If Jesus Was Frustrated Then When People Refused To Accept Him, How About After Generations Of Christian Violence?

May 26, 2021              John 5: 40-41

39 ‘You search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that testify on my behalf. ⁴⁰Yet you refuse to come to me to have life. ⁴¹I do not accept glory from human beings. ⁴²But I know that you do not have the love of God in you. ⁴³I have come in my Father’s name, and you do not accept me; if another comes in his own name, you will accept him. ⁴⁴How can you believe when you accept glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the one who alone is God? ⁴⁵Do not think that I will accuse you before the Father; your accuser is Moses, on whom you have set your hope. ⁴⁶If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me. ⁴⁷But if you do not believe what he wrote, how will you believe what I say?’

            There is frustration in Jesus’ words in verse 40.  The Jewish Leadership is looking for something, it is looking for eternal life.  That is the Messianic Expectation that gives them hope against the Romans.  The idea that there will be an heir of David to sit on that great king’s throne forever.  Christianity has the idea of eternal life fairly thoroughly worked out.  It did not ever really occur to me to consider that the Jews had that same expectation, that same desire, in that time and place. 

            Where does that lack of awareness come from?  I think it is from what I know of Judaism today, distancing itself from Christianity.  And as we read Jesus here, as we progress through the New Testament, it may strike us as weird that the Judaism would distance itself from Christianity, as we developed from Judaism, through Jesus.  But to read the history between our religions since the time of Jesus, it is NO wonder to me at all that Judaism wants to keep a safe distance from Christianity.  We do NOT have a good record of dealing with our brothers and sisters in Christ.

            I have never really progressed past the military and political expectations of the Messiah at the time of Jesus, and then in focus on the ways that Jesus did NOT fit those expectations.  There is an interpretive note that “we” Christians got Jesus ‘right’ while the Jewish Leadership got him ‘wrong’.  That breeds arrogance, ‘us’ versus ‘them’. 

            Jesus seems to build on that theme when he goes on to say he does not accept glory from human beings.  I think that is a two-edged statement.  On the one edge, the purpose of humanity, according to the Westminster Standards, is to glorify God and enjoy God forever.  That is a “God the Father” thing, and Jesus, standing as an intermediary, is, I believe, on the one hand, saying that he will not accept the glory of human beings for himself over and against the Father.

            But I also believe there is another piece to this.  Refusing the ‘glory’ of human beings is meant to prevent any hint of self-aggrandizement in the eyes of the people.  It is to try and prevent exactly what has happened, an ‘us’ and ‘them’ turning into ‘us’ versus ‘them’ in matters of faith.  As I have said, our history with Judaism is not good as a religion.

            That leads to another thing.  It was very tough for me, an American Presbyterian in the 21^st century, to look back on the blood and horror of Christian history without pointing at it and saying “That isn’t me.”  This is not limited to the times when Jews have been assaulted, exiled, and killed by Christians, many times on the excuse “They killed Jesus” (which is why I am careful to look at the Jewish leadership in considering Jesus’ debates).

            It is not just about how my faith has treated others, but the religious wars within my faith.  “You believe wrong therefore I will kill you.”  I do not know just how far we can remove ourselves from the love and purpose of Jesus when we fall into that kind of thinking.  And it is ‘we’.  Christians are Christians.  I have never killed anybody in the name of Jesus, so I have two choices when it comes to Christian history.  The first is to deny it, that “my” Christianity is somehow better than “their” Christianity.  Or I accept it.  This was done in Jesus’ name.  It is wrong and we are seeking to do better.

            Because that is the very nature of faith.  We have Jesus’ forgiveness and are called upon to strive to do better, knowing that Jesus will pick us up again even when we fall.  There are compelling reasons why Jesus’ words back in John “Yet you refuse to come to me to have life” still resonate today.  It is the history of violence and sin that marks our own history.  Today, we have it packed away, glossed over.  Cannot tell you the last time I used the Crusades or the religious wars after the Reformation as a sermon illustration.  There will be freedom when we do comes to terms with it.  More later.

            Peace, Pastor Peter   

Distinguishing Belief in God from Abiding in God's Word

May 25, 2021              John 5: 37-39

³¹“If I testify about myself, my testimony is not true. ³²There is another who testifies on my behalf, and I know that his testimony to me is true. ³³You sent messengers to John, and he testified to the truth. ³⁴Not that I accept such human testimony, but I say these things so that you may be saved. ³⁵He was a burning and shining lamp, and you were willing to rejoice for a while in his light. ³⁶But I have a testimony greater than John’s. The works that the Father has given me to complete, the very works that I am doing, testify on my behalf that the Father has sent me. ³⁷And the Father who sent me has himself testified on my behalf. You have never heard his voice or seen his form, ³⁸and you do not have his word abiding in you, because you do not believe him whom he has sent.

39 ‘You search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that testify on my behalf. ⁴⁰Yet you refuse to come to me to have life. ⁴¹I do not accept glory from human beings. ⁴²But I know that you do not have the love of God in you. ⁴³I have come in my Father’s name, and you do not accept me; if another comes in his own name, you will accept him. ⁴⁴How can you believe when you accept glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the one who alone is God? ⁴⁵Do not think that I will accuse you before the Father; your accuser is Moses, on whom you have set your hope. ⁴⁶If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me. ⁴⁷But if you do not believe what he wrote, how will you believe what I say?’

            So there is a circular logic going on here.  The Father has testified to Jesus, the Father sent Jesus.  However, the Leadership that Jesus is talking to, they are denied this testimony.  They have never heard his voice nor seen his form nor have His word abiding in them, because they do not believe in Jesus, whom the Father sent.  How then do you achieve these things?  You believe in Jesus, to whom the Father has testified and whom the Father has sent.  To believe in Jesus is to experience who sent Jesus.  To experience who sent Jesus is to know the truth of Jesus and his testimony.  Without belief, they cannot experience who sent Jesus.  So they do not receive His Testimony. 

            A couple of interesting bits here in what Jesus is saying.  The first thing he tells them is that they, the Leadership, have never heard the voice of the Father.  This is true in the background of this age.  There has not been an ‘official’ prophet since Malachi, a couple hundred years before.  The second bit that Jesus says, “You have never…seen his form.”  That goes much further back.  When Moses was on the Mountain of God, he only saw God from the back, God’s glory being too powerful.  When Elijah went up on the Mountain of God, there was wind and fire and then God showed up in the still small voice.  The point seems to be that divine intervention is not coming directly from ‘the Big Guy’, but through Jesus.

            And then Jesus says they, the Leadership, do not have ‘his’ word abiding in themselves because they do not believe in Jesus, sent by ‘him’ (the Father).  It is something of a fine line that Jesus is drawing here.  The Leadership believe in God, that is Judaism, that is their religion.  Jesus is not comparing them to ‘Gentiles and unbelievers’, but he still needs a way to poke at their lack of faith in what has come among them. 

            He wants them to understand the transition, the fulfillment of the faith that is represented by the coming of Jesus.  It is the Messianic expectation that has been fulfilled.  It is God’s Plan that is being carried out.  It did not fall upon them cold, but came in the testimony of John the baptizer, who, by Jesus’ explanation, appears to have been accepted by the Leadership as someone of God. 

            The Leadership of the Jewish people, the educated ones, those ‘in the know’, those who are filled up with the knowledge and study of the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament, they are the ones who have not been drawn across the gap of faith that would have the word of the Father abiding in their hearts, if they believed in the one that the Father sent. 

            He says this straight up in the next verse.  They search through the pages of the Old Testament because they believe eternal life is to be found in the pages themselves, instead of in Jesus, the Messiah, the one to whom the pages refer.

            So Jesus is not simply arguing them in a circle.  They are believers, but they have not made the leap of faith to Jesus.  Jesus will continue his persuasion in the verses to come.  More later.

            Peace, Pastor Peter.

John Is Important, Not the Most Important, But Best To Pay Attention!

May 21, 2021              John 5: 34-37

 ²⁸Do not be astonished at this; for the hour is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his voice ²⁹and will come out—those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of condemnation. ³⁰“I can do nothing on my own. As I hear, I judge; and my judgment is just, because I seek to do not my own will but the will of him who sent me.

³¹“If I testify about myself, my testimony is not true. ³²There is another who testifies on my behalf, and I know that his testimony to me is true. ³³You sent messengers to John, and he testified to the truth. ³⁴Not that I accept such human testimony, but I say these things so that you may be saved. ³⁵He was a burning and shining lamp, and you were willing to rejoice for a while in his light. ³⁶But I have a testimony greater than John’s. The works that the Father has given me to complete, the very works that I am doing, testify on my behalf that the Father has sent me. ³⁷And the Father who sent me has himself testified on my behalf. You have never heard his voice or seen his form, ³⁸and you do not have his word abiding in you, because you do not believe him whom he has sent.

            Sorry for delays this week, celebrating a huge family milestone so have had to rearrange priorities a little. 

            So there is this notion out there that I first remember from watching “The West Wing”.  It is the concept of ‘walking it back’.  Something is said, usually in a public forum, and it is…too much.  So, to backpedal, but without appearing to back off completely, they call it walking it back.  I saw the idea displayed in the latest episodes of Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist.  An African American employee is asked essentially to walk back his open and honest assessment of working, as a black man, in a white dominant industry.  “Walking it back” is generally viewed in a negative light, retreating from where one honestly believes oneself to be.

            On first reading of verse 34, that is what struck me.  Jesus just said to the leadership that they’d sent messengers to John and John testified to the truth of Jesus.  But the wider context is Jesus and the Father are one and sharing back and forth.  So Jesus suddenly seems to walk back what he said.  John testified to the truth, sure, but I do not accept human testimony.  Then he seems to get disingenuous.  In saying that he, Jesus, does not accept human testimony, he tells them about the human testimony that they, mere humans, might be saved.  So John’s testimony is enough for us, but not enough for God.  Taken by itself, it looks like Jesus is building up and cutting John down in following sentences. 

            Look back to verse 31 to see how this whole piece begins.  Jesus has already eliminated himself as an effective witness to…himself.  He points at John as a witness for the people, but not for himself.  Yet John is a good witness.  Verse 35: “He (John the baptizer) was a burning and shining lamp…”  It appears that even the Leadership was willing to accept that John the baptizer was sharing something pretty incredible and necessary for belief.

            But as good as John’s testimony was (and it seems to have been pretty darned good), Jesus seems not to be so much discounting it as setting it alongside a testimony that is even greater.  That is because Jesus is not talking about human testimony but about divine testimony.  It is a two-step process.

            First, the Father has sent Jesus to do certain works of the Father among humanity.  God-level work done by Jesus.  This is the stuff Jesus is actually doing.  These divine level works, they are the first testimony of the divine to Jesus.  These testify that Jesus was sent by the Father, because He (Jesus) does the Father’s business.

            It is a careful distinction from what Jesus says concerning John.  John was a witness, John spoke, John gave testimony of what was to come.  His were prophetic words.  But now Jesus changes the focus.  It is not simply what was said about Jesus that makes Him God-awesome.  It is about the actual work he does, the work of God the Father.

            So, while at first glance, it may look like Jesus walked back the authority of John’s testimony due to God’s testimony, words versus words, that is not his point.  To quote a cliché, the actions speak louder than the words.  John said Jesus, essentially, is from God.  Jesus does God’s work, that is the proof, that is the testimony.

            And it is here that Jesus wraps things up.  In this manner, the Father who sent Jesus has testified on the behalf of Jesus.  That is why the Father’s testimony is more powerful than that of John.  It is not simply a human versus divine debate.  John spoke of what would come to pass.  In Jesus, it came to pass.  That is the witness of the Father. 

            So, again, going back to verse 31, where Jesus denies that he can testify effectively about himself, that is because he is sharing the action of God the Father (more than ‘just’ his words).  More later.

Peace, Pastor Peter

Jesus Hearkens Back to the Truth Spoken By John the Baptizer

May 17, 2021              John 5: 33

 ²⁸Do not be astonished at this; for the hour is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his voice ²⁹and will come out—those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of condemnation. ³⁰“I can do nothing on my own. As I hear, I judge; and my judgment is just, because I seek to do not my own will but the will of him who sent me.

³¹“If I testify about myself, my testimony is not true. ³²There is another who testifies on my behalf, and I know that his testimony to me is true. ³³You sent messengers to John, and he testified to the truth. ³⁴Not that I accept such human testimony, but I say these things so that you may be saved. ³⁵He was a burning and shining lamp, and you were willing to rejoice for a while in his light. ³⁶But I have a testimony greater than John’s. The works that the Father has given me to complete, the very works that I am doing, testify on my behalf that the Father has sent me. ³⁷And the Father who sent me has himself testified on my behalf. You have never heard his voice or seen his form, ³⁸and you do not have his word abiding in you, because you do not believe him whom he has sent.

            So one of the bits to keep in mind when looking closely at the verses of the Bible is context.  How does one verse fit into the wider context?  Is it dialogue?  Monologue?  Narrative?  When it comes to Jesus, another question to remember is ‘To whom is Jesus speaking?’  Because he speaks very differently to his disciples than he does to the Jewish leadership, the difference between his allies and those who were arrayed against him.  It is particularly needed in John’s gospel as John provides us with some of Jesus’ longest monologues. 

            These verses are aimed at those who have come at Jesus in regards to the Sabbath question.  He was the one who ‘broke’ Sabbath when he told the man he healed to take up his bed and go.  And the Leadership is not simply in an adversarial relationship with Jesus, they are after his life.  Go back to verse 18, they presumed Jesus was making himself equal with God, so they were out for his life. 

            Thus the very specific steps Jesus is laying out to map the relationship between the Father and himself.  He is not back-pedaling what he said, but he is seeking to make it as clear as he can.  Because Jesus is not out to defy the Leadership, he is there to convince them of the Plan of God being made manifest through himself, as the Son.

            Now Jesus points back to John 1:19, where the Leadership sent priest and Levites to John the baptizer specifically to figure out what he was all about.  John was another figure of Godly authority outside the mainstream of the Leadership.  His presence and ministry were forerunners to the ministry of Jesus.  Jesus is taking them back to what they already know as he continues to make the case for who is and what he does. 

            You may notice that I call them the Jewish Leadership while John calls them the Jews.  This is an important clarification built on a bloody history.  I still remember my preaching professor pointing out this clarification.  Simply to call them ‘the Jews’ is to misrepresent things.  It is not the entire Jewish people who are out to get Jesus.  But that presumption has been made in times when there has been persecution of and pogroms against the Jews.  Christians have called the Jews, as a whole, the Jesus-killers, and that is a sentiment that continues in White supremacist thought to this day.

            To read the Gospel, when John refers to the Jews, it is obvious from the context that he is talking about the Leadership in Jerusalem.  Jesus’ presence and ministry are challenging the status quo, which is preserved by the Leadership, priests, Levites, Pharisees, scribes, and so on.  The Jews as a people, they were the ones benefitting from the testimony of John and Jesus.

            It is interesting that the Leadership is interpreting Jesus’ Sabbath work as the impetus for Jesus equating himself with God.  There are some examinations of the Sabbath that might help deepen our understanding even more of what Jesus did.  But that is for later, when there will be more.

For now, peace.  Pastor Peter

The Importance of Why the Self-Testimony of a Human is Not True

May 13, 2021              John 5: 31-32

 ²⁸Do not be astonished at this; for the hour is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his voice ²⁹and will come out—those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of condemnation. ³⁰“I can do nothing on my own. As I hear, I judge; and my judgment is just, because I seek to do not my own will but the will of him who sent me.

³¹“If I testify about myself, my testimony is not true. ³²There is another who testifies on my behalf, and I know that his testimony to me is true. ³³You sent messengers to John, and he testified to the truth. ³⁴Not that I accept such human testimony, but I say these things so that you may be saved. ³⁵He was a burning and shining lamp, and you were willing to rejoice for a while in his light. ³⁶But I have a testimony greater than John’s. The works that the Father has given me to complete, the very works that I am doing, testify on my behalf that the Father has sent me. ³⁷And the Father who sent me has himself testified on my behalf. You have never heard his voice or seen his form, ³⁸and you do not have his word abiding in you, because you do not believe him whom he has sent.

            Jesus anchors his testimony is the flow chart from heaven to earth.  Because it is a flowchart.  God to Jesus to us and back again.  That is how it is going to develop…does that make this SPOILERS?  Last post was all about the two persons of Jesus, the human and the divine.  We pointed out that this theological division is NOT explicitly laid out in the Bible.  It is the after-market interpretation of what God tells us by people sincerely and deeply trying to understand the wisdom of the Lord.

            Because that division makes sense here.  If we assume Jesus to be fully God and fully human, this is the human being who is speaking to his disciples.  “If I testify about myself, my testimony is not true.”  A human claiming to be God, well, that is usually an attempt by some trickster to invoke powers to convince other people of what he wants for himself.  It is a fair question to ask how this is different for Jesus.

            Unlike a sinful human being (oh yeah, the other piece of Jesus as human is that he is tempted in every way but not sinful), unlike a sinful human being who would have their own agenda of power and leadership, Jesus was never about the power.  His message has always been about the Plan of God, how he must die and come back. 

            This does not mean there have not been sinful human beings who are about the death as well, but they usually do not want to die alone.  When there is a mass suicide by a cult (and these religious-types who think they are God usually devolve into a cult), it is the leader claiming that the mass death is needed to pass on to whatever comes next.  In my experience, I cannot name a cult leader who died, claiming that their death would open the way for their followers.  And it is usually secret knowledge, this desire to mass suicide.  Because if the leader openly spoke of their all needing to die, the authorities would step in.

            If I testify about myself, my testimony is not true.  Those words as applied to Jesus, if we applied them to someone like Jim Jones or David Korresh or another leader that takes…extreme measures…with their cult, these words stand in judgement of them.   

            There is another who testifies to Jesus, and because of that testimony, we know the truth.  That testimony is from God.  In human consideration, we divide God the Father as fully God from Jesus who is fully human and fully God.  Now, where human consideration can get sidetracked is in the division of the minutia of what entails God and what entails Human, and how we try to reverse engineer our understanding to grasp who/what God is.

            The important piece to remember however is that God is love.  And that is the testimony that is coming from God the Father to God the Son.  And Jesus is very clear on how that works.  There is nothing hidden, nothing secret.  We are not called to retreat to some secret location or to cut off friends and family.  Any of those should be clues that this testimony is just from the one who wants our loyalty/money/lives.  It is the love of God, which we see worked as a God who loved us that God sent God’s only begotten Son to die for us, that is the basis of understanding how the testimony about Jesus, from God, makes it true.  From the divine, to the human.

            More later.

Peace, Pastor Peter

Why The Theological Pronouncements of the Faith Are Not Nearly So "Heaven Sent"

May 11, 2021              John 5: 30

 ²⁶For just as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself; ²⁷and he has given him authority to execute judgment, because he is the Son of Man. ²⁸Do not be astonished at this; for the hour is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his voice ²⁹and will come out—those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of condemnation. ³⁰“I can do nothing on my own. As I hear, I judge; and my judgment is just, because I seek to do not my own will but the will of him who sent me.

³¹“If I testify about myself, my testimony is not true. ³²There is another who testifies on my behalf, and I know that his testimony to me is true. ³³You sent messengers to John, and he testified to the truth. ³⁴Not that I accept such human testimony, but I say these things so that you may be saved. ³⁵He was a burning and shining lamp, and you were willing to rejoice for a while in his light. ³⁶But I have a testimony greater than John’s. The works that the Father has given me to complete, the very works that I am doing, testify on my behalf that the Father has sent me.

            “I can do nothing on my own.”  One of the difficulties in listening to someone like me who pretends to be deeply immersed into the theology of Christianity and the meaning of the Bible is that it sounds like I actually sound like what I am talking about.  Read a book of theology, read the confessions of the church, and there is a similar…certainty.  THIS is what we believe, and here is why.  There are usually bible texts to prove things from there.

            But no one person is nearly that smart.  Our theological conclusions of today are based on generations, literally thousands of years of biblical interpretation and understanding, trying to translate what God, in the divinity of our Creator, has laid out for us to seek to understand as broken, sinful, created beings.

            Why such an apology to begin this diatribe?  Because of what Jesus leads off with.  How can he do nothing on his own?  Who is Jesus?  What is Jesus?  Those are questions that plagued the early church and have plagued those who seek to understand our faith more deeply.  The standard theological answer is that Jesus is “fully God and fully Human”, but what does that even mean?  Because there is no clear verse say, in Paul, where he tells us, “And oh yes children of faith, in case you were wondering, Jesus does all this salvation stuff because he is the Son of God and the Son of Man, perfectly, inseparably both, God and Human, because…”

            Again, who is Jesus?  He can do nothing of himself, but it said back in John 1:1 that he is God.  But how can God give Jesus all these things if Jesus is already God?  Did God create a shell of a man?  Is this some kind of hybrid?  Some kind of uber-angel? 

            And what is Jesus doing in this verse?  Creating a train of connection to God the Father.  “I hear.  I judge.  My judgement is just.  It is not my will but that of him who sent me.”

            It is the crowning achievement of human theological thinking, in taking what the Bible teaches us seriously, in looking at Jesus and what has been done for us, in laying it out as a statement that Jesus is fully Human and fully God.  It is the work of sinful human understanding attempting to wrap its mind around the divine.  God lays out what God has done.  We humans have this drive to make things fit. 

            And as we read about Jesus doing for us while receiving that authority from God, we seek to make the connections.  But what doing this study has given me is the up close and personal of studying the Scriptures and connecting to these truths myself.  It is what I am trying to share in this blog.  This is where I am, with a lifetime of experience in the faith, here is Jesus speaking and acting out, how then shall these things crisscross?  There is certainly an invitation to those of you who have followed along to continue, watching one man’s interaction with the Bible I hold to be so holy.

            More later.

Peace, Pastor Peter

Don't Be Astonished, Jesus Says, I Talk to the Dead and They Hear Me

May 10, 2021              John 5: 28-29

 ²⁴Very truly, I tell you, anyone who hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life, and does not come under judgment, but has passed from death to life. ²⁵“Very truly, I tell you, the hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live. ²⁶For just as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself; ²⁷and he has given him authority to execute judgment, because he is the Son of Man. ²⁸Do not be astonished at this; for the hour is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his voice ²⁹and will come out—those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of condemnation. ³⁰“I can do nothing on my own. As I hear, I judge; and my judgment is just, because I seek to do not my own will but the will of him who sent me.

³¹“If I testify about myself, my testimony is not true. ³²There is another who testifies on my behalf, and I know that his testimony to me is true.

            So what is the most astonishing thing here?  Assuming Jesus is adding this observation since his last “Very Truly I Tell You”, so it is in this important piece?  Is it the dead who are going to hear things?  Is it about the life that is in the Father, the creative life invested in us at creation that is now passed to Jesus?  Is it the authority of judgement that has been passed along to the Son of Man? 

            Frankly, Jesus has already commented on how judgement has passed to the Son of Man.  He has done a few pieces identifying how the Father and the Son are, as he will put it, abiding in one another.  I think it is about the dead people.  As Jesus goes on to say, “the hour is coming when all who are in the graves will hear his voice”-the voice of the Son of Man.  While he is not powerfully explicit about it, from what we know, the dead will hear his voice speak to them from the grave, because Jesus is going to die.  He is also headed ‘downstairs’, descending into hell according to the Apostle’s Creed.  And if the ‘hour’ that is coming is reference to the moment of the Passion of The Christ, this stuff all begins to tie together. 

            All who are in their graves will hear his voice…the collective ‘passed away’ from the beginning of creation.  This is the judgement of Jesus sweeping back over the flow of history.  This is Godly stuff here.  God created time, God is NOT bound by time.  So the Plan of God is to ‘insert’ the death and resurrection of Jesus as a time-bound event-because of us, those created in the temporal structure of creation but it is one event for all, beginning to end.  Confusing?  Well, thank God that God has a handle on it.

            And we are given to understand why they are coming out.  There are two categories of resurrection, to life for the good, to condemnation for the evil.  Again, this is in divine terms, good and evil, a dualistic view of the world, no shades of ‘maybe’ behavior in between.

            So here’s where things can get interesting.  To track through the gospel of John, is it to see a development in the theology of God’s Plan as Jesus lays it out for us?  Because we can easily come to the book with the full plan of God, laid out from the Birth of Jesus, through Jesus’ death and resurrection, to His ascension, and looking forward to His coming again, against which we measure every passage.

            But Jesus has not laid out the entire case of His death and resurrection as yet.  What we are first receiving is that Jesus is God and what Jesus has received from God the Father as the Son of God and the Son of Man.  And we know there is a relationship between God and Man, and Humanity, built into the Sonship.  And it has to do with the Messiahship, and Jesus as Christ-which means the Anointed One. 

            Read this verse without the context of the rest of John and the Bible and it looks like we are judged on merit.  Good versus Evil.  All we need is the formula to figure out how good can outweigh the other.  Except for one problem.  Sin.  But before we can talk meaningfully about sin, we need to understand the balance. 

            But the astonishing thing is that the dead are going to hear Jesus’ call.  More later.

Peace, Pastor Peter

           

Life In God Becomes Life in the Son, Is The Life Given to Humanity at Creation

May 5, 2021                            John 5: 26

 ²²The Father judges no one but has given all judgment to the Son, ²³so that all may honor the Son just as they honor the Father. Anyone who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him. ²⁴Very truly, I tell you, anyone who hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life, and does not come under judgment, but has passed from death to life. ²⁵“Very truly, I tell you, the hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live. ²⁶For just as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself; ²⁷and he has given him authority to execute judgment, because he is the Son of Man. ²⁸Do not be astonished at this; for the hour is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his voice ²⁹and will come out—those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of condemnation. ³⁰“I can do nothing on my own. As I hear, I judge; and my judgment is just, because I seek to do not my own will but the will of him who sent me.

            So first, verse 26 comes in expansion of what has been offered in verse 25.  What 25 offers is that those dead who hear the voice of the Son of God will live.  That was the discussion from yesterday.  One thing that did not come up was the mechanism of living once more from the condition of death.  Because death is pretty permanent (Jesus has not raised anyone from the dead yet).  Just as the Father has life in himself…Jesus tells us.  It feels like a throwaway comment, made off the cuff.

            But we are returning here to Genesis, to the Creator God.  But it is not ‘just’ the days of creation, but a special moment in the creation story that rings in my mind.  God created Adam out of the ground and then breathed life into him.  This was an order of life above that which God had already created in the plants and the animals.  There was the capacity of intelligence, of being able to be in relationship with God at a cognitive and heartfelt level.  All creation reflected the goodness of God, but that is in a passive manner.  Humanity was created with the chief end, as the Westminster divines tell us, to Glorify God.  The life that God breathed into us allow us to express the goodness of God in an active manner. 

            When death was pronounced on humanity for the sins of Adam and Eve, the capacity to actively express glory to God was cut short.  Okay, so from the Father having life in Godself, we have jumped to the ultimate purpose of humanity.  Am I trying to clear the Grand Canyon on a pogo stick?

            I am actually working out a basic tenet of the Christian faith.  Our purpose is to glorify God, great.  But does that mean more than singing to God loudly in church and wearing the proper t-shirt?  That is a rather dark-humored approach to considering that we isolate glorifying God to a service of worship and/or a Christian fellowship gathering.  But there are no such limits placed on this.  It is life-wide. 

            Connect it to something else from the creation story, we are created in God’s image.  In that, we are the glory of God as the Bible makes reference to the child being the glory of the parent.  But how does that grow from our verse?

            It may help to abuse a theater metaphor.  Life is the stage on which we can glorify God.  Death closes the show.  There is no more stage on which we can glorify God.  But the life that is in the Father, the life that is the stage to which we were created, that life has been granted to the Son, that the Son may have life in himself.  It is from that life in Godself that the life of humanity was given, when God breathed life into us.  Go back to John 1, and the first verses speak of the Word being God.  What that means is developed here.

            Jesus is given the creative power of life-provision that came at creation.  Thus, when the dead hear His voice, when they return to life, it is because the Son has received that creative power of life-provision passed down from the Father.  The Father provided us with the stage, with life, and now Jesus provides us with the stage, with life.

            To use another metaphor, in Jesus, we are restored to factory settings-and then some.

            More later,

Peace, Pastor Peter