Incarnational Witness

 

 

“One of the two who heard John [the Baptist] speak and followed Him [Jesus] was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother. He found first his own brother Simon and said, ‘We have found the Messiah (which translated means Christ).’” John 1:40 – 41.

 

“The next day He [Jesus] purposed to go into Galilee, and He found Philip. And Jesus said to him, ‘Follow me.’ Philip found Nathanael and said to him, ‘We have found Him of whom Moses in the Law and also the Prophets wrote – Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.’ Nathanael said to him, ‘Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?’ Philip said to him, ‘Come and see.’”

 

Andrew hears John the Baptist say, “Behold the Lamb,” and Andrew follows Jesus. Andrew finds his brother Peter and says, “We have found the Messiah.” Jesus finds Philip and Philip finds Nathanael and Philip says, “We have found Him…come and see.”

 Sometimes Jesus calls us directly to know Him, but most of the time He calls us to follow Him through others; through John the Baptist, through a family member such as Andrew, or through a friend such as Philip. John the Baptist was certain when he cried “Behold the Lamb of God.” Andrew and Philip were seminally certain, that is, they had a certainty about Jesus, but it was a certainty that would go through a process of being more and more certain - is it not true that most of us, if not all of us, are in this process?

 

However, even when Jesus calls us directly, as with Paul on the road to Damascus, we soon find that He continues the call through others – Paul immediately needed Ananias, and then later he needed Barnabas, and still later he needed the affirmation of the prophets and teaches of Antioch (Acts 9:10; 11:25 – 26; 13:1 – 2). The original Apostles needed one another, and others, as they grew in Christ – as they grew individually and as a foundational group (Ephesians 2:20; Rev. 21:14).

 

May I say that witnessing is less a matter of what we do, than of who we are in Jesus Christ…and of who Jesus Christ is to us. When we reduce witnessing to techniques we profane Christ’s command to go into all the world, to all peoples, and make disciples, teaching others to obey all that Jesus Christ has commanded us. Witnessing is more than proclaiming, though proclaiming is certainly an element of witnessing, the Great Commission is more than the dissemination of information, it is the command to “make disciples.” How can we make disciples if we are not living as disciples? If we ourselves are not disciples of Jesus Christ – and this goes far beyond what we consider normal Christian living – how can we make disciples? If we don’t know who Christ is in us and who we are in Christ how can we live sacramentally so that we are broken Bread and poured out Wine for our generation?

 

Andrew and Philip said, “We have found…” While naturally from their perspective they found the Messiah, we can also say that the Messiah found them, as they would come to understand. Jesus would say in the Upper Room, “You did not choose Me but I chose you…(John 15:16). Earlier Jesus would say, “No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him…(John 6:44). We have the freedom to speak either way, “I found Him,” or “He found me,” are both accurate; just as we have the freedom to say, “I saw the sun rise this morning,” without going into an explanation of the relationship of the sun and earth and orbits and the earth’s axis.  We have the freedom to speak from varying perspectives.

 

Andrew “brought him [Peter] to Jesus.” Philip brought Nathanael to see Jesus. In John 4:29 the woman at the well told the men of her village, “Come, see a man who told me all the things that I have done; this is not the Christ, is it?” (Consider that this woman, with an unstable and questionable social background, was saying to the men of her village, “Come, see a man.” She was telling them what to do!)

 

O dear friends, our level of knowledge and understanding is not the point in all of this, for Andrew and Philip and the woman of the well had all just met Jesus, but they were finding their friends, family, and neighbors and were saying, “Come and see.” They were bringing others to meet Jesus. Philip appealed to Moses and the Prophets when he spoke with Nathanael, while the woman at the well appealed to her experience with Jesus – what matters is that we tell others, bring others, and follow Jesus ourselves. We are called to be faithful, Jesus is responsible for the results (John 15:1ff).

 

John Chapter One is a chapter of witnessing, God has witnessed to the world through His Creation in and through the Word, the Son; God has also witnessed particularly through the Incarnation, an Incarnation that is ongoing – that began in a Grain of Wheat and now continues through a Harvest – a Harvest on a trajectory of culmination. Since this chapter is a chapter of Incarnational Witness, as indeed the Gospel of John is the Gospel of Incarnation Witness (what we see in John 1:14 is expanded in chapters 13 – 17 and beyond), when it comes to our witness, who we are is critical – when we realize who Christ is in us and who we are in Christ, our witness flows from our organic koinonia in the Trinity…hence witnessing is less a matter of what we do, than living in the reality of who we are.

 

Are our lives perpetually saying, “Come and see”? Are we saying, “Behold the Lamb!”

 

Are we sacramentally living as broken Bread and poured out Wine?

 

Who Did Andrew and Philip Find?

 

“The two disciples heard him [John the Baptist] speak, and they followed Jesus.”

 

Let’s state two things that ought to be before us at all times:

 

The first is that our desire ought to always be to speak in such a way that others follow Jesus Christ, and that they follow in such a way that they bring others to know Jesus, for to follow Jesus Christ entails witnessing to Jesus Christ and bringing others to Jesus Christ. How did we come to a place in the West, and in our congregations, where lesser forms of Christianity are the norm? A faithful Church is a witnessing Church. A faithful Bride is a Bride not ashamed of her Husband.

 

The second thing is that we need to be willing to leave the things we know, the things that are familiar to us, so that we might follow Jesus Christ and increasingly come to know Jesus Christ. Abraham, our Father in the Faith, left what he knew (Ur of the Chaldees) in order to obey the call of Yahweh; our fathers and mothers of Hebrews Chapter 11 were perpetually “going out” in order to follow the True and Living God, and Andrew and Philip would both leave the familiar in order to follow Jesus. Jesus was constantly calling men and women to leave what they knew, and often what they were secure within, to follow Him.

 

How different is the Biblical call of Jesus Christ from what we preach and teach and write about today? We often say, “Keep what you have. Keep your pleasures, keep your affluence, keep your egotism, keep your pursuit of temporal position and glory; come to Jesus and He will help you gain all of these things and enjoy them even more – Jesus will help you get what you want!”

 

Sadly, we even give sin new names, therapeutic names – so that we don’t think there is really anything wrong with us that can’t be fixed with some counseling and hugs or the acquisition of things – whether it is the sin nature with which we are all born, or specific sins of our hearts, minds, and bodies – we substitute therapeutic language for Biblical language, therapeutic concepts for Biblical concepts, the wisdom of man for the wisdom of God.

 

But make no mistake, we are not only called to leave sin, to leave the bad things, we are called to leave even some pretty good teaching, such as the teaching of John the Baptist, so that we can follow Jesus. In fact, for those of us raised in the de facto Law of Moses and traditions of men, which at times may have been helpful to us and others, we are called to leave even those things so that we may give Jesus Christ our all in all and find in Him our everything.

 

The Law of Moses was our tutor (Galatians 3:15 – 4:11; note 3:24), but to remain in the Law is to die, and to teach the Law as Law is to place others under condemnation (2 Cor. Chapter 3). There was a time when Andrew needed to leave John the Baptist, just as we are called to leave the Law, through the death of Jesus Christ, and be married to Another (Romans 7:1 – 6).

 

To truly understand the Law and the Prophets and the Writings is to see Jesus Christ in them (Luke 24:27, 44 – 45). Just as John the Baptist proclaims, “Behold the Lamb!”, the Old Testament shouts, “Behold the Lamb!”

 

I suppose I should make this point, we are not called to seek new things, new understandings, new revelations; we are called to seek and follow Jesus Christ. I am afraid that I must confess that I used to be a member of the “Revelation of the Month Club.” I was always seeking something newer and higher and more novel, rather than seeking a deeper and more intimate relationship with Jesus Christ. I was more focused on sharing “truth” with others, understandings with others, than I was in sharing Jesus Christ with others. Let us not deceive ourselves, we can make some attractive religious idols – the most powerful idols are the attractive idols, not the ugly scary idols – just look at the winners of the show American Idols. We create talented religious idols, not dumb idols.

 

Usually it doesn’t cost us much, if anything, to share our spiritual and religious knowledge with others – after all, it is really just a social game. But to share Jesus Christ means that we must live in Jesus Christ as He lives in us and through us – and my dear friends, that means that the Cross is our nexus, that we live in Galatians 2:20 – and that will simply cost us our lives, for we must die with Christ so that others may live in Christ (John 12:24; Philippians 3:8 – 16; Acts 20:24; 2 Tim. 2:8 – 10).

 

May I please make another confession? There have been times (O I wish I had those times back to live them again!), in which I preached and taught about witnessing for Jesus Christ without speaking of suffering for Him, of bearing His reproach, of laying down our lives for Jesus and others. I look on those times with shame. Any book, any video series, any preaching or teaching that purports to speak of witnessing for Jesus without suffering for Jesus and others is an airplane with one wing – and what happens to such an airplane?

 

We ought not to read John 3:16 without 1 John 3:16.

 

What do you think about that statement?

 

We’ll pick Andrew and Philip up again in the next post in this series.

 

 

 

"Come And See"

 

“Again the next day John was standing with two of his disciples, and he looked at Jesus as He walked, and said, Behold, the Lamb of God! The two disciples heard him speak, and they followed Jesus.

 

“And Jesus turned and saw them following, and said to them, What do you seek? They said to Him, Rabbi (which translated means Teacher), where are you staying? He said to them, Come, and you will see. So they came and saw where Jesus was staying…” John 1:35 – 39a.

 

Ought not our message to eternally be, “Behold, the Lamb of God!”? What would the professing church look like if this were our message? This message, that of the glorious Lamb, is the only message than saves sinners, heals the brokenhearted, sets prisoners free, and transforms men and women into the fulness of the image of God. This is the only message that is relevant to every headline, every need of mankind, every sorrow, every trouble, every conflict, and every fear.

 

How could there be room for dissension within a congregation that hears such preaching and teaching, and that finds its koinonia in the Lamb? How could there be division within the professing church were we to look to the Lamb, proclaim the Lamb, and follow the Lamb wherever He goes (Rev. 14:1 – 5)? How could we not be overcomers were we to live out of our identity in the Lamb, with the Lamb living in us – individually and as His People? How could there be inequity in the Catholic Body of Christ on earth, were we to follow the Lamb wherever He goes?

 

O dear friends, what a great gulf exists between marketing ourselves, our churches, our ministries – and the Gospel of “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” What a deep chasm it is between a therapeutic “gospel” in which our needs are the center of gravity, and the eternal proclamation of “Behold the Lamb!”

 

Is there a more important question to ask Jesus Christ, the Lamb, than “Rabbi, where are you staying?” Ought not our desire every morning to be to follow Jesus? To seek where Jesus is to be found when we awake, and as we live every moment of every day? Ought not we to be continually “Looking unto Jesus” (Heb. 12:2)?

 

O but how distracted we are in this distracted world! We are distracted by the 24/7 news. We are distracted by the false idea that we must have a relevant response to whatever the world thinks is important, no matter how eternally irrelevant it may be. We are distracted by faddish “Christian” teaching which changes colors like a chameleon. We are distracted by our insatiable curiosity. We are distracted by “success,” by money, by materialism, by self-glory, by pleasure and affluence. We are distracted by political power.

 

Who is there who will behold the Lamb and call others to behold Him? Dear, dear friends, when the Lamb is in our midst we will be on our faces, and as the song says, “The things of earth will grow strangely dim, in the light of His glory and grace.”

 

The man or woman or child who learns to live in the New Jerusalem now, will feel quite at home when that City comes in its fulness. May the Lamb ever be our Light, our radiant Light, by which we see all things.

 

Jesus bids us to “Come and see” where He is (John 17:24) – may this be our Way of Life.

 

 

 

 

The Anointed One, Who Anoints

 

Continuing from our last post:

 

After His resurrection, and prior to His ascension, Jesus commanded His disciples not to leave Jerusalem “but to wait for the promise of the Father, which you heard of from Me; for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now…but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, even to the remotest part of the earth” (Acts 1:4 – 5, 8).

 

Jesus Christ is the Anointed One who anoints. He anoints and baptizes those who trust in Him with the Holy Spirit, and this anointing becomes our way of life – that is, we live in the power and koinonia of the Holy Spirit.

 

Our baptism in the Holy Spirit by Jesus Christ is particularly called “the Promise of the Father.” Why? Yes, we can answer that it is because this is something the Father promised, and hence it is the “Promise of the Father,” but might there be more to it?

 

When we are baptized in the Holy Spirit we share in the Anointing of Jesus Christ, His Anointing becomes our Anointing. This pleases the Father and is in fulfillment of His desire that Jesus Christ “would be the firstborn among many brethren” (Romans 8:29). From eternity the heart’s desire of our Father is to “bring many sons to glory” (Hebrews 2:9 – 13). The very nature of our sonship, the very nature of our standing with the Father, the very nature of our organic union with Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – is the indwelling Trinity – it is the Life of God, the Anointing of God the Holy Spirit – we have become “partakers of the Divine Nature” (2 Peter 1:4). Hence “The Spirit Himself testifies with our sprit that we are children of God…” (Rom. 8:16).

 

We are vessels that are filled and immersed and sealed.

 

Israel was once a man who was first called Jacob. Then Jacob’s name was divinely changed to Israel, a prince who rules with God. Still later, the name Israel came to mean a people who were descended from Jacob – Israel. When I use the name “Israel” I may be referring to either the individual known as Jacob, or I may be referring to the people Israel who came from the loins of Jacob, who were generated from Jacob – Israel. (Yes, I may also be referring to the current political entity known as “Israel” in the Middle East).

 

The same is true when I use the name “Christ,” for Jesus says that “except a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it abides alone, but if it dies it bears much fruit” (John 12:24). This is the reality behind Paul’s words, “For even as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though they are many, are one body, so also is Christ” (1 Cor. 12:12). That is, Christ may speak particularly of Jesus Christ (much like Israel may speak of Jacob – Israel), or it may speak of the Body of Christ, with Jesus Christ as its Head (much like Israel may refer to the people descended from Jacob – Israel, with Jacob – Israel as its genealogical head or source).

 

1 Corinthians 12:12 is not a simile, it is not a metaphor, it is a present reality for those who are in Jesus Christ – Christ is a Body with Jesus Christ as its Head. 1 Corinthians 12:13 says, “For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free, and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.”

 

The Anointed One who anoints baptizes us into an Anointing which makes us organically One Body – “so also is Christ.”

 

This is in fulfillment (at least in some sense) of Jesus’ prayer that we “may all be one; even as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us, so that the world may believe that You sent Me. The glory which You have given Me, I have given to them, that they may be one, just as We are one; I in them and You in Me, that they may be perfected into one, so that the world may know that You sent Me, and loved them, even as You have loved Me” (John 17:21 – 23).

 

The Promise of the Father is a promise to His Firstborn that He, the Firstborn, will have many brethren. The Promise of the Father is a promise to us that He will bring us to glory, in and with His Firstborn Son.

 

O dear, dear friend; the enemy would blind us to our sonship and anointing. The enemy would have us root our identity in Egypt, would blind us to the glory that our Lord Jesus has bestowed upon us. We have been called into the fellowship, the koinonia, of the Trinity. We have been invited to the Marriage Supper of the Lamb – and where shall we sit at this marriage supper?

 

We will sit at the head table, for we are the Bride.

The Anointed One, Who Anoints

  

John testified saying, I have seen the Spirit descending as a dove out of heaven, and He remined upon Him. I did not recognize Him, but He who sent me to baptize in water said to me, He upon whom you see the Spirit descending and remaining upon Him, this is the One who baptizes in the Holy Spirit. I myself have seen and have testified that this is the Son of God. John 1:32 – 34.

 

O my, where to begin? Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah, the Anointed One – and yet there is such confusion surrounding the anointing of the Holy Spirit, there is confusion surrounding Jesus Christ as the Anointed One and the One who anoints. All four Gospels tell us that the One upon whom the Holy Spirit descends and remains is the One who baptizes with the Holy Spirit, with Matthew and Luke adding “and fire.” (Matthew 3:11; Mark 1:8; Luke 3:16).

 

The Anointed One is the One Who anoints. We use the name Jesus Christ, but we pay little attention to the name; Jesus speaks of the One who saves, Christ speaks of the Anointed One who anoints. While John the Baptist recognized Jesus as the Messiah who anoints by the Holy Spirit descending and remaining on Jesus, we don’t appear to do that – we have any number of ways in which we recognize Christ, but strangely the Anointing doesn’t seem to be one of them, and when it is one of the ways we recognize Christ, it is often secondary, tertiary, or worse.

 

Can it be said that we truly recognize Christ if we substitute other forms of recognition in place of the Holy Spirit?

 

We recognize Christ (we think we do) by political position, by worldview, by tradition, by liturgy, by particular experiences, by a list of dos and don’ts, by religious jargon, by dress codes, by nationality…what can you add to this list? We may even say we recognize Christ by certain doctrines, forms of teaching and preaching, or various catechisms and confessions. But do we recognize Jesus Christ by the Anointing? Do we recognize Him by the Anointing that remains upon Him and by that same Anointing into which He immerses (baptizes) us?

 

Jesus Christ is revealed by the Holy Spirit, by the Anointing; and may I gently suggest that without the Anointing that everything else, no matter how good and right they may be in their proper place (and some of the aforementioned may have no proper place!), can be but dead letter and old wineskins.

 

Flesh and blood did not reveal Jesus Christ to Peter (Matthew 16:17), nor will flesh and blood reveal Jesus Christ to us. If we are indeed in Christ then we have “an anointing from the Holy One” (1 John 2:20). “By this we know that we abide in Him and He in us, because He has given us of His Spirit” (1 John 4:13). “We know by this that He abides in us, by the Spirit whom He has given us” (1 John 3:24b).

 

Paul writes, “Now He who establishes us with you in Christ and anointed us is God, who also sealed us and gave us the Spirit in our hearts as a pledge” (2 Cor. 1:21 – 22).

 

In Romans 8:14 we read, “For all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God.” What does this look like in our lives? In the lives of our congregations?

 

It may be fair to say that our experience often reflects that of the disciples of Ephesians 19:2 who said, “…we have not even heard whether there is a Holy Spirit.” For while we may have heard of the Holy Spirit, functionally and experientially we seem to do fine without Him.

 

Our koinonia with the Holy Spirit should be palpable, just as should our koinonia with the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. To be sure this palpability may not be what we think it should look like; for we are called to submit to the Holy Spirit, not to engage in a paganism that seeks to manipulate God the Holy Spirit or to manipulate others into particular spiritual expressions.

 

And this leads me to what Jesus Christ says on the matter of the Spirit’s work in our lives: “The wind blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it, but do not know where it comes from and where it is going; so is everyone who is born of the Spirit” (John 3:8). Let’s also not miss John 3:6, with its echo of John 1:13, “That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.” And let’s add John 6:63, “It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing; the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life.”

 

Back to John 3:8, we “do not know where it [the wind] comes from and where it is going.”

 

One of the beauties of the Gospels is that Jesus interacts with people in any number of ways; He says one thing to the rich young man, another thing to the woman caught in an adulterous act, and yet another thing to a raving lunatic among the tombs. Would it not be foolish to devise a teaching, a system of thought, that insisted that in sharing the Gospel that we must adopt the approach of Jesus to Nicodemus to the exclusion of His approaches to all other people in the Gospels? (Now that I’ve written this it occurs to me that some of us have done this very thing – I certainly did in a particular season of life).

 

What then, can we learn from Jesus’ own ministry and from what Jesus says concerning the Holy Spirit in John 3:8? I think we can learn that just as Jesus manifested His love and grace in myriad ways toward people, that the Holy Spirit manifests Himself in myriad ways with people When Jesus says “you do not know” in John 3:8, it seems to me that Jesus means “you do not know.”

 

Yet we want to ignore this, just as we want to ignore Jesus when He says that “…you do not know which day your Lord is coming” (Matthew 24:42). We read these words about our Lord’s coming and promptly set out to identify the day and hour of His coming. We read our Lord’s words concerning the moving of the Holy Spirit and we promptly set out to define and dictate what God the Holy Spirit will do and what He won’t do, how God the Holy Spirit will manifest Himself and how He won’t. (To be sure, Paul gives guidance in 1 Corinthians chapters 10 – 14 concerning what our response to the Holy Spirit ought to look like as the People of God.)

 

I’ll come back to this in the next post, but let me conclude with this thought:

 

Jesus Christ is the Anointed One who anoints, He baptizes with the Holy Spirit and with fire. Ought we not to be looking for the anointing of the Holy Spirit in order that we might see Jesus Christ revealed? Ought we not to be imploring God to infuse us with anointed lives? Ought we not to be crying out for our congregations to be anointed and filled with the Holy Spirit? Ought we not to resolve to cease being armchair quarterbacks, engaging in endless speculation about God the Holy Spirit, and get in the game?

 

Is the Anointing a living experience? If we are in Christ, then we are in the Anointed One and the Anointed One is the One who anoints.

 

O dear ones, this world needs to hear the authoritative Voice of God through His People. The Church needs to hear its preachers and teachers speak as the oracles of God, as men and women with authority and not as the scribes (Matthew 7:29; 1 Peter 4:11).

 

“For the Kingdom of God does not consist in word but in power” (1 Cor. 4:20; see also 1 Cor. 2:1 – 5).

Preparing the way for the Lamb

 

As we’ve been considering what we can learn from John the Baptist, what are you learning, what is challenging you? Are you seeing yourself in John the Baptist? Are you seeing yourself in Isaiah Chapter 40?

 

We are called to live in the Scriptures and to submit to the Scriptures living in us – the Word of God is to be formative in our lives, in our souls – we are not called to force the Bible into our own image, or to make the Bible a captive to our parochial and proprietary viewpoints, but rather to live under the authority of the Word of God, allowing the Word to mold us, to shape us, into the image of Jesus Christ. As the Word leads us into a dynamic and transformational life in Jesus Christ, it necessarily leads us into lands and dimensions that dwarf our understanding. As someone from Montana might say, “Life in Christ is Big Sky country.”

 

How are you seeing yourself in the Bible? Can you see yourself in Psalm 139? Can you see yourself in Ephesians 2:1 – 10? Are you seeing yourself in John Chapter One? What do you look like in these passages? What do these passages look like in you?

 

It is one thing for the Biblical text to be on the page, it is another thing for the Biblical text to live within us.

 

Back to John the Baptist in John Chapter One; we see that John came so that Jesus would be manifested, made known, revealed. This was John’s purpose and calling and this is our purpose and calling. This reminds me of a time when I was the guest speaker at a church in Richmond, VA. As I placed my Bible on the pulpit and prepared to give the Sunday message, my eyes fell upon a bronze plaque affixed to the top of the pulpit, something that no one but the speaker could see, it was from John 12:21, “Sir, we would see Jesus.” I don’t mind telling you that it was sobering to read that verse, it was a reality check that I needed before giving the sermon.

 

John cries out, “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” Isn’t this to be our cry? The centrality of our message? Aren’t we to be pointing others to the Lamb, as opposed to ourselves, our pet doctrines, our traditions, our doctrinal distinctives, our movements?

 

What would it look like if the professing church in unison cried, “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!”?

 

In John 1:35 – 37 we read, “Again the next day John was standing with two of his disciples, and he looked at Jesus as He walked and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God!” The two disciples heard him speak, and they followed Jesus.”

 

What do you suppose John felt when these two disciples left him and followed Jesus? Did he fell joy and satisfaction or did he feel resentment? Did he rejoice that his ministry was bearing fruit, or did he want these two disciples to stay with him?

 

How do we feel when those who were once focused on us, learn to follow the Lamb? What do we think, how do we react, when those who once paid attention to us and our words learn to have eyes and ears and hearts attuned to Jesus Christ?

 

Consider the words of John the Baptist in John 3:29, “He who has the bride is the bridegroom; but the friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly because of the bridegroom’s voice. So this joy of mine has been made full.”

 

This reminds me of Paul in 2 Corinthians 11:2, “For I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy, for I betrothed you to one husband, so that to Christ I might present you as a pure virgin.”

 

Our calling is to point others to Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God. It is to wed others to Jesus Christ; not to ourselves, our movements, our ministries, our distinctives. As Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 1:30 – 31, Christ is everything and we are to glory in Him and in Him alone. We are to glorify Jesus Christ, not ourselves. John the Baptist modeled this, Paul the Apostle modeled this – are we modeling this? Are we more enthralled with our agendas than we are with Jesus Christ?

 

(And permit me to make this observation, we all, I suspect have egos. We all want attention and recognition. The question is what do we do with our egos, it is what do we do with our desire for attention and recognition. The wise disciple learns to deliver himself or herself to the Cross, the wise disciple learns to run to the Cross as soon as pride, vanity, ego, and self-glorification raises its head – the wise disciple cries out, “He must increase, but I must decrease!”)

 

Can we know a greater joy than the joy of being used by God to wed others to Jesus Christ?

 

What do you think?

 

How do you see yourself in John Chapter One? What are you learning from John the Baptist?

Preparing the way for the Lamb

  

 The previous post concluded with these questions: What does this passage from Isaiah 40:1 – 5 look like in your life? What does the ministry of John the Baptist in John Chapter One look like in your life?

 

A key element in the ministry of John the Baptist, (not to be confused with the Apostle John who wrote the Gospel of John), is to prepare the way for the Lord, for Jesus the Messiah (let’s remember that the words Messiah and Christ both mean “anointed” – the former is the Hebrew term, the latter the Greek term). Let’s look at a portion of the Isaiah passage again:

 

Clear the way for the LORD in the wilderness; make smooth in the desert a highway for our God. Let every valley be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; and let the rough ground become a plain, and the rugged terrain a broad valley; then the glory of the LORD will be revealed…

 

When we see the word LORD in upper case letters that means that the actual Hebrew word is Yahweh, the personal and covenantal name for God, the core Name (if we can use that term) by which God reveals Himself in the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings (what we call the Old Testament). I point this out so that we can see that when this is fulfilled in John the Baptist preparing the way for Jesus Christ that John is preparing the way for Yahweh, for God. The Yahweh who gave the Ten Commandments on Sinai is the same Yahweh who, in His Incarnation, gives the Sermon on the Mount. Let there never be any mistake about this, that Jesus Christ is God (see John 1:1, 14, 18). The Trinitarian mystery unfolds in John’s Gospel, enveloping us in its Presence, and inviting us into the Divine Mystery, making us “partakers of the Divine Nature” (2 Peter 1:4). As a matter of fact, in some ways the Gospels introduce us to this mystery in baptism of Jesus Christ when the Son is baptized, the Holy Spirit descends in the form of a dove, and the Father speaks from heaven.

 

John the Baptist proclaims his message in the wilderness. Is there not a sense in which we all live in a wilderness? No matter how “civilized” a society may be outwardly, inwardly we have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Everyone of us has been born spiritually dead. Yes, we all have a measure of light from the Light (John 1:9), but we are also all either enemies of God, or have been enemies of God but are now reconciled to God in Jesus Christ (Romans 5:1 – 11; Ephesians 2:1 – 10). We can be seduced by the affluence of society, we can be made drunk by the desire for things and pleasures. It is a grave danger to compare our affluence with the poverty of others and think that we are better off, no man dead in his sins and alienated from the life of God is better off than another man – whether we are rich or poor, without Christ we live in a wilderness.

 

Those of us who, by the grace of God, have come into a relationship with Jesus Christ are called to go back into the wilderness and proclaim Jesus Christ – and make no mistake, wherever we are, no matter how affluent our surroundings may be, we are in a wilderness.

 

Are we sharing the Gospel of Jesus Christ in the wilderness?

 

Are we “making smooth a highway for our God”? Consider Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 9:19 – 23:

 

For though I am free from all people, I have made myself a slave to all, so that I may gain more. To the Jews I became as a Jew, so that I might gain Jews; to those who are under the Law, I became as one under the Law, though not being under the Law myself, so that I might gain those who are under the Law; to those who are without the Law, I became as one without the Law, though not being without the law of God but under the law of Christ, so that I might gain those who are without the Law. To the weak I became weak, that I might gain the weak; I have become all things to all people, so that I may by all means save some. I do all things for the sake of the gospel, so that I may become a fellow partaker of it.

 

Paul learned the art of making a smooth highway in his relationships with others so that he could share Jesus Christ. He worked to bring every mountain down and raise every valley up so that he could communicate the Gospel of Jesus Christ. He became all things to all people so that he might save some of them in the wilderness.

 

Do we place barriers between us and others, and if so, do we reinforce those barriers? Or, do we strive to bring every mountain which might be a barrier down, and do we strive to raise every valley that might be a barrier up – in order to make smooth the way of the Gospel of Jesus Christ? I fear that our propensity is to hold on to, and defend, the barriers that stand between us and others.

 

Yesterday I saw a woman wearing a shirt that spoke of Jesus Christ. She also wore a hat with a political message. The hat represented a barrier to the Gospel. I have known professing Christians in the workplace whose work ethic was not good, and whose work product was poor – those were barriers to them sharing the Gospel. I have known professing Christians who were gossips in the workplace, gossip is a barrier to making a smooth highway for the Gospel.

 

Much of the professing church in the United States has become politicized to the point where its politicization is a barrier to a credible Gospel message – instead of making the highway smooth we have strewn it with potholes and treacherous debris.

 

The attitude of John the Baptist that, “He must increase but I must decrease” (John 3:30) is essential for us to cultivate and maintain if we are going to prepare the way to share the Gospel with others. When Jesus Christ is our focus, our life, our love; when sharing Him with others is the passion of our soul, then the glory of the LORD will be revealed.

 

Are we living our lives so that Jesus the Messiah will be manifested to others (John 1:31)?

 

What is there in my life that I need to put aside so that it will not be a barrier to sharing Jesus Christ?

 

Are we building and maintaining barriers between us and others, or are we making smooth a highway for our God?

Preparing the way for the Lamb

  

All of the Gospel writers emphasize the calling and ministry of John the Baptist. As we might expect, the Gospel of John presents some complementary facets of John’s ministry relative to Matthew, Mark, and Luke. While John begins his Gospel in timeless eternity, he quickly brings us down to earth in 1:6, “There came into being a man sent from God, whose name was John.” Then John the Apostle writes, “He came as a witness, to testify about the Light, so that all might believe through him. He was not the Light, but he came to testify about the Light.”

 

Before John writes the compelling incarnational words of 1:14, “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us…” he first writes, “There came a man sent from God whose name was John.”

 

When John is questioned by the religious establishment about who he is and what he is doing, he answers by speaking Isaiah 40:3, “I am a voice of one crying in the wilderness, Make straight the way of the LORD” (John 1:23). Let’s look at a fuller quotation from Isaiah:

 

“Comfort, O comfort My people, says your God. Speak kindly to Jerusalem; and call out to her that her warfare has been ended, that her iniquity has been removed,  that she has received of the LORD’s hand double for all her sins. A voice is calling, Clear the way for the LORD in the wilderness; make smooth in the desert a highway for our God. Let every valley be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; and let the rough ground become a plain, and the rugged terrain a broad valley; then the glory of the LORD will be revealed, and all flesh will see it together; for the mouth of the LORD has spoken.” (Isaiah 40:1 – 5).

 

May I please ask what you might consider a strange question?

 

What does this passage from Isaiah look like in your life? What does the ministry of John the Baptist in John Chapter One look like in your life?

 

Allow me to point out that Isaiah 42:6 was spoken by the Lord concerning Paul and Barnabas in Acts 13:47, so it isn’t really all that strange when I ask, “What does this passage from Isaiah 40 look like in your life?” Or if I ask, “What does Isaiah 42:6 look like in our lives?” You see, we are called to live in the Word and to submit to the Word living in and through us. It is a grave error to view the Scriptures as a petrified forest, for the Bible is a forest of living trees, from all of which we are to partake. What we read and meditate upon is to be a living reality in our lives – for Christ is in the Bible and the Bible is in Christ. So, what does Isaiah 40 look like in our lives?

 

I’ll leave us to ponder this for now.

 

The Law, or Grace and Truth?

 

“For the Law was given through Moses; grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ” (John 1:17).

 

We are, I think, afraid of Grace and Truth in Jesus Christ. We are, I think, afraid to acknowledge that we are dead to the Law and married to Jesus Christ (Romans 7:1 – 6).

 

We usually agree with Paul that, “But now apart from the Law no flesh will be justified in His sight; for through the Law comes the knowledge of sin” (Romans 3:20).

 

But I’m not sure that we agree with Paul that, “…whatever the Law says, it speaks to those who are under the Law, so that every mouth may be closed and all the world may be accountable to God” (Romans 3:19). I write this because the Law is often still preached and taught to those in Christ, those under grace. This does not appear to square with Galatians 4:1 – 7, which pictures us first as being under the tutorial Law but then being adopted (placed) as sons and entering a new realm of relationship with God and frankly a new Way of living.  

 

We don’t seem to actually believe that the Law is “the ministry of death” (2 Cor. 3:7), that the letter kills (2 Cor. 3:6), that it is the “ministry of condemnation” (2 Cor. 3:9), or that frankly it has no glory when compared to grace and truth (2 Cor. 3:10). If we truly believed what the Bible teaches about the Law we would stop teaching it and trust ourselves and our congregations to the grace and truth which is in Jesus Christ.

 

This does not mean that we should stop teaching the Old Testament, absolutely not, we need every page, every paragraph, every word of the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms. But it does mean that we teach the Old Testament so as to see Jesus Christ – this is the way Jesus taught and revealed Himself through the Old Testament (see Luke 24), as well as how the Apostles taught the Old Testament.

 

This is, by the way, not antinomianism, that is, it is not lawlessness as some would charge and as most would fear (hence our fear of teaching what the Bible teaches about the Law). It is rather teaching what the Bible teaches about who Jesus Christ is in us and who we are in Him. It is teaching that we are to love as Jesus loves, that we are to lay down our lives as Jesus laid down His life - and as He desires to continue to lay down His life in us, His Body.

 

It is to teach that we are “partakers of the Divine Nature” rather than partakers of the Law. It is to teach that the Trinity dwells within us and desires to draw us into deep eternal koinonia – individually and as God’s People.

 

There is something in our religious nature that rejects the idea of being dead to the Law and married to Jesus Christ. We would rather remain under the Levitical system than walk with Melchizedek (see the NT book of Hebrews). We think it is safe, we’ll keep one foot in the Law and the other foot in the Gospel – the result is that while we may have crossed the Red Sea, our hearts and minds tend to remain in Egypt.

 

In the Gospel of John, the religious leaders apply unrelenting pressure on Jesus, they must hold onto the Law at all costs – they are even willing to murder. Is it possible that we also put pressure on grace and truth, becoming unwitting accomplices of the scribes and Pharisees and Sadducees? How else can we explain the poverty of the professing church? How else can we explain that the typical professing Christian has no sense of his sonship? Her inheritance in Christ? No sense of loving as Jesus loves, going as Jesus goes, laying down his life as Jesus lays down His, being dead to sin and the world and alive to Jesus Christ, being crucified to the world by the Cross.

 

How else can we explain the lack of sharing the Gospel, that we neither speak to others of Jesus nor pray with others as Jesus?

 

Well, while there may be other contributors to the answers to these questions, I have little doubt that living under the Law and its perpetual condemnation is one of the core problems. The Law treats us as children at best, not as sons and daughters of the Living God. The Law can produce but condemnation and death – not the Life of Jesus Christ, not Grace and Truth.

 

Dear friends, the Nature of God living in us, through Jesus Christ, will accomplish far more than the Law. Why isn’t this self-evident? We see an initial Incarnation in John chapters 1 – 12, then we see an expanded Incarnation is chapters 13 – 21. Do we really think that the Law offers us something better than the Incarnation? “Except a grain of what falls into the ground it abides alone, but if it dies it bears much fruit” (John 12:24).

 

Are we living in the Law, or is the Incarnation living in us?

 

When people touch us, are they touching the Law of Moses, or are they touching the Incarnation of Jesus Christ in His Body?

The Word Became Flesh

 

“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us…” (John 1:14a).

 

For the first thirteen chapters of John we see what the “Word became flesh” looks like with respect to our Lord Jesus Christ, but then this mysterious subject takes a turn that is so unexpected that to this day many of us deny it even though “it is written.” For in John 14 Jesus tells us that the Holy Spirit will come to live within us and that He and the Father will also come to live within us (John 14:16 – 17, 23). In other words, the Word will not only tabernacle in the flesh of the Son of Mary, but He will also live within His People.

 

This radical transposition was demonstrated on the Day of Pentecost (Acts 2) when the Holy Spirit filled the Temple of God, the People of God, and inaugurated an expanded Incarnation which finds its climax in the manifestation of the sons of God (Romans 8:19), the ultimate breaking forth of the New Jerusalem, the Bride (Revelation chapters 21 – 22), and the maturation of the Mature Man (Ephesians 4:13).

 

Paul, whose life was once orientated and dedicated to the Temple in Jerusalem, came to see the Greater and Eternal Temple in Jesus Christ (Ephesians 2:19 – 22) and preached what he heard from St. Stephen, that God does not live in temples made with hands (Acts 7:48; 17:24). Peter also saw the expanded and ever-growing Incarnation when he wrote that we are “being built up as a spiritual house” (1 Peter 2:5). And of course the Apostle John writes, “Greater is He who is in you, than he who is in the world” (1 John 4:4).

 

Now if a hallmark of the Incarnation is “grace and truth” (John 1:14, 16, 17), then a hallmark of our lives must be “grace and truth.” We must not have grace without truth, for that is subjective promiscuity. Neither should we have truth without grace, for that is dead legalism and pedantry – that is scribal Christianity.

 

Not only must we have grace and truth, just as Jesus Christ we must “realize,” manifest, and demonstrate grace and truth (John 1:17), and in Christ we are called to manifest, explain, and display the Father (John 1:18; 14:7 – 9).

 

The enemy desires to blind us to our birthright, our inheritance, and our calling. If the enemy cannot keep us from the Kingdom, he will attempt to keep us from realizing the fulness of the Gospel and our calling as the brothers and sisters of Jesus Christ. While we may have been delivered through the Red Sea, our hearts and minds and identity are often found back in Egypt.

 

Jesus has given us His glory because we are His brothers and sisters (John 17:22; Romans 8:29; Hebrews 2:10 – 13). It is surely a cosmic tragedy that we refuse to accept His glory, our calling in Him, and our identity as the saints of God in Christ. The world awaits deliverance through the Body of Christ, creation groans and travails for our unveiling (Romans 8:20 – 23), and yet our hearts and minds remain in Egypt, in the house of bondage. What does it matter if we gather on Sundays if our hearts and minds are elsewhere?

 

I fear that just as ancient galleys chained slaves to oars, that we are chained to pews; we row and we row, but we row in the waters of perpetual sin consciousness – a characteristic of the Old Covenant (Hebrews chapters 7 – 10), and we make myriad excuses for why we do not soar with eagles in our inheritance, our birthright, and our calling in our Lord Jesus Christ.

 

Dear, dear friends, both the world and the professing church need to see the reality of John 1:14 – 18 in us…not just as individuals, for no one person can contain the glory of God, but rather in us as the Body of Jesus Christ, the Bride, the true and everlasting Temple of God.

 

 

The Word Became Flesh

 

“And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. John testified about Him and cried out saying, “This was He of whom I said, He who comes after me has a higher rank than I, for He existed before me.” For of His fulness we have all received, and grace upon grace. For the Law was given through Moses; grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ. No one has seen God at any time; the only begotten God, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained Him [made Him known].” John 1:14 – 18.

 

We have seen the Word in the Beginning; now we see the Word in time and space. We have seen the Word invisible, now we see the Word visible. In verses 10 – 13 we see the Incarnation and the ministry of the Word, now in verses 14 – 18 we see the Incarnation and ministry of the Word expressed once again.

 

Verse 10, “He was in the world…” Verse 14, “And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us…”

 

In verses 10 and 11 we see that the Word was not received; in verses 12, 13, 14, and 16 we see that the Word was perceived and received.

 

The Church Fathers saw the “eternal generation of the Son” in Proverbs 8:24 and John 1:14 and 18. That is, the Son is the Only Begotten of God, but this begottenness is eternal in its Divine Nature and it is beyond our understanding. Note that in John 1:18 the Word is styled “the Only Begotten God.” While some ancient manuscripts have “the Only Begotten Son,” the better reading is likely “the Only Begotten God.” In any case, both renderings are faithful to the Word and the Biblical message.

 

In verse 12 we see people “receiving” the Word. In verse 14 we see people “seeing” His glory, a glory “full of grace and truth.” In verse 16 we see people “receiving” His fulness and “grace upon grace.” Then in verse 17 there is a contrast between the Law given through Moses and the grace and truth that were communicated to us through Jesus Christ.

 

May we ask ourselves whether we are “seeing His glory”? Throughout the Gospel of John the glory of the Word, Jesus Christ, is revealed again and again in various forms and settings. His glory is revealed in Cana, it is revealed with the woman at the well, it is revealed in the loaves and fishes, it is revealed in the raising of Lazarus, it is revealed in the Upper Room, it is revealed on Calvary, and it is revealed in the Resurrection. His glory is revealed in His teachings about worship in Spirit and in Truth, it is revealed when He speaks of Himself as the Bread of Life, the Water of Life, the Light of Life, and the Way, the Truth and the Life.  May I ask, “Are we seeing His glory”?

 

In John 17 Jesus Christ will say that He has given us His glory. If we are not seeing His glory how will we know what it is that He is giving us? Consider that in 2 Corinthians 3:17 – 18 we are taught that our transformation comes about as were are “beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord” and are “being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit.”

 

(Note the juxtaposition of Jesus Christ and Moses in both John 1:17 and in 2 Corinthians Chapter 3).

 

Are we beholding the glory of the Word, our Lord Jesus Christ, in our daily lives? Is His glory transforming us into His image?  

Rejection and Reception

  

“He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him. He came to His own, and those who were His own did not receive Him. But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.” John 1:10 – 13.

 

While the world rejected Jesus Christ, while “His own” rejected Jesus Christ, there were those who received Him. At any given time there is rejection and reception happening around us. In another sense this is also happening within us, we are either receiving or rejecting the Word of God.

 

As we see in both the Gospels and Epistles, “His own” were not all “His own” and those who were not “His own” were “His own.” Hence we have Jesus Christ “declaring the Name of the Father to His brethren,” whether Jew or Gentile (Hebrews 2:10 – 13; Ephesians 2:10 – 22; Romans 9:6 – 8).

 

Are we receiving Jesus Christ? Are we receiving His Word? There is more to this idea of “receiving” than we might think. In the Parable of the Sower the good soil “hears the word and understands it” (Matthew 13:23), are those who “hear the word and accept it” (Mark 4:20), and “are the ones who have heard the word in an honest and good heart, and hold it fast” (Luke 8:15).

 

Then the idea of birth is introduced “who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.” In the next verse the image of birth is continued, but this time it is not our birth from God that is spoken of, but rather the eternal generation of the Only Begotten from the Father that we see.

 

Peter writes that, “…you have been born again not of seed which is perishable but imperishable, that is, through the living and enduring word of God” (1 Peter 1:23).

 

That which Jesus Christ has, Light and Life, He gives to us through a new birth, a wonderful and mysterious miracle in which the Life of God comes into earth, the earth of our bodies, our souls, our spirits - joining us to the Holy Trinity (1 Cor. 6:17; Hebrews 2:11; Ephesians 5:31 – 32; John chapters 14 – 17).

 

We are as utterly and totally dependent upon God for this birth as we were dependent upon our parents for our first birth. This second birth is “not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.” As Jesus teaches Nicodemus in John Chapter 3, we must be born again of the Spirit of God.

 

In our receiving Him we also receive our birthright, our coinheritance in Jesus Christ, and this inheritance is that of the children of God, the sons and daughters of the Living God (Romans 8:12ff; Galatians 3:23 – 4:7; Ephesians 1:3 – 14).

 

Well now, what do you know of your birthright in Jesus Christ? Are you living in that birthright?

 

Are you receiving Jesus Christ as your daily source of life?

 

Have you experienced the miracle of being born of God in Jesus Christ? Is the life of the Trinity abiding in you?

 

Looking at the characteristics of the good soil (see above), what do those characteristics look like in your life? In the life of your congregation?

 

How are you cultivating the soil of your soul?

 

If you know the glory and mystery of new birth in God in Christ, are you growing and maturing in Jesus Christ, is His image being progressively displayed in you? In the life of your congregation?

 

I think these are things worth pondering and speaking about with one another.

 

What do you think?

Perceiving and Receiving

 

“He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him. He came to His own, and those who were His own did not receive Him. But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.” John 1:10 – 13.

 

What do you see as you ponder the above?

 

The Creator is among those who He created but they do not recognize Him. The Messiah, the Son of David, the Descendant of Abraham, is among His subjects and brethren “according to the flesh” but they do not recognize Him. The Word walked among us and we did not know Him nor receive Him. Do we know Him walking among us today? To be sure, just as Jesus Christ walked among the candlesticks of Revelation, He walks among us today – but do we have eyes to see and ears to hear?

 

Throughout the Gospels we see John 1:10 – 13 being played out. We see Jesus recognized and received, rejected and finally crucified. How do people perceive Jesus Christ? How do we perceive Jesus Christ? How do we know Him? Are we perceiving and receiving Him?

 

Questions we, the disciples of Jesus Christ, ought to always be asking ourselves is, “How are the people around me responding to Jesus Christ? Are they receiving Him or rejecting Him? Are they receiving His Light or living in darkness? What is their response to the name of Jesus Christ?"

 

There isn’t a chapter in the Gospels that isn’t being played out in some fashion today – whether it is at work, at school, at home, in our neighborhoods, in our civic organizations, in our leisure time – in every sphere of life the Gospels are being replayed – God’s People are either living in Christ and as Christ or they are not; others are either receiving Him or they are not.

 

If we read the Gospel as something that only happened “back then” then we are to be pitied. If we preach and teach the Gospel as something that only, or primarily, happened back then, then we and those who hear us are to be pitied.

 

Can you see yourself in this passage (John 1:10 – 13)?

 

Can you see yourself in John1:3 (compare with Psalm 139)?

 

Can you see yourself in John 1:4?

 

Dear friends, as long as the Gospel is outside us, the fulness of Christ will not be inside us.

 

Light

 

“The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend [overpower] it.” John 1:5.

 

“This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil. For everyone who does evil, hates the Light, and does not come to the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But he who practices the truth comes to the Light, so that his deeds may be manifested as having been wrought in God.” John 3:19 – 21.

 

Throughout John’s Gospel the Light shines in the darkness and the darkness opposes the Light, but the darkness can neither understand nor overcome the Light. Appearances can be deceiving, for there are certainly times in the Gospel when it appears as if the Light is being overcome, whether it is when many turn away from Jesus (John 6) or the Crucifixion, things are not as they appear – Jesus Christ is victorious.

 

Have there been times in your life when things were not as they appeared? Have you had the experience of Christ brining victory out of apparent defeat? Perhaps even as you read this you are experiencing great difficulty?

 

Since we are called to live with Christ and to live as Christ, there are times when we may cry, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken me!?” We ought not to be surprised when we encounter suffering, nor should we be surprised when we don’t understand all that is happening to us; but we can learn to trust our kind heavenly Father and Lord Jesus Christ through the vicissitudes of life, knowing that the darkness cannot overcome the Light that lives in us, the Light that has redeemed us, the Light which holds us in His everlasting love (see Romans 8).

 

The fact is that “men love the darkness rather than the Light for their deeds are evil.” As you look at John 3:19 – 21, what do you think this looks like? What does it look like in the Gospels? What does it look like today?

 

Here, once again, appearances can be deceiving; we should be careful in judging by outward appearances.

 

Someone reading John 3:19 – 21 for the first time might be excused for thinking that the religious leaders would flock to Jesus and accept Him. They might be excused for thinking that those who attended synagogue regularly would follow Jesus. They also could be excused for thinking that those who were not religious and whose way of living was outside accepted religious norms would reject Jesus and want nothing to do with Him.

 

Yet, what really happened? Who ensured that the Romans would crucify Jesus? Who sought to destroy Jesus throughout His ministry? On the other hand, who made up a significant element of those who followed Jesus? Looks can be deceiving.

 

Have you ever been deceived by the way things appear? Have others ever surprised you by their openness and thirst for Jesus Christ?

 

Do you treat people differently according to their appearance? (See James 2:1ff).

 

How did Jesus relate to others?

 

I wonder what I can do to guard against being deceived by appearances.

 

LIGHT

“And the city has no need of the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God has illumined it, and its lamp is the Lamb.” (Rev. 21:23). “And there will no longer be any night; and they will not have need of the light of a lamp nor the light of the sun, because the Lord God will illumine them; and they will reign for ever and ever.” (Rev. 22:5). 

 

“No longer will you have the sun for light by day, nor for brightness will the moon give you light; but you will have Yahweh for an everlasting light; and your God for your glory [or beauty!]. (Isaiah 60:19).

 

Can you visualize the above passages? Take a moment, close your eyes, what do you see? Often we have to close our eyes to the world around us in order to “see” the other world around us, for we live in a world of shadows and types and hints of what lies beyond the veil of physical sight. As we learn to live by faith and not by sight, we learn to see beyond what the natural eye sees, we learn to see Him who is invisible. (See 2 Kings 6:17 for an example of how we might learn to live).

 

Peter made the mistake, as understandable as it might have been, of putting Moses and Elijah on the same level as Jesus Christ, and the Father made it clear that, “This is My Beloved Son; listen to Him!” (Matthew 17:5).

 

We are called to live in the Light of Jesus Christ. Are we doing this? Are the above passages in Isaiah and Revelation working themselves out in our lives today?

 

What do the above passages look like in our lives today? Are they real to us and in us?

 

Describe what they look like in your life.

Light

 

“In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men. The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend [or overpower] it.” (John 1:4 – 5). “There was the true Light which, coming into the world, enlightens every man.” (John 1:9).

 

While few professing Christians actually share Jesus Christ with those who don’t know Him, at times those who do witness lack compassion, love, grace, and an identification with humanity; they often see themselves as separate and apart from others. This is the opposite of Paul, who identified himself with his audience. For example, in Athens he said, “…for in Him [God] we live and move and exist, as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we also are His children.’” Paul not only identified himself with his audience in their common humanity, he also identified their common humanity has having its origin in God.

 

Since Christ gives light to everyone, even in our fallen condition, we have common ground with everyone. This common ground may not always be readily apparent, because often our differences are the things that jump out at us. Our challenge, indeed our calling as disciples of Jesus Christ, is to find common ground with others, it is to find the shared light and understanding that we have with others, and to communicate to others on the basis of that shared light. Of course to do this we have to listen to others, to pay attention to others, and to put others before ourselves.

 

What might this common ground look like? It could be love of family. It could be a sense of social justice. It could be a love of nature. It could be a love of sports – yes sports, God loves playtime, He loves the joy it brings – of course when we make it a god that is different, but play is good for the soul. It could be vocational fulfillment, the satisfaction of a job well done.

 I once asked a coworker, who dearly loved his son, where a love like that came from; from there I was able to share about God our Father and His love for us in our Lord Jesus Christ.

 

What common ground do you share with your coworkers, neighbors, and others? How might you use this shared light to share about the true Light that gives light to us all and promises a fuller Light and Life to those who come to know Him?