authority to manumit. The verb ἐλευθερώσῃ governs ὑμᾶς, not αὐτόν: the Son's freedom is communicable, transferred to those He liberates by adoption (cf. 1:12: ἔδωκεν αὐτοῖς ἐξουσίαν τέκνα θεοῦ γενέσθαι).
The progressive paternity-argument (vv. 37-44) escalates ruthlessly. First Jesus distinguishes Abrahamic descent from Abrahamic works (v. 39); then He insinuates that their actual paternity differs from what they claim (v. 38, παρὰ τοῦ πατρός, "from your [own] father" with deliberate ambiguity); then their indignant rebuttal "we were not born of fornication" (v. 41) lets slip a likely retort to a circulating slander about Jesus' own paternity. The exchange culminates in v. 44's explicit identification: ὑμεῖς ἐκ τοῦ πατρὸς τοῦ διαβόλου ἐστέ. The grammatical structure is striking: "you are from the father, namely the devil"—with διαβόλου in apposition. The polemic is not anti-Jewish but anti-rejection: anyone who rejects the Truth is patrimonially aligned with the original Murderer-and-Liar, regardless of ethnic descent (1 John extends the same ek-tou-diabolou language without any reference to Jewishness).
Verse 44's anatomy of evil is John's most explicit demonology. The devil is (a) ἀνθρωποκτόνος ἀπ' ἀρχῆς—murderer from the beginning, alluding to the introduction of death through deception in Eden and to Cain's killing as the first overt expression; (b) ἐν τῇ ἀληθείᾳ οὐκ ἔστηκεν—not standing in truth, the perfect ἕστηκεν indicating settled posture rather than momentary lapse; (c) ψεύστης καὶ ὁ πατὴρ αὐτοῦ—the originator of falsehood. The descriptions are diagnostic, not merely defamatory: they explain why the leaders cannot hear (v. 43, οὐ δύνασθε ἀκούειν). Spiritual deafness is paternally sourced; conversion requires not mere persuasion but rebirth (cf. 3:3, 5).
The closing tis ex hymōn elegchei me peri hamartias (v. 46) is a unique and extraordinary self-claim. ἐλέγχω ("convict, expose by argument") is the technical legal term for proving a charge. Jesus invites cross-examination on His sinlessness and offers it as the silencing reason for their unbelief: "If I speak truth, why do you not believe Me?" The implication is that unbelief in His case cannot be grounded in His character; it can only be grounded in theirs (v. 47). Hearing the words of God (τὰ ῥήματα τοῦ θεοῦ) is the sign of belonging to God; refusal to hear is therefore the disclosure of an alternative parentage.
Truth liberates only those who abide in it. Spiritual paternity is recognized by family resemblance, not by genealogical claim—children do what their father does. The Son who alone abides in the house is alone able to manumit slaves into the house, and what he manumits us from is not external bondage but the only paternity that ever held us captive.
The slave/son household-image in vv. 35-36 draws directly on the Genesis 21 expulsion of Hagar and Ishmael: the slave-woman's son does not inherit alongside Isaac because Isaac is the son of promise (cf. Gal 4:30). The doulos who does not μένει εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα in v. 35 is recognizably Ishmael; the υἱός who does abide is Isaac—and behind Isaac, the Son par excellence whose abiding freedom is communicable.
Verse 44's "murderer from the beginning... liar and father of lies" reaches back to Genesis 3 (the serpent's deceiving lie that introduced death) and Genesis 4 (Cain, named in 1 John 3:12 as ἐκ τοῦ πονηροῦ). Wisdom of Solomon 2:24 had already glossed Genesis 3 in these terms ("by the envy of the devil death entered the world"). John presupposes this exegetical tradition and uses it to map the leaders' present murderous intent (ζητεῖτέ με ἀποκτεῖναι) onto the original primeval murder, thereby exposing their actual genealogy.
The leaders' counter-charge in v. 48 is a double slur. Calling Jesus a Σαμαρίτης accuses Him of religious miscegenation—the Samaritans had a competing temple at Mt Gerizim and were considered ritually compromised (cf. 4:9). Calling Him δαιμόνιον ἔχεις imputes prophetic falsehood through demonic agency, the same tactic used in the Synoptic Beelzebul controversy (Mark 3:22). Jesus addresses only the second charge directly (v. 49), letting the first die from its own weight; his answer reframes everything as a contest of honor: He honors the Father; they dishonor Him. The verbs τιμῶ / ἀτιμάζετε are precise inversions, exposing the moral-religious topology in which the leaders, claiming to honor God, are dishonoring His Son and therefore dishonoring God.
Verse 50's ἔστιν ὁ ζητῶν καὶ κρίνων is a third-person reference to the Father as both seeker-of-the-Son's-glory and judge-of-its-deniers. Jesus refuses self-glorification (v. 54a, ἐὰν ἐγὼ δοξάσω ἐμαυτόν, ἡ δόξα μου οὐδέν ἐστιν)—an explicit rejection of the very category the world operates in. Glory that is self-conferred is no glory; glory bestowed by the Father is the only authentic doxa. This rule will resurface in 17:5 as the basis of the Son's pre-creation glory and post-passion restoration.
The double-amēn pronouncement of v. 51 (ἐάν τις τὸν ἐμὸν λόγον τηρήσῃ, θάνατον οὐ μὴ θεωρήσῃ εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα) deploys the strongest available negation (οὐ μή + aorist subjunctive) and the term θεωρέω (sustained perceptive observation rather than mere γεύομαι, which the leaders substitute in v. 52). The careful verb selection is crucial: physical death will indeed reach the believer, but they will never contemplate Death as their permanent destiny. The leaders' substitution of γεύομαι ("taste") in v. 52 lets them caricature the saying as an absurd promise of physical immortality—a familiar Johannine misunderstanding-by-flattening. Both verbs eventually serve John's argument: in 1 Cor 15 Paul will declare that the believer "tastes" not death itself but its already-defeated form.
Verses 53-55 escalate to direct paternity-confrontation. The leaders' question μὴ σὺ μείζων εἶ τοῦ πατρὸς ἡμῶν Ἀβραάμ; expects "no" syntactically but receives a devastating implicit yes. Jesus does not dispute their genealogical claim ("of whom you say, He is our God") but their knowledge: οὐκ ἐγνώκατε αὐτόν, ἐγὼ δὲ οἶδα αὐτόν (v. 55). The shift between perfect ἐγνώκατε (durative knowledge they don't possess) and present οἶδα (intuitive personal knowledge Jesus does possess) is theologically loaded. To be God's people requires knowing God; to know God truly is now impossible apart from knowing the Son who is sent.
Verse 56 introduces a startling exegetical claim: Ἀβραὰμ ὁ πατὴρ ὑμῶν ἠγαλλιάσατο ἵνα ἴδῃ τὴν ἡμέραν τὴν ἐμήν, καὶ εἶδεν καὶ ἐχάρη. Three readings have been defended: (a) Abraham, in his earthly life, prophetically anticipated Messiah's day (Genesis 15's covenant cut, or 17's announcement of Isaac, or—a common Targumic and Talmudic tradition—22's binding of Isaac, see Targum Pseudo-Jonathan Gen 22 and b. Sanhedrin 89b); (b) Abraham, post-mortem in Sheol/paradise, sees the day of Christ's coming (cf. Luke 16:22-25's portrait of Abraham aware of present events); (c) the rabbinic tradition that Abraham received a foreshow of the entire history of Israel including the Messiah (cf. Genesis Rabbah 44.22; 4 Ezra 3:14). All three converge on the same point: Abraham's joy was not in his own descendants per se but in the Day Christ brought. The aorists ἠγαλλιάσατο / εἶδεν / ἐχάρη depict completed historical events.
The leaders' bewildered πεντήκοντα ἔτη οὔπω ἔχεις (v. 57)—choosing the round number for the upper bound of age, not a precise estimate—elicits the climactic v. 58 πρὶν Ἀβραὰμ γενέσθαι ἐγὼ εἰμί. The aorist infinitive γενέσθαι (Abraham's "coming-into-being," a contingent event) stands against the absolute present εἰμί (Jesus' timeless existence). The contrast is between creaturely temporality and divine self-existence. Read against Exodus 3:14 LXX (ἐγώ εἰμι ὁ ὤν) and Isaiah 43:10 LXX (ἵνα... πιστεύσητε ὅτι ἐγώ εἰμι), the formulation is unmistakably theophanic. The leaders' immediate response—stones (v. 59)—confirms they have heard the saying as a divine-name claim and therefore as blasphemy under Lev 24:16. The verb ἐκρύβη ("hid himself") suggests sovereign withdrawal rather than panicked escape; the hour, once again, has not yet come.
Abraham came into being; the Son of God simply is. Every other religious figure has a birthday; Christ has only an eternal present. The stones the leaders pick up to silence Him are the unwitting confession that they have heard Him correctly—they are stoning Him for the divine name He has declared.
The climactic ἐγώ εἰμι in v. 58 echoes the LXX rendering of Exodus 3:14, where Yahweh names Himself אֶהְיֶה אֲשֶׁר אֶהְיֶה (ʾehyeh ʾăšer ʾehyeh, "I am who I am") and the LXX translates ἐγώ εἰμι ὁ ὤν. Isaiah 43:10 uses the absolute ἐγώ εἰμι repeatedly as Yahweh's self-disclosure to Israel: "you are My witnesses... that you may know and believe Me and understand that I am." LSB capitalizes "I am" in such contexts and elsewhere preserves "Yahweh" wherever the Hebrew has YHWH—an editorial decision that makes the divine-name texture of John 8:58 unmistakable to the LSB reader.
The Targumic and rabbinic tradition that Abraham foresaw "the day of the Messiah" at the Aqedah (Gen 22) provides the most plausible referent for v. 56. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Gen 22 has Abraham prophesying messianic restoration on Mount Moriah, and b. Sanhedrin 89b speaks of Abraham seeing the days of redemption. Jesus draws on contemporary Jewish exegesis to claim that the patriarch's joy at the binding-and-deliverance pointed forward to the day of the Son's own substitutionary lifting up.
"Truly, truly, I say to you" for ἀμὴν ἀμὴν λέγω ὑμῖν (vv. 34, 51, 58) — LSB preserves the doubled Aramaic ἀμήν as "Truly, truly," matching the formal solemnity of John's signature double-amēn formula. Other versions sometimes flatten this to "very truly" or "I tell you the truth"; LSB's repetition keeps the rhetorical weight of the original.
"Slave of sin" for δοῦλός ἐστιν τῆς ἁμαρτίας (v. 34) — LSB consistently renders δοῦλος as "slave," not "servant," preserving the ownership-language Jesus uses to describe sin's dominion. The harshness is theological, not merely lexical.
"Before Abraham came into being, I am" for πρὶν Ἀβραὰμ γενέσθαι ἐγὼ εἰμί (v. 58) — LSB's "came into being" preserves the contrast between aorist γενέσθαι (something coming into existence) and absolute present εἰμί (timeless self-existence). Smoother renderings ("before Abraham was") collapse the very contrast that constitutes the divine-name claim.
"Lift up the Son of Man" for ὑψώσητε τὸν υἱὸν τοῦ ἀνθρώπου (v. 28) — LSB preserves the literal "lift up" rather than smoothing to "exalt" or "crucify." The Johannine wordplay—same verb for crucifixion and exaltation—is essential to the Gospel's theology of glory-through-cross.