Coming Forth, Going Back, Wrapped Up

 

“Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands, and that He had come forth from God and was going back to God…” John 13:3.

 

As we considered a few reflections ago, there is an Inclusio of Identity in the Upper Room in which we see Christ Jesus coming from the Father and going back to the Father (John 13:1 – 3; 14:3,12; 16:28; 17:5, 8, 11, 25 – 26). We also see Jesus taking us up into Himself, into His journey, and drawing us into the koinonia of the Trinity. That is, Jesus wraps our lives up into Himself, He envelops us, drawing us to “where I am” (John 14:3; 17:24) so that we might see and participate in His glory (John 17:22 – 24).

 

One of the ways Jesus expresses this is when He says, “Abide in Me, and I in you…I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing.” (see John 15:1 – 11).

 

We also see in John 13:3 that Jesus was “knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands”. Therefore, after the Resurrection when Jesus gives us the Great Commission He says, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth” (Mt. 28:18). We “go” and “make disciples” in the authority of Jesus Christ – not on our own authority, not in our own volition, not by our own ingenuity (see also 1 Cor. 1:17 – 31).

 

In our passage, consider that not only is Jesus about to be betrayed, but that His betrayer is with Him, eating with Him during one of the High Holy Feasts of Israel – Passover. Consider the method of execution that awaits Jesus – how many times have Jesus and His disciples witnessed a crucifixion in their travels? How many times have they prayed for the condemned and suffering victims of crucifixion as they endured those excruciating slow and shameful deaths – stripped of all dignity and humanity?

 

Considering what awaits Jesus, does it really seem as if “all things” had been given into His hands? Well, if we consider that He is “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29, 36); if we consider that Jesus came for this very “hour” (John 12:27 – 28; 13:1; 17:1); then yes, perhaps we can see that all things have been given into His hands. If we see this, then perhaps we will also begin to glimpse the incredible love that Jesus has for us – that having all power and authority He dies for us, bearing our sins for us, bearing our sinful selves – becoming sin for us that we might become “the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Cor. 5:21).

 

Jesus has all authority and all power, and He uses that not for self – preservation but for the salvation and blessing of others – O dear friends, what do we do when we are given authority and power and ability? Jesus eats with His betrayer, with the agent whose heart and inner being have been given to evil (John 13:2, 27; 17:12). Jesus washes the feet of His disciples, even the feet of Judas. How can He do this? How can we do this?

 

Friends, Jesus, even in the agony of soul (John 13:21), abides in the peace of God – and He gives that peace to us. “Peace I leave with you; My peace do I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Do not let your heart be troubled, nor let it be fearful” (John 14:27). Again, Jesus speaks these words in the midst of betrayal and impending crucifixion, a crucifixion which is a crucifixion not only of body, but of soul – a crucifixion beyond our experience or comprehension in which He will cry, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” as He becomes our sin bearer.

 

So then, can we eat with our betrayers? Are we able to wash the feet of those around us when the veil of suffering and isolation is descending upon us? When those around us are unaware of what is actually transpiring around them? When God is making us sacrifices for the deliverance of others?

 

Of course we can…in Christ, for this is our calling…as we abide in Him.

 

In Christ, we participate in His coming from the Father and going back to the Father, for our lives are wrapped up in Christ. Paul writes, “…your life is hidden with Christ in God” (Col. 3:3). Therefore we can live in the assurance of our eternal life in Jesus Christ, an assurance that in Him we are secure in our purpose and destiny, that we are sharers with Him in His inheritance (Romans 8:14 – 17, 28 - 30) and that this inheritance includes doing the will of our Father as we are transformed into the image of His Son.

 

We do not understand these things, we cannot really explain them, but we can participate in them in Christ. We are becoming who we are in Christ and He is becoming our All in all. Paul writes, “When Christ, who is our life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him in glory” (Col. 3:4).

 

John writes, “Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not appeared as yet what we will be. We know that when He appears, we will be like Him, because we will see Him just as He is.” (1 John 3:2).

 

Until then, let us learn to live with Jesus in the Upper Room (John chapters 13 – 17). It is a place of destiny and transition, a portal into the Holy of Holies. It is a place in which the inside is much larger and grander than the outside.

 

Loving To The End

 

 

“Now before the Feast of the Passover, Jesus knowing that His hour had come that He would depart out of this world to the Father, having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end.” John 13:1.

 

What does it mean that Jesus “loved them to the end”? It could mean that He loved them to the end of His life on earth. But would that mean He loved them up until the Crucifixion, or that He loved them up until the Ascension? In either case, He certainly continues to love them as the Resurrected Christ. So it could mean that He loved them up until the end of the first part of His ministry, up until the Crucifixion; or up until the Ascension.

 

Could it mean that He loved them up until the completion of His work on earth? If that is the case, then He still continues to love them up until the consummation of all of His work on earth, in and through His Body, the Church, and beyond…whatever “beyond” may mean. In other words, “end” may be chronological or it may refer to “goal” and “purpose.”

 

Or, of course, we may be looking at both meanings, at two sides of the same coin; and I think that is likely the case – after all, who can understand the fulness of the ways of God?

 

So here we are, in the Upper Room with Jesus on the night of His betrayal, on the eve of His Crucifixion, and what is Jesus doing? He is loving His own and He is loving them to the end – an end that extends beyond the Upper Room down through the ages as well as beyond the Upper Room in terms of spatial and dimensional transcendence. After all, He will soon enter into the Heavenly Tabernacle on our behalf (Hebrews 9:23 – 25), as He will enter into His People (John 14:23; 17:23).

 

As He is loving His own, He is praying for His own:

 

“I ask on their behalf; I do not ask on behalf of the world, but of those whom You have given me; for they are Yours…I do not ask on behalf of these alone, but for those also who believe in Me through their word…” (John 17:9, 20).

 

You see, dear friends, Jesus is loving and praying for us, He is loving and praying for you and for me. We are the “joy that was set before Him” that caused Him to “endure the Cross and despise the shame” (Hebrews 12:2). Jesus had us as the “end” in view, in His heart, in His “being” on that night in the Upper Room.

 

But now we have the question, “Are we loving others to the end?”

 

After all, Jesus tells us, He tells me and He tells you, He tells His People:

 

“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.” (John 13:34 – 35).

 

Then He says, “This is My commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends. You are My friends if you do what I command you.” (John 15:12 – 14).

 

Is not the end purpose of our lives to love others as Christ Jesus loves us? And are we not to love in this sacrificial fashion until the end of this physical life?

 

May it be said of us all who are in Christ, when we have breathed our last in this world, that we have loved others until the end.

 

Our God has given us others to love; in our families, churches, workplaces, schools, communities – some will love us back, some will not; some will be kind to us, others will not; some will scatter when betrayals come, perhaps some will not.

 

What will be said of us?

 

Will it be said that we have been faithful to our heavenly calling, and loved others until the end?

 

O heavenly Father, dear Lord Jesus, teach us to love others to the end of life and for the end purpose and destiny that You have for us all – may it be said of us, that we love others as Jesus loves us…until the end.

 

His Hour/Our Hour

 

“Now before the Feast of the Passover, Jesus knowing that His hour had come that He would depart out of this world to the Father, having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end.” John 13:1.

 

Those who are in Christ will all have an hour that comes in our lives when we will depart from the world to the Father. Until then we have, I think, many appointed hours and seasons of life – some of which may be clearer to us than others; that is, we may be more aware of some seasons and hours than others. Sometimes our sense of purpose and goal may have great certainty to it, and other times we may experience what has been called, “the graciousness of uncertainty.”

 

We ought not to trust in our certainty, nor be unduly dismayed at our uncertainty – for our lives are in the hands of our kind heavenly Father and Lord Jesus Christ and God loves us and cares for us – and our trust ought to ever be in Him.

 

By God’s grace we want to say with Jesus, “I glorified You on the earth, having accomplished the work which you have given Me to do.” (John 17:4). But we can only say this in Christ Jesus for only Christ Jesus is able to accomplish the Father’s work within us and through us – as Jesus says, “…apart from Me you can do nothing” (Jn 15:5b).

 

We know we have a destiny in Jesus Christ, a purpose in Him – and that primary purpose, if it can be called such, is to love God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength and to love our neighbor as ourselves (Mark 12:28 – 31). We also read:

 

“For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them” (Eph. 2:10). What these good works are, and how we discover them and live in them, takes a lifetime to discern – for I think they are always coming to us in myriad ways – through God’s Word, through prayer, through others, through circumstances, through life’s lessons. These good works are discerned and fulfilled in union with His Body, His People – for we are members one of another – and whatever we may have to offer as individuals pales in comparison to what we have to offer as His Body.

 

It is also helpful to remind ourselves that our Father is conforming us to the image of His Son, “so that He would be the firstborn among many brethren” (Rom. 8:29). This is the “good” that we read of in Romans 8:28 – our lives must be always about Jesus. Can we trust our Father to accomplish His work within us?

 

When I look back over my life I see many things that I regret. (I share this in case you have this experience). What can we do with our regrets? Our sins? Our imperfections? Our defects?

 

Our sins are forgiven in Christ and we are justified in Him (Romans 1:1 – 5:11) – miracle of miracles! When God sees us in Christ He sees us as righteous and He remembers our sins no longer. O how I love 2 Corinthians 5:21:

 

“He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.” (No wonder Romans 5:1 – 11 is filled with such excitement).

 

What can we do with our regrets but give them to Jesus and trust Him as our Redeemer…and as the Redeemer of others? In other words, what can we do but trust Him to help those whom we have hurt, or whom we have not helped when we could have – what else can we do? It is not always possible to make amends, and it is often not wise to go back into the past in that it opens wounds that are best left in the hands of God.

 

Of course we can also look for daily opportunities to be a blessing to others, Divine appointments to serve others, to wash the feet of others, to love others – and in this way perhaps, in some sense, we see Christ Jesus redeeming the past.

 

Jesus says, “And who of you by being worried can add a single hour [cubit] to his life?” (Matt. 6:27). While the immediate context of this has to do with bodily necessities, its deeper context is God’s care for us and our devotion to Him – what is the core of life really about? It is about seeking first the kingdom of God and His righteousness (Matt. 6:33).

 

If our heavenly Father knows that we must eat and drink and wear clothing, (Matt. 6:28 – 32), surely He also knows that we need peace of mind, comfort, spiritual and emotional rest, assurance of forgiveness…and so many other things, all of which we find in our Lord Jesus Christ.

 

As the years go by, I find myself with Paul, looking forward to our heavenly dwelling (2 Cor. 5:1- 8) – knowing that an hour will come when I will depart to be with the Father. I am reminded that God “prepared us for this very purpose” and that He “gave to us the Spirit as a pledge.” That is, a measure of heaven lives in us now as a guarantee of our ultimate destiny in Christ Jesus (see also Eph. 1:13 – 14).

 

I love Fanny Crosby’s lyrics, “Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine, O what a foretaste of glory Divine…”

 

Yes indeed. Amen.

His Hour

  

“Now before the Feast of the Passover, Jesus knowing that His hour had come that He would depart out of this world to the Father, having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end. During supper, the devil having already put into the heart of Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon, to betray Him, Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands, and that He had come forth from God and was going back to God, got up from supper, and laid aside His garments, and taking a towel, He girded Himself.” (John 13:1 – 4).

 

In Cana of Galilee, at the inception of His public ministry, we read, “When the wine ran out, the mother of Jesus said to Him, ‘They have no wine.’ And Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, what does that have to do with us? My hour has not yet come.’” (John 2:3 – 4).

 

In John 7:30 and 8:20 we see two times when the religious leaders wanted to seize Jesus because of His teaching, and yet they couldn’t do so “because His hour had not yet come.”

 

But then, during Holy Week, Jesus says, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be gloried…Now My soul has become troubled, and what shall I say, ‘Father, save Me from this hour?’ But for this purpose I came to this hour.” (John 12:23 – 27 passim).

 

Then in John 17:1, Jesus says to the Father, “Father, the hour has come; glorify Your Son, that the Son may glorify You.”

 

The image of “hour” is woven throughout the Gospel of John (see also 4:21 – 23; 5:25 – 28; 16:32). There is “hour” directly related to Jesus, and “hour” related to mankind and His People. In John 2:3 – 4 the image is introduced, but we are told that the hour hasn’t come, but then in 12:23 – 27 what we have anticipated has arrived, His hour has come, it has finally come; it may not have come in the fashion that was anticipated, but it has indeed come with eternal irrevocability.

 

In much the same way in John 2:19 – 22, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up,” anticipates John chapters 12 – 21, the Crucifixion and Resurrection. In other words, John 2:19 – 22 gives us an image of what John 2:4, the coming of the “hour,” will look like. We may not realize this the first time we read John Chapter 2, but this is how John is structuring his Gospel of Jesus.

 

There is a sense in which John is once again pulling us back into Genesis Chapter One with his emphasis on “hour”. While John’s first words, “In the beginning was the Word,” connect us with, “In the beginning God created,” (Genesis 1:1), in an obvious way, what we may forget is Genesis 1:14:

 

“Then God said, ‘Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night, and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years…’”

 

In other words, life is not to be lived randomly, but rather in accordance with God’s timing and seasons – both in terms of chronology and in terms of “the right time,” the appointed hour. For example, in Galatians 4:4 we read, “But when the fulness of time came, God sent forth His Son…”

 

However else we might read Genesis Chapter One, it is meant to primarily reveal Jesus Christ and His work within us and His self-disclosure to mankind. Thus Paul writes, “For God, who said, ‘Light shall shine out of darkness,’ is the One who has shone in our hearts to give the Light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.” (Gal. 4:6).

 

And then we have, “For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.” (Rom. 1:20).

 

So when we read Genesis 1:14, about “signs and for seasons and for days and years” we are called not to actually look at the physical solar system and beyond, but rather to look through the solar system and beyond, to look through the visible heavens into the invisible.

 

Our fixation on the visible blinds us to Jesus Christ. Is it an accident that in the same passage where Paul refers to a deeper meaning in Genesis One that he also writes, “…we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.” (2 Cor. 4:18).

 

Let me put this another way with another example, many professing Christians are intrigued by Noah and the Flood and the Ark. But, fixation on the physical Ark and Flood and person of Noah without “seeing” that Christ is our Ark, that there is a flood of evil and judgment around us, that Christ is our Noah, that we are called to fashion our congregations into not cruise ships but rather ships that withstand storms and which are places of refuge for others – if we cannot “see” through the visible into the invisible, if we cannot see ourselves has having a Great Commission to be His Ark of salvation for others – then simply believing in a physical account of the Flood actually leaves us high and dry. Fixating on the visible without seeing through the visible into the invisible leaves us in the company of those who search the Scriptures thinking that in them they have eternal life…and yet miss Jesus Christ (John 5:39).

 

O dear friends, Jesus reveals Himself through the entire Old Testament, not just through a text here and there (Luke 24:27, 44 – 45; 1 Cor. 10:11; Col. 2:16 – 17; and also consider the way Jesus and the Apostles saw and taught the OT! Are we not to follow in their footsteps?) “The substance is of Christ”! (Col. 2:17).

 

We will return to “knowing that His hour had come” in our next reflection in this series.