The Jewish people all belong to one family; they are descended from Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.  God changed Jacob’s name to Israel, so the offspring of Jacob are also known as the Children of Israel or simply, ‘Israelites’ (Exodus 3:15).  So when Jesus accused them of behaving like their father, they thought of their forefather Abraham, who learned to trust and obey God.  But Jesus said that if those who opposed Him had the same nature as Abraham, they would certainly not be trying to kill Him: Abraham had looked forward to Jesus’ day (John 8:56).

No, Jesus said that those religious people belonged to the devil!  What a provocative statement!  Jesus backed up His comment by saying that they had the family nature of Satan.  They did not love Jesus – the Father’s honoured Son, nor would they listen to Him.  They were not on the side of truth (John 18:37).  Their motive was to shut out the truth from their minds, stop anybody else hearing the truth and kill Jesus who is the Truth.  They envied His holiness (Mark 15:10) which showed up the evil in their own hearts.  In order to feel better about themselves, they wanted Jesus to be seen as  bad or irrelevant.  Their method was to circulate lies about Jesus to get public opinion against Him, to ‘cancel’ Him.
 
Satan is determined to destroy what God has made, and to keep people far away from God's love and truth.  Satan achieves this by the lies he circulates into people's minds, blocking out the truth from God.  So, even the religious people could not give the Son of God a fair hearing.  They were unable to hear the voice of God, because they did not belong to Him.  Those who wanted Jesus out of the way were agents for the devil.
 
Satan still continues his evil work, spreading lies into people's minds.  He motivates them to challenge the authority of Jesus, trying to destroy the work Christ has done in people's lives.  Persecution is tough, but those who suffer must remember that Jesus understands - because it happened to Him first.  As He said, "Remember what I told you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also. If they obeyed my teaching, they will obey yours also. They will treat you this way because of my name, for they do not know the one who sent me." (John 15:20-21).  Our prayer must be that those who belong to Christ will stand firm when they suffer for His sake, still daring to proclaim the gospel, and trusting that God will open some eyes to the truth of Jesus, so that they will be saved.