Tag: God

Red Letter Year: 9/27

John 1.29-42

photo-529 The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Look! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! 30 He is the one I was talking about when I said, ‘A man is coming after me who is far greater than I am, for he existed long before me.’ 31 I did not recognize him as the Messiah, but I have been baptizing with water so that he might be revealed to Israel.”

32 Then John testified, “I saw the Holy Spirit descending like a dove from heaven and resting upon him. 33 I didn’t know he was the one, but when God sent me to baptize with water, he told me, ‘The one on whom you see the Spirit descend and rest is the one who will baptize with the Holy Spirit.’ 34 I saw this happen to Jesus, so I testify that he is the Chosen One of God.”

35 The following day John was again standing with two of his disciples. 36 As Jesus walked by, John looked at him and declared, “Look! There is the Lamb of God!” 37 When John’s two disciples heard this, they followed Jesus.

38 Jesus looked around and saw them following. “What do you want?” he asked them.

They replied, “Rabbi” (which means “Teacher”), “where are you staying?”

39 “Come and see,” he said. It was about four o’clock in the afternoon when they went with him to the place where he was staying, and they remained with him the rest of the day.

40 Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, was one of these men who heard what John said and then followed Jesus. 41 Andrew went to find his brother, Simon, and told him, “We have found the Messiah” (which means “Christ”).

42 Then Andrew brought Simon to meet Jesus. Looking intently at Simon, Jesus said, “Your name is Simon, son of John — but you will be called Cephas” (which means “Peter”).

Comments

We might be tempted to read this as a quick shift of gears from the Prologue, the high, cosmic pronouncement giving way to the more earthy accounts, but we should resist that temptation and read today’s passage in continuity with what we have read for the past two days. The temptation comes from our experiences with Mark, Matthew, and Luke, but John the Evangelist presents John the Baptist to us in a very different way than the other three Gospels. Instead of describing the action of Jesus’ baptism, the Evangelist gives us all this information in the form of a testimony from the Baptist. We should read this together with the opening pronouncement of John’s Gospel because the Baptist’s declaration comes in that same mode. It carries the same cosmic weight as the prologue.

The Evangelist does this to put the humanity of Jesus on the same footing as the divinity of Jesus. Note the use of the present tense in v. 29 – Jesus is not the Lamb who will take away the sin of the world some time in the future. He is already taking away the sin of the world by virtue of his Incarnation. God has taken on flesh, has brought human life into the divine life. The Baptist declares both the humanity of Jesus and his divinity (v. 30: “he existed long before me”). Jesus is not just the Lamb of God, he is the Lamb of God slain from the foundation of the world.

This indicates that God’s plan for taking away the sin of the world was Jesus from the very beginning – from even before the Fall. The dispensationalist notion that God went through several trial redemption plans before settling on one that worked is proven false on these grounds – the plan was Jesus all along. This also confirms the move John made in yesterday’s reading in separating between Law on one side and grace and truth on the other side. Jesus was the plan long before the Law existed. Jesus didn’t take the place of the Law because the Law never displaced Jesus to begin with. Ordering our lives around the Law denies both the divinity of Jesus and his resurrection. This was the Ebionite heresy John was responding to and is disturbingly similar to the Calvinist preoccupation with law that persists in our own day. Jesus’ invitation is for us to come and see him – note the singularity and totality of these commands. Where do we come? To Jesus alone. What do we come to see? Jesus alone. Twice the Baptist tells us to “Look!” – to set aside all distractions (especially religious and religious-rule-based distractions) and focus on Jesus. I hope this is something we can do.

New Living Translation (NLT) Holy Bible. New Living Translation copyright© 1996, 2004, 2007 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale HousePublishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

Red Letter Year: 9/25

John 1.1-14

1 In the beginning the Word already existed.

The Word was with God,

and the Word was God.

2 He existed in the beginning with God.

3 God created everything through him,

and nothing was created except through him.

4 The Word gave life to everything that was created,

and his life brought light to everyone.

5 The light shines in the darkness,

and the darkness can never extinguish it.

6 God sent a man, John the Baptist, 7 to tell about the light so that everyone might believe because of his testimony. 8 John himself was not the light; he was simply a witness to tell about the light. 9 The one who is the true light, who gives light to everyone, was coming into the world.

10 He came into the very world he created, but the world didn’t recognize him. 11 He came to his own people, and even they rejected him. 12 But to all who believed him and accepted him, he gave the right to become children of God. 13 They are reborn—not with a physical birth resulting from human passion or plan, but a birth that comes from God. 14 So the Word became human and made his home among us. He was full of unfailing love and faithfulness. And we have seen his glory, the glory of the Father’s one and only Son.

Comments

When I started this Red Letter Year thing back in January, I really didn’t know how it would go – or if it would go. Or more accurately, I wasn’t sure I would or could keep it going all year long. (Like a pitcher throwing a no-hitter, I hope I’m not jinxing myself here.) But here we are starting the book of John. I sat down the other day and mapped out to the end of the year and it works out perfectly (No, I hadn’t done that before. I just tried to keep each reading around 15 verses, following natural breaks as much as possible.)

As I read through today’s passage and thought about introducing John, it occurred to me that one thing I haven’t mentioned all year is the Book of Kells and the four depictions given, one for each Gospel. You can read more about them here, but the one that is relevant for us now is the eagle representing John’s Gospel, which takes a higher view than the others and often uses loftier writing. This is nowhere truer than right here in chapter 1. The language and theme are transcendent. John flies us back to the very beginning – of everything.

While Mark avoided any account of Jesus’ origin, both Matthew and Luke focused on the human birth of Jesus. John shares nothing of that (this will be a recurring trend, John shares very little with the other three); instead he shares – not the origin of Jesus – but the eternality of the Son and his essential part in the origin of all that exists. John gives us a cosmic view of Jesus (this will also be a trend), well beyond anything we have seen in the other three Gospels. There are three things I want to point out as we begin reading John.

First, about this cosmic thing, I meant that quite literally. One of John’s favorite words is the Greek word “kosmos” which we usually translate as “world,” but which can mean what we mean by cosmos as well. I will explain this more as we go, but to put it in a nutshell, John understands the world as loved by God, hostile to God, and yet saved by God all at the same time. We see those themes expressed here in the opening passage and we will see them quite often. God creates and loves the cosmos, the cosmos is hostile to God, but God’s love overcomes the cosmos’ hostility. I’m going to leave “world” as the translation has it, but keep this whole dynamic in mind, because John clearly had it in mind while writing. It will help you understand his account more deeply.

Another favorite word of John’s is one I am not going to leave alone because I think we need some correction regarding it. John uses the Greek word “pisteuo” a lot too, it is a verb that we usually translate as “believe,” but which means something closer to “trust.” When we think of believe, we either think of a specific set of doctrines we give mental assent to, or else we think of something like believing in the Tooth Fairy. John doesn’t mean either of those here. He means trust expressed in action – in fact John always uses the verb form here, never the noun. In Greek some words take one form for a verb and a slightly different form for a noun (we call these cognates). We use words as nouns and verbs in English too (like: fish, brush, etc.) but we don’t usually change the ending to indicate which way the word is being used (and this really confuses people trying to learn English). My point is, the Greek noun cognate is “pistis,” which we translate as “faith” – except John never once uses the noun form, he always uses the verb. This means John understands faith itself as an action, which is one reason “trust” is a better way to translate his idea into English. We think “believing” is a mental game, but we know “trust” requires more.

I have one more point, but I am going to save it for tomorrow. For now, please note carefully what John says here. Some Christians have a bad habit of referring to the Bible as the Word of God, but as I blogged a long time ago (in two parts), the Bible is not the Word of God (click to read). The Bible cannot be the Word of God because right here John tells us that Jesus is the Word of God (click to read). Maybe we could say the Bible is the word of God (lowercase w), but I think that is just confusing. The Bible is written record of the prophetic and apostolic witness about Jesus Christ, the Word of God, who is in himself the fullness of the revelation of God to humans. John tells us that the Word God spoke in the beginning, the Word by which the entire cosmos was created, is Jesus Christ. Everything that exists was created by him. This includes you and me and is a reaffirming of the creation account – both that God created all – and that you and I are created in the image of God. John makes clear from the outset that what matters most is that we have been created and loved by Jesus and reborn, not because of our bodies, or passions, or even our will, but because of Jesus’ unfailing love and faithfulness.

New Living Translation (NLT) Holy Bible. New Living Translation copyright© 1996, 2004, 2007 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale HousePublishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.