New Thoughts (1/12/05-1/16/05)
What the Baptist declares here is something we will hear repeatedly from him. What is of more interest to me at present is what the Evangelist declares. His explanation of the Christ in this passage is stunning. John has ordered these three statements in a fashion whereby each offers some explanation of the one prior. I would prefer to look at them in reverse order, to see the building of the point.
So, I begin with verse 18. This begins with a simple statement, declaring a truth well understood within the Hebrew community, although perhaps not quite so fully understood amongst the Gentiles: No man has seen God. Throughout the Old Testament, this simple truth was declared. Moses declared it, as much as he longed for a glimpse. Isaiah understood it so well that he was brought to despair by even the sighting he had in visions. “Woe is me, for I, a sinner, have seen His holiness!”
As a quick aside, I will say this: The truth of this statement still holds. No man has, or ever will see God and live. If any man makes claim to the contrary, rest assured that the man is either deluded or a liar. Have nothing to do with such a one, for he is a trap set for the destruction of faith.
As applies here, though, I really think John has a different point in view, which is brought out in looking at the meaning of this word ‘seen’ in the Greek. It has the meaning of seeing in an attentive fashion. It’s not just that eyes have not been laid upon Him. It’s that no man has really paid attention to Him, to the significance of what can be seen of His passage. It carries the thought of knowing, not unlike eido – I see, and seeing, I know. I understand. In Hebrew usage, it also takes on the thought of experience. Taking these things together, the opening of the verse becomes, “No man has understood, experienced, or known God in all of history.”
This understanding fits well with the testimony of Scripture. Consider Paul’s evidence against mankind in Romans. Though invisible, God’s nature was clearly evident in His creation. He made Himself evident to man and in man. Still, though they knew of God in this fashion, they did Him no honor. They refused to know or understand Him (Ro 1:19-21). Mankind did not see fit to acknowledge God (Ro 1:28). This condemnation was not just upon the Gentiles, but upon the Jews as well. They, who had been entrusted with His very word of Covenant, had never really understood Him. They continually tried to fashion Him after their own ideas, or after the ideas of their neighbors. They had no desire to experience the God who is, preferring that He would settle down and look like the other gods around them.
That this is the appropriate way to view John’s words is, I think, supported by the remainder of verse 18: The Son, the Only God, He who rests in the arms of the Father, has explained Him. What little we did see, we did not understand until the Christ came amongst us and brought understanding. He thoroughly explained the Father, and in so doing, thoroughly explained Himself, for Father and Son, they are the Only God. In experiencing the Son, those who walked with Him experienced the Father. In attentive focus on the Son, they paid attention to the Father, who had, after all, said, “This is my Son. Listen to Him” (Mt 17:5). “I do nothing on My own, but speak only such as the Father taught Me” (Jn 8:28).
Now, we come to verse 17, which offers an insight into just how it was that Jesus taught us of the Father. Moses gave us the Law, John declares. What was the Law? It was God’s revelation of what He was like. It was a description of righteousness contained in a set of rules for life. However, centuries of evidence were laid up against Israel, the keepers of the Law, for though they held the Covenant, they had never come close to keeping the Covenant. The very existence of the Pharisees was evidence that they still didn’t understand God, didn’t understand righteousness. Here, they had in their possession God’s own rules for righteous living, and they set them aside in favor of some more achievable goals. They saw, but without understanding.
Into this setting steps the Son. In Him, Truth is realized. In Him, grace is realized. How are we to understand this statement? The key is in understanding that ‘realized’ means completed, fully performed, come into being from nothing. Think about it! All creation was realized in Him. In the Christ, everything that is came into being from nothing! In the beginning, God created (Ge 1:1). Prior to that, the earth was formless, void (Ge 1:2). There was nothing until creation was realized, until God brought it into being. This He did through the Son, by Whom and for Whom all things were created. And, He who created all things stepped into Creation that Creation might have in it One Man who fulfilled what Man was to be, who fulfilled the Law.
The Law is a declaration of the Truth. Jesus is the Truth. He is the Truth of what God is, and He is the Truth of what man is. In His incarnation, the Truth of man was realized. Man was brought to perfection, for there now was a Man who walked in full compliance to the Law of righteousness. Man, ever and always created in God’s image had, up to that point, never fully taken on God’s image. He was forever falling short, missing the mark, failing to manifest the righteousness without which His image could not possibly be complete. In Jesus, the image was made complete.
Because His compliance with the Law of God was complete, John could also declare that in Jesus grace was fully realized, present in perfection, complete and without any lack. In Him, we saw one whose heart was fully under the influence of God, and we saw what that influence looked like when it was reflected in a man’s life. We saw it in perfection. In Him, we saw what a man could be when God’s favor rested fully upon Him. Forever and a day, men had been trying to obtain salvation by their works, but the best of their works was constantly brought to nil by their own unrighteousness. They could not do it, however much they tried, and every one of them died never having obtained the goal. Jesus did it. Because the grace of God was in Him in fullness, He was empowered to walk in complete concord with God’s Law. He died to obtain the goal, and not just for Himself, but for all who would ever truly know Him.
Before I pursue that further, I want to look back at this matter of the Law for just a moment. Our first attention, when we think of the Law, is usually given to the Decalogue, that terse description of what love of God and love of neighbor look like. This truly is the epitome of the Law God gave to man, but it is by no means the whole of it. The portion of Moses’ writing that is given over to expounding the Law is quite possible the major portion. He takes what we have in brief in the Decalogue, and through numerous examples and applications, shows what those rules mean for day to day life. He shows what it means for the individual, and he shows what it means for the nation as a whole. Indeed, in many cases, the punishments meted out for personal sins were designed to purify not only the individual but the nation.
The sins of the individual are, cannot help but be, the sins of the nation. A pure nation cannot be built on a sinful populace. In the case of the individual, Jesus pointed out that the inner state, the spiritual, must be made clean first, and then the outward, physical manifestation would be clean as well (Mt 23:26). This was the issue with Israel at the time. They had become focused on the appearance of righteousness, and had lost sight of what righteousness really entailed. This is why John the Baptist had come. It was the core of his message, and the message only got louder when Jesus took it up.
As it is for the individual, so it is for the nation. In that sense, the individual might be seen as the spiritual state of the nation, and what is evident to the surrounding nations is but the reflection of the individual’s state as it manifests in national action. If there is a perception of an “ugly America” in the world today, we are fools to blame it on the government and leave it at that! The government does not, in the end, own responsibility for the reputation of a nation. The reputation is nothing more or less than the sum of its people. However poorly a government may represent its people, it will be the nature of the people that is known and remembered, not the nature of a government whose reign passes quickly from the scene.
There was a comment made in regards to the understanding of Mosaic Law as having originated with Moses, and not the surrounding cultures which deserves consideration. “The testimony of a nation is not so lightly to be set aside” (J. Robertson). Now, as I said, he writes this in regards to the source of the Law Moses recorded. The testimony of the nation was and is that the Law came through Moses, from God. However, when I look at that quote, I feel it must be considered in a wider scope, a ‘prophetic’ scope, if you will. Let us find the moral application of Mr. Robertson’s statement.
“The testimony of a nation is not so lightly to be set aside.” How this applies in so many things! Consider the case of ancient Israel. Here was a nation that had been formed by God, so blessed by God as to be the possessors of His Holy Temple. So great were His blessings upon that nation that even though they rebelled constantly against Him, He gave to them a king of great ability in David, followed by a king of unparalleled wisdom in Solomon. Indeed, the testimony of the nation at that time was known to all, and royalty from distant nations came to seek wisdom from the throne room of Israel.
What was established in those two reigns was the testimony of the nation, and it was no simple thing to change. It took many kings, and generations of near constant rejection of God’s rule before the testimony of the nation was reversed. As God had promised through the prophets for many years, Israel became a byword, an example of a nation utterly bereft of all favor and hope. They were taken from their lands, scattered to the winds. Their king was blinded, their capital destroyed, and even the Temple that had been the greatest part of Israel’s testimony was torn down.
Come see Israel several hundred years later. The Temple has been restored, indeed made glorious by human standards. Yet, the once proud nation is under the thumb of Rome. They are not complacent under that thumb, but they are under it nonetheless. Once more, the nation is establishing a testimony. The testimony this time is that the Jews are a rebellious people, a people who will respond to nothing but the sternest measures. They are not unlike a strong willed child. They refuse all attempts to rule them. Rome felt it directed towards them, but God had felt the same refusals for centuries. It began with their refusal of His rule. “No, but we would have a king like everybody else!” May I submit that from that very moment, the testimony of a nation was established, and it has never changed. They established themselves as a nation of rebels, rebels against their own God even as they offered Him their words of worship. They established themselves as a nation that would go through the motions of worship, but would never allow God to really take root in their lives. They established themselves as a nation that would be ruled by the flesh, and not by the spirit. Outside their boundaries they became notorious not only for their rebellious nature, but also for their skill in the arts of trade and commerce. Neither of these reputations were terribly favorable.
Israel is, however, but one example. Let us consider continental Europe. Here was a land that birthed some of the greatest movements in the history of Christianity. In spite of their beginnings in barbarous tribal cultures, the nations of Europe became established as Christian kingdoms. By and large, they gave shape to what Christianity would be. Sadly, their form of Christianity often retained the barbarism of their earlier ages. “The testimony of a nation is not lightly to be set aside.” Here was a Christianity bent on empire. Here was a Christianity bent on military defeat of the enemy, and willing to break every law of Christ in pursuit of that defeat. Here was a Christianity of ‘the ends justify the means.’
Even in the face of the great change that they brought to the faith as the various Protestant movements sprang up, Europe displayed here barbarous roots. Debate on the subject of faith was met with the sword. The Imperial Religion of Rome was not about to tolerate these would-be usurpers of her power. It was no longer a matter of God’s Truth, it was a matter of Empire. The inter-tribal warfare had never really ceased. And now, we are faced with a Europe almost embarrassed by displays of Christian faith. We see a Europe more bent on putting an end to religion than ever the Soviet Union was.
Then, look at the Soviet Union. In spite of decades of violent suppression, the faith that is there refused to die. Every effort was made by the leadership of that nation to change the testimony of Russia, but they could not. Faith remained when the leaders were gone. Even today, as we witness a renewed effort to suppress religious freedom in the land, the faith of Russia remains. The testimony cannot be set aside.
What, I wonder, will be the testimony of America? If we look back to our roots, it’s a mixed message. There were, to be sure, those who came to America to pursue their Christian faith. Chased out of Europe by the dominant tribe of Rome, they sought fresh territories in which they could be dominant. While we like to say they came to establish freedom of religion, that’s not exactly accurate. They came to establish their own religion, and were not terribly tolerant of other forms. Meanwhile, there were other portions of the nation being established for far different reasons. Commercial interests were always present. Political interests were always present, as the nations of Europe sought to gain power by their colonial exploits. We find, in some cases, that America was used as a place to dispose of criminals and debtors. As I say, it is a very mixed heritage that we find at the start of the nation.
Consider, also, that our emergence into nationhood was founded on rebellion. However right and proper we may deem it in our national pride, it was in its own way indefensible by the standards of Christian faith. England had not made any demands upon the colonists that would stand at odds with holy law or holy living. Given that, there could be no basis for throwing off the government God had appointed over the people. We rebelled against the appointed authority, and in so doing, we rebelled against God. We share Israel’s roots, then: a nation of rebels, refusing all governance.
That this is the case seems the more evident in our current age. As a nation, we live under a body of laws, but we are forever looking for ways to ignore those laws. We establish speed limits on the highway, and then ignore them. Even those charged with enforcing such laws ignore them. Meanwhile, the people procure for themselves tools for evading even such few attempts as may be made at enforcement. We will lie through our teeth before the judge to get out of a speeding ticket. We will use every trick we can find to avoid paying a fine we know to be justly levied against us.
Over against this, we must also recognize that America has long been one of the primary sources for Christian missionaries. There is, whatever else may be in our national genes, a strong strain of Christian faith in the land. Having come out of the religious battlegrounds of Europe, we have bent perhaps too far in the direction of religious tolerance, but the core remains Christian still. In spite of protestations to the contrary, the foundations of our body of legal code are still to be found in the legal code God passed down to Moses. Whether or not the Ten Commandments can now be displayed in the judicial chamber, they remain displayed in the laws of the land.
But, what will be the testimony of this nation? “The testimony of a nation is not so lightly to be set aside.” There are, as I see it, portions of our testimony that ought never to be set aside. There are other aspects that I think we would do well to overcome. We are, like it or not, a nation of rebels. It is evident in everything we see and do. ‘Rules are made to be broken.’ ‘Just do it.’ These are the mottos by which we live. I am reminded of Mary as I think about this, Mary whose very name declared her a rebellious one. She was born a rebel, declared a rebel every time somebody spoke her name. Yet, the testimony of her life declares with utmost clarity that she overcame the name. If we, as a nation, look to our roots, we will find we were born rebels. Here, then, is the first seed of our national testimony. The question is can we, like Mary, overcome our name?
There is that countervailing wind of testimony for us. There is our history of laboring in the fields of the Gospel. There is a long tradition of sending workers into the harvest. There is also a great deal of effort on the part of those who oppose the kingdom of God to bring that work to an end. Will we continue under the mantle of the mission, or will we sit back in satisfaction under the banner of the rebel? It’s a national choice. It’s an opportunity to determine what the testimony of this nation will be. We may well be at a crisis point in determining what that testimony will be. I pray we find it in ourselves to determine that our testimony will be “In God we Trust.”
Let me return to the subject of the Law once more. Interestingly, this topic came up at home group this week. Jesus fulfilled the Law. It was suggested that this meant the Law no longer had any application to us. There are, indeed, aspects of Law which no longer hold, for Jesus has fulfilled what the ceremonial portions typified. There remains the moral and civil Law, though. These are matters that still apply. Jesus certainly declared that He came to fulfill the Law, and He did so. He also said that not one least bit of the Law was revoked while life continues. The Law, after all, defines God’s holiness. In its own way, it defines God, who is holiness. The Law and its exposition explain to us what God’s holiness requires of us, what the penalties of our incessant rebellion are, and how these requirements play out in daily life.
Where there is violation there is punishment required. A law with no power of retribution would be no law, but merely advice, suggestion. God’s Law includes Godly retribution for failure to comply. But, that retribution has a goal, a good goal, a lofty goal. It is aimed at something far greater than giving us grief in our misbehavior. It is aimed at something far greater than protecting society from our ills. It is aimed at establishing a reverence towards God’s holiness, the very thing the Law describes. That is, in effect, the whole purpose of the Law, to create in man a proper reverence for righteousness, for holiness, for God, for the image of God that is man.
Because of this goal, the Law takes an interest in our sexual behaviors. It declares that there is a right and proper time and place for such behaviors. Because God established the marriage covenant, and because that marriage covenant is itself a sign and type of the relationship God would have with mankind, it is a holy thing. Marriage is to be held in the utmost esteem. It is to be pursued within the boundaries that God declared for it in the beginning. “For this cause a man shall leave his parents and cleave to his wife. They shall become one flesh” (Ge 2:24). Now, this not only establishes marriage as something instituted by God, it also establishes the boundaries. It does not say that two people, with no further restrictions applied, shall be so joined. It specifies a man and a woman. The word translated ‘wife’ is ‘ishshah [OT:802] – a woman. It may be used to indicate a wife or an adulteress, but it is always the female that is indicated. One of each. That is God’s boundary on marriage. The only other boundary given is that a believer should take a believing partner, although if married before belief came, the marriage covenant shall not be set aside at the instigation of the believing partner. Those that insist that the Bible is not explicit in denying the homosexual lifestyle have yet another verse to contend with in the creation account.
A fair portion of the Law covers issues of sexual behavior. This is one of the characteristics that sets Mosaic Law apart from others. Why is that? It comes back to that statement from Genesis: “They shall become one flesh.” That is not so much a statement of the covenantal nature of marriage as it is of the effect of sexual relationship. Man and woman are each in themselves incomplete. It requires the bond of such intimate relations to make them one complete flesh. Within the bonds of the marriage covenant this uniting of flesh is a wonderful thing, a holy thing, to be reverenced for its holiness as God is to be reverenced for His holiness. However, marriage defines the boundary for legal sexual union. We are at liberty so long as we remain within that boundary. The moment we step outside those bounds, we enter the realm of sin. We overstep the limits God has set, and allow our portion of God’s image to be joined sinfully with another. Thus, we defile the image of God.
As terrible as it is that we should so defile God’s image, how much worse when we add to that crime by coupling in ways proscribed by our Creator? How vile we make ourselves when we allow male to join with male, female to female, worse still, remove the boundaries of species. These problems do not go unnoticed in Scripture, not one of them. And, to a one, the punishment provided for when the Law is broken in regards to sexual relations, the punishment is death. Why? Quite simply because in no other way do we more violently and more directly defile God’s glory. We are created in His image. Because we are created in His image, we already possess a degree of holiness, of sanctification. Sexual misconduct is one of two means by which we disfigure the immediate image which is in us, by which we desecrate the image of God in our flesh. Murder is the other. Both are punishable by death, because both defile God’s image.
Scripture provides well-known examples of this punishment being meted out. As regards the homosexual relationship, one need look no further than the case of Sodom and Gomorrah. How can any believer look at that record and still think it’s OK? How can any preacher claim to know Scripture and still declare that God doesn’t mind homosexuality, even in the pulpit? How can any thinking believer follow such a lead? What about the issue of sex outside the race of man completely? We have the record of that, as well, in the mixed race of the Nephilim, the offspring of illicit union between fallen angels and women of earth. This may seem too far fetched for our modern sensibilities, yet the record is there. Again, the punishment was death. “The LORD was sorry that He had made man on the earth” (Ge 6:6), because of the extent of wickedness that was evidenced in this foul union. Thence the flood.
Perhaps we need a more recent example. Witness the AIDS pandemic. The modern mind is offended to hear that this might be somehow related with sexual relations. Yet, it is. We are told that it found its start when men and monkeys joined in illicit act. It spreads like wildfire where sexual relations are commonly outside of the holy boundaries of marriage. Yes, the record has shown that it can and does effect those who have stayed within the legal limits as well, but the cases that are related to promiscuous, out of wedlock sex are far and away the majority. Scripture described this disease for us two thousand years ago, and also explained its cause. Because men refused to acknowledge God, and insisted on their own way, “God gave them over to the lusts of their heart, allowing their bodies to be dishonored” (Ro 1:24). Because of this, “God gave them over to their own degrading passions: women cast off proper desire and instead burned for one another, men joined with men in indecent union. These received in their own flesh the penalty of their sins” (Ro 1:27). It is unfolding before our eyes, but rather than deal with the disease of sin that underlies the problem, the whole effort of science is devoted to blotting out the symptoms.
The Law set the boundaries. The Law explained in great detail that the penalty for insisting on remaining outside those boundaries is death. We did not choose death in ignorance. We were fully and wholly informed of the consequences of our actions, but we chose not to believe it. We chose to have it our way, and God in His wisdom said, “Fine. Your way it is.” Still, we want to lay the blame at His feet when the payback comes. He shouldn’t have allowed us to do that! Ah! But we still want our free will. We just want our free will without the responsibility.
Now, the Truth be told (and this brings us back to John’s declaration), we had the Law, we had the boundaries declared, but we did not have the means to comply. Moses laid it out in detail. “Here’s what God requires of us as His people.” But, nowhere does Moses tell us how we are supposed to live up to those requirements! “The Law was given through Moses,” John writes, “but the Truth of the Law was realized – made complete – in Christ, the grace to comply was perfected in Christ.” It was realized, completed, and perfected in Christ not only for Himself, but for all who would believe! That is the great Good News of the Gospel! Now, we not only have the instructions telling us what is required of us, we have the Example set before us to show that it is possible to comply, and we have in Him the power to do so.
The Law, in its Mosaic form was designed to point us to that Power by which we could comply. It was designed to show us in no uncertain terms just how hopelessly sinful we were. We looked upon the Law as God handed it down and we declared, “Yes, we can do that.” God must have shook His head to have heard such a thing! Of course we can’t do that! Don’t we get it yet? We’re a fallen creation. We are so caught up in sin, we live sin, we breathe sin, we eat sin for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and every snack in between, and we can, by the mere decision of our impoverished will, decide that we’ll just stop all that? The only way that we could ever say that is by downgrading the requirements, by insisting on missing the point.
God says, “No other gods before Me.” If we say, “Yes, we can do that,” it is because we have heard in that ‘before Me’ a loophole, have interpreted that as indicating it’s OK to have other gods as long as we keep saying He is the greatest of them all. Either that, or we simply delude ourselves into a peculiar blindness when it comes to recognizing the gods we have set up for ourselves. The gods we serve today don’t look like the gods we see in mythology and history, so we become convinced that we don’t suffer from this problem. Yep, we’re clean on this commandment. Yet, we are enslaved to our bank accounts, our stocks and bonds. We are devoted to increasing our cache, and have no thought for those in need around us, but we’ll still insist that we have no other gods.
God says, “Don’t murder your brother.” If we say, “Yes, we can do that,” it is because we have heard in that ‘your brother’ a loophole, have decided that only applies to our fellow believers, and we can do what we like when it comes to the heathen. Either that, or we simply delude ourselves into another blindness, decide that it’s only that final, brutal act of manslaughter that God is concerned about. We reject the notion that maybe Jesus meant what He said when He told us that we had already run afoul of this law when we called our neighbor a fool.
We have a myriad ways of convincing ourselves we’re good with His Law, rather than accept the Truth that the Law has always declared: apart from God, we cannot comply with the least requirement. How desperately we need to hear that which Gabriel told Mary, “with God, all things are possible.” How desperately we need to understand this, to see how it fits with the Law, and lay hold of the Christ in whom grace was realized.
When John tells us that the Truth was realized through Jesus Christ, let us keep this separated from the fact that the Truth was realized in Jesus Christ. Yes, He fulfilled the Law. He lived out what the Law required. He is the reality of all which the Law symbolized. This is quite true. It is, after all, the dividing line between Judaism and Christianity, between the Old and New Covenant. Prior to Messiah, we had all the requirements and no means of obeying them. We had only the incessant need to atone for our sins, to make such amends as we could for the constant sins we could not but commit. We had the types and shadows. We had a ceremonial atonement that in reality could atone for nothing. It was but a sign of hope in Him who would come to make the real Atonement. Now, He has come.
I was reading an article last night, as it happens, that made the point that John’s Gospel is really laid out in a fashion to display exactly how it is that Jesus ‘realized the Law.’ It’s an amazing article, one that deserves to be remembered, although I’m not going to go into detail on that right now. What it pursues is how the life and ministry of Jesus fulfilled in reality what every act of Mosaic worship typified. He is the Lamb, the Scapegoat, the Altar, and the Offering upon it. He is the Water and the Bread, the Incense on the Altar. He is the Mercy Seat, and the Blood sprinkled upon it for our good. Stunning! Yes, indeed, every aspect of the Law was realized in Christ Jesus.
However, that’s not the point John is making in this verse. Here, he tells us that the Truth was realized through Christ Jesus. In Him, we were forced to come face to face with the full intent of the Law. We were forced to finally look at ourselves in the Light of the Law and see how far from righteous we really were. We were forced to see the impossibility of our situation apart from Him Who had come to save us. “Apart from Me, you can do nothing. But, with God, all things are possible, even obedience!” Jesus realized not only the Truth, which was but a revealing of Himself after all. It was also a perfection of grace. In Him we saw every benefit of God displayed, every outward evidence of God’s holy influence. We saw man as man was intended to be. And through His obedience, through His perfect adherence to all that the Law He was born under required of Him, the grace we saw in Him was made available to us.
Through Christ, we are empowered to see the Truth as it applies to God and as it applies to ourselves. Through Christ, we are empowered to receive the grace of God, by which we are reconciled to Him. Through Christ, we are empowered to receive the grace of God in power to obey, to shake of the bonds of rebellion, to step out of the slavery of freedom into the liberty of righteous obedience. What a glorious heritage is ours, when we serve a God who is willing to do this for us! He, Who by all rights could have destroyed the whole of humanity determined instead to take it upon Himself to save us.
I see no other claimant to the godhead out there attempting this! The god of Mohammed leaves it to his own adherents to labor in the vain hope of maybe, just maybe making it to Paradise. However hard they labor, they can never be sure it was enough. The Hindus, for all their myriad gods, are trapped in a never-ending circle of karma, always striving, never arriving. These gods are all willing to go out of their way to punish the wrongdoer, but don’t seem too inclined to offer much in the way of help towards doing right. They lay out rules, mete out punishments, but never bring their adherents one step closer to the things they require. In the end, they offer only hopelessness.
God, however, comes and declares, “It is finished! I have done it, now come, and receive the benefit of My work.” From His fullness we all have received. This is the penultimate point John is making in this particular section, though it is the point from which he begins. It really is the culmination of the thought. Jesus did the complete work of the Law, He alone in all the history of man, even that which is yet to be written. It is from His completed work that we receive. It is because He could truthfully declare, “It is finished!” that we have received of the grace of God. Grace upon grace: enough that He had already given us life and sustenance, air to breathe and water to satisfy our thirst. These were already more than we could ever claim to have deserved. But, in Christ, we have received so much more than this!
Jesus was the fullness. What a wonderful word picture that is! He was crammed full of righteousness like a fishing net. Remember that story? There were John and Peter out fishing. Hadn’t caught a thing all day, and Jesus says, “throw your net over there.” The experts decide they might as well humor this guy. Can’t hurt. The nets come up so filled with fish that they must call for help to get their catch ashore. That’s fullness! That’s the righteousness we find in Christ!
His fullness is like that which fills the hollows. Remember John’s call? “make the road level, fill in the valleys that His road may be smooth.” He is that which fills the valleys of sin in our lives with the fullness of His own righteousness!
His fullness is like a ship with a full crew. Without a full crew, the ship might be able to leave port, might make some limited progress on its course, but it is ever at risk. In an emergency, when every hand is needed to address the situation, that ship will be caught up short, and flounder on the rocks. Jesus, our ark, the ship in which we sail for the heavenly kingdom, sails with a full crew. No emergency can disturb His course. No calamity shall overtake Him for which He is not fully prepared to overcome.
This is the fullness from which we receive. This is the fullness that is imparted to us more and more as we grow in faith, as we work out our salvation, as we persevere on the path of sanctification. We have, from the moment of our rebirth, His holy influence upon us, a first grace, if you will. To this, He has added undeserved favor (as if the first were deserved!) He has, by His influence, birthed and developed within us a holy spiritual condition. Grace upon grace! He adds to this His own merciful kindness in such measure that we, too, begin to display a merciful kindness towards others. By His grace, we found our hearts under His influence. Grace upon grace! He continues to pour out further benefits upon that first gift! He pours out the ability to obey in greater degree day by day. He pours out His own character upon my own, that daily I might look more like Him in whose image I was made! Oh! How His continued, constant grace accumulates to my account!
Lord, I am struck with a bit of the awe that John must have felt even as he wrote this passage. How utterly, inexpressibly wonderful You are. How amazing, that You should do so much for all of mankind, let alone for me. How thoroughly indebted I am to You for hauling me out of the darkness I had chosen, for empowering me to choose You instead. How marvelous that You continue to labor on my behalf, to patiently peel away all the obfuscations I set up, so that I can truly see, and having truly seen, truly repent, change course, and pursue the path You set. What thanks could ever be enough for what You have accomplished by Your own right arm? What least part of it shall I pretend to lay claim to? Where is boasting? You have left it no room. Where is pride, when all that is good in me is You?
Mighty Father, continue to bring the change in me! Oh! How I long to see the mature image, the completed picture that You are creating in this life. Yes, I know that seeing the completion means seeing the death of this flesh, but what wonderful benefit that is! What sorrow the death of the flesh when the real life of resurrection awaits? What cause for tears when one has graduated to real life, has ceased from their wanderings and come home to stay? What grief when the bride is once for all in the arms of her Groom? Oh, blessed Hope! Come swiftly, my God, come swiftly!
The gifts of grace are free, and freely given. Never a man earned the least of these gifts, and never a man will. Yet, as grace upon grace accumulates to my account, I am not free to hoard it. “Freely you received, freely give.” That is the command of my Savior. That is what love looks like. That is the image of God. His blessings are not given for us solely that we might store them up, look at them, show them off. No, His blessings are given that we might be doubly blessed by using what He has blessed us with to bless others. If there is excess in the blessing account, spend it well and wisely! Give it to those who are short on blessing. Satisfy the need you know is there. Satisfy it, though it empties your own account, for you know your Provider will soon make another deposit. “Never have I seen the righteous out begging.” Certainly, not begging for the grace of God! He is pleased to give good gifts to His children, to satisfy their every need, and to give more than they even think to ask for. His grace is ours in abundance, and overabundance. But, like the manna that fed the nation in the desert, the abundance we are given is an abundance for the moment, to be used for the needs of the moment. If we seek to store up today’s grace for tomorrow’s use, we will find that what was grace has turned to rot. It’s a daily bread, to be received daily for daily use.
Let not God’s abundant grace become an avenue for sin. The Law was good, but sin found in it a means to make man more sinful. The Law was, indeed, a grace of God given to man. It was His gracious will that we might be given to understand what He expected of us, that we might have a guide to righteousness. He could have left us with nothing but nature to guide us, but He didn’t. He gave us His definition of righteousness, explained what would lead to life, and what to death. Grace upon grace! For so long, we had the definition, but not the means. He has added the means. Yet, we lacked the desire. Grace upon grace! He has given us a desire for Himself, He has given us a desire to pursue righteousness, even as He has provided the means of our attaining to righteousness. He has given us a love for Him, and a longing for Home, and He has provided the Way, the Truth, the Light, by which we might come Home to Him! How utterly incredible is my God!
There is a reason for the excitement that led John to record this passage. There is a reason that it causes that same excitement in me when I read it. For John, this piece opened with a recollection of that one moment in time that thoroughly and utterly changed the course of his life. Remember, he introduced this with a recollection of the Baptist declaring, “There He is! There is the Messiah, Who existed before me! There is the Lamb of God, the Savior of the world!” Shortly, John will continue the story of that day, telling us how two of the Baptist’s disciples became disciples of Messiah that very day. I tell you, John was one of them. This was the moment that defined John. That is why he must break into his story to shout out the glorious reality of Christ, of life in Christ.
In that moment, when John pointed to Messiah, and the ministry of Jesus found itself begun in the lives of Andrew and young John, these two received of His fullness. The rebirth was accomplished. What remained was the training. That’s what John is talking about. That’s the connection between the shout of the Baptist and the shout of the Evangelist that follows. The Baptist pointed, and a few received of His fullness in that moment. In sharing the moment and what it meant, John reminds every believer that reads his words of that moment in their own lives when suddenly Truth had come to live in their hearts.
That is the excitement I feel when I read this passage. When John says ‘we all have received’ I know I am in that number. I can look back to that moment when God suddenly became my God, when the rebellion of unbelief was set aside in an instant and reality shone through. What a wonder! I think I could write of it forever, and not exhaust the wonder of it, at least from my perspective! One cannot long consider all that God has done and not get lost in wonder. It’s not possible. John can’t do it. He walked with the Lord some seventy or eighty years, and still the sheer wonder of what God had done in him so overwhelmed him that he must break his chain of thought and just shout.
Paul couldn’t do it. Read his letters and see. He might be in the midst of a very well organized, very well reasoned presentation of his argument for faith. He might be on the verge of delivering the crucial point, when the mere contemplation of that point reminds him of the absolute wonder of God, and he has to just drop everything and let that wonder out. Oh! The glory! Everything to Him! All power! All honor! All everything! Let all the earth shout His praises, for He alone is worthy!
When we have that point in our life, that point of course change, that point where suddenly, quite apart from any doings of ours, the fullness of Christ enters in, these moments of doxology cannot help but pepper our daily life. When we come to these passages as fellow believers, we feel that tug of deep calling to deep. If we can read through the excitement of the apostles and not feel it in ourselves, we haven’t yet read it. We’re just skimming the words with no real attention. If we’re paying attention, if we are reading with the eyes of the Spirit, their excitement will ever and always be contagious. Rejoice, oh soul within me, rejoice! Your Savior has come! He has done it! He has brought life, satisfied the demands of justice, paid your penalty, and set you free! How dare you even think of being downcast within me! I live in the light of life, in the certitude of hope! I stand on the Rock, Christ Jesus, and no wave crashing against my shore can disturb me from within my Strong Tower! It is well with my soul, and frankly, nothing else matters.
Now I come to one final thought that struck me in studying this passage. In Jesus, we are told, truth was realized, Truth was completed. Truth appeared in history. Truth stood before us and taught. Now, I find it of greatest import, when considering this declaration of John’s to recall Jesus’ own declaration regarding Himself: “I AM the Truth. I AM the only path to the Father” (Jn 14:6). Consider, then, His words to the woman by the well. “Those who worship God must worship in spirit and in truth” (Jn 4:24). Could it be that Jesus was declaring the Trinitarian reality here? Could it be that both spirit and truth ought to be capitalized here? “Those who worship the Father must worship in the Spirit and in the Truth.” After all, none come to the Father but through the Son, and those whom the Son has claimed as His own have received the Spirit from Him!
Consider Jesus’ words to Pilate in this light, as well. “Yes, I am King. I was King from birth, and therefore, I came to the world to speak Truth – to declare Myself. All who are of the Truth – who are of My kingdom – hear Me and understand” (Jn 18:37). It adds a whole new dimension to what Jesus was saying, when we remember that where He speaks of Truth, He speaks of Himself. Pilate, not understanding, nor even particularly caring, asked “what is truth?” A post-modernist before his time! Had he been listening to what had led up to this point, he would have already heard the answer. “I AM.”
Finally, I would turn our attention to that wonderful message Jesus declares: “You will know the Truth, and the Truth will make you free” (Jn 8:32). Now, we want to turn that around, even in Christian circles, and make it about our knowing. It’s because we know that we are free. It comes back not to Jesus, but to our own knowledge. Oh! How we want to be found responsible for our own salvation! How we will twist and bend the reality of God’s economy to make a place for ourselves once more! But, the King of heaven insists: It’s all about Jesus. It is not our knowledge of the Truth that sets us free, it is the Truth. It is not our great understanding of things theological that breaks the bonds of sin, it is Jesus, the Truth. Quite frankly, the Truth will set you free whether you have perfect understanding of Him or not. Perhaps we should look at the verse backwards, so we don’t read into it that dependency of the second clause upon the first. “The Truth will make you free, and you will know the Truth.”
Notice, also, that Jesus does not tell us we will grapple with the Truth, struggle and study and wrestle with the deep things of God. He says ‘you will know.’ It will happen. Even that knowing is not about us. It’s about our Teacher. You will know because your Teacher is quite competent to tune His lessons to your ability, to bring you along by whatever fashion is necessary. You will be made free because the Truth has come to you, whether or not you fully understand Him just yet.
I also want to note that the knowledge Jesus tells us we shall have is that knowledge of intimacy, the ginosko knowledge. We will be intimate with the Truth, with Jesus! What a wonderful promise that is! We will be intimate with our Savior, with the One who has made us free. Truly, God showers upon us grace upon grace! We hold the promise of intimate relationship with God, of that intimacy properly reserved for husband and wife, as the Law declared. We cannot possibly obtain that promise without the righteousness, the holiness that must come in preparation. It’s impossible that we should enter into intimate union with the very epitome of holiness and not be holy, sanctified, washed clean ourselves. Impossible! Is it any wonder that John the Baptist felt the urgency of our need for cleansing? Is it any wonder that every life that ever drew near to Him drew near in fear and trembling, knowing full well its own imperfections?
Oh! Praise be to God that it all depends on You! If it were not all about You, Jesus, I should collapse in despair. If it were not all about You, I would still be chained to my sinful body of death and shame. But, You have come. Truth has come, Love has come, Mercy has come, yes, and Justice has come. You are all these things and more, and You have come in Your fullness and from Your fullness I have received. Oh! We shall do exploits! Having tasted of Your fullness, how could we not? We shall do exploits, my King, and not because of anything in us, but only because You are here with me and in me, filling me with every good and perfect gift that I might serve Your will as You have purposed. Thank You! Thank You for giving me a part to play in Your perfect plan. May I fill it perfectly by Your power.
