"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).