“What Then Has Happened?” (1)

 

 

John 14:18 – 24 form an enigmatic unit which requires pondering; it raises questions, it has a wonderful question (“What then has happened?”), and it confronts us with how we see Christ, the world, and ourselves. Previously we considered the theme of Jesus going away and coming again, and we see that again in this passage. As we read the passage, what else do we see? What questions do we have? Are we puzzled by anything Jesus says? Why is Judas (not Iscariot) asking his question? (Please read the entire passage).

 

Since in our previous post we pondered verse 18, we’ll consider verse 19 in this reflection.

 

“After a little while the world will no longer see Me, but you will see Me; because I live, you will live also.” (John 14:19).

 

In 16:16 Jesus also says, “A little while, and you will no longer see Me; and again a little while, and you will see Me.” Do we “see” this theme in the Upper Room?

 

Jesus has a lot to say about the “world” in the Upper Room. (see 15:18 – 16:11; 17:14 – 18). In 14:19 He tells us that a time will come when the world will not see Him, but we will see Him. How can this be? Perhaps a clue is found in, “…because I live, you will live also.”

 

Simply put, people who are alive in Christ see Him, people who are dead do not see Him. We were all once dead in trespasses and sins (Eph. 2:1) and our lives were animated by the ways of the world and of the enemy (Eph. 2:2). God, in His mercy, raised us up from spiritual death and made us alive in Jesus Christ (Eph. 2:4 – 10).

 

We are aliens on this planet and in this world, as Jesus says (17:16), “They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.”

 

Why do we not embrace our otherworld identity in Jesus Christ? Why do we instead try to be like the world? Why do we try to attract the world with the things of the world, rather than the things of Christ and God? In Michael Green’s Evangelism in the Early Church, he points out that the Church’s witness has been the most effective when it has been the most counter-cultural. Yet, at least in the West, we give ourselves to economic and political and entertainment movements, allowing them to displace the Christ of the Cross and the Cross of Christ. We push “Christian” worldviews on others at the expense of the Gospel of our Lord Jesus.

 

(I hope you will forgive me, but I must make this observation. Does no one see the irony that “Christian” conservatives who criticize Christian liberals for preaching a social gospel, have now embraced a political and social gospel of their own?)

 

Should we be surprised if the world cannot “see” Jesus? Should we be surprised if our worldly ways of attempting to communicate the Gospel fail to reach the hearts of others? Aren’t we called to “make disciples” (Mt. 28:19) as opposed to operating group therapy sessions on Sunday mornings?

 

John 14:18 – 24 demonstrates that those whom Christ has called to Himself are not to see and hear and think and live as the people of the world – and yet much of the professing church has adopted the world’s thinking and way of doing things. Let’s remind ourselves that the things that are seen are temporal, while the things that cannot be seen are eternal (2 Cor. 4:18). We are called to live with eyes that see the invisible (consider Hebrews chapters 11 and 12).

 

I find great assurance in Jesus’ words, “…because I live, you will live also.” This means that we not only live in Him today, but that we live in Him tomorrow and for eternity. This means that our existence and forever future is rooted and grounded in Jesus, in the Resurrected One who has conquered and abolished death – and that our reality is not the false reality of a world in rebellion, but of the everlasting Kingdom of God our Father.

 

Jesus says to John (Rev. 1:17 – 18), “Do not be afraid; I am the first and the last, and the living One; and I was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of death and of Hades.”

 

Can we hear Jesus saying to us, “Do not be afraid, because I live, you will live also”?

 

Can we hear Jesus saying, “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears My word, and believes Him who sent Me, has eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life”? (John 5:24).

 

Can we hear Jesus saying, “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me will live even if he dies, and everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die”? (John 11:25 – 26).

 

I pray that this Easter we will see Him as never before!

 

Orphans, or Sons and Daughters?

 

“I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.” John 14:18.

 

As a reminder, these verses and passages, as all Bible passages, ought to be read and pondered again and again in their context – that is, in their extended passages. This one verse is connected to its immediate context (the verses immediately preceding and following it) and it is a thread of a glorious tapestry revealing Jesus Christ. The man or woman who is born again of the Holy Spirit can never exhaust the depths of Jesus Christ in the Bible – Jesus Christ is forever and always coming to us afresh in and through His Word.

 

Someone recently said to me, “I read the Bible once and I know what is in it.” What can we say in response to such a statement? Such a statement is likely the result of ignorance or arrogance, or of both. No doubt I have lived in both places, ignorance and arrogance, not realizing the depths of Jesus Christ in the Bible, thinking foolishly that the Bible is a matter of information and data, thinking like a fool that the Bible was something I could “apply” the way I might “apply” mathematics or logic or the laws of physics or the rules of accounting.

 

Jesus calls us to obey Him and His Word, not to apply it. Jesus calls us to receive Him and worship Him and say, “Not I, but Christ.” Jesus commands us to deny ourselves and follow Him, to live as those purchased by His blood, no longer belonging to ourselves.

 

Those who know the Scriptures, realize they know so little of the Scriptures – for the depths of the Bible are the depths of eternity and the Eternal One. We may be, at some point, “wise master builders,” but even then we know that we are such because we sit at the feet of the one true Master…our Master. To be mastered by the Master, that is to be most desired. Don’t you think?

 

As we ponder John 14:18, I am struck by Jesus saying, “I will come to you.” Isn’t this a theme of the Upper Room? Jesus is always coming to us, He is promising to do so, to always do so.

 

In 14:3 Jesus says, “I will come again.” In 14:21 – 23 He speaks of disclosing Himself to us and coming to us. In 16:16 – 22 He again speaks of His coming to us, of us seeing Him. And then, in John 17 Jesus calls us into the depths of union with the Father and with Himself, into the holy koinonia of the Trinity. Also, throughout the Upper Room Jesus is speaking to us of the Holy Spirit coming to us and living within us, and of the Father living within us.

 

We, individually and as His Body, are to experience His coming to us as our Way of Life. But O how many of us live as if we are orphans! How much of our teaching and preaching dumbs us down rather than raises us up! Why do we not know and experience and embrace the overwhelming power of the Holy Spirit in our lives – as individuals, as families, as congregations?

 

Dearly beloved, we are the sons and daughters of the Living God and Jesus Christ is our elder Brother who has redeemed us and brought us back to our Father. We ought to banish forever the thought that we are orphans, that we have no Father…or that we have a Father who is far away from us, a Father who does not care for us, a Father who does not desire to be in deep communion with us every moment of every day.

 

God came to earth in the Incarnation some 2,000 years ago, and He has never left…He lives within the Body of His Son Jesus Christ. We are no more orphans than Jesus is an orphan.

 

O beloved, the enemy would rob us of our identity in our Lord Jesus Christ. If the enemy cannot rob us of our salvation, he will seek to rob us of the riches of our salvation – he will seek to blind us from the fulness of our inheritance in Jesus Christ. And let us make no mistake, this is not about us or our glory, this is about the glory of God and the blessing and salvation of others – for if we are debilitated then our witness is debilitated and muted.

 

If we ponder this passage before us, if we consider the flow of John Chapter 14, indeed of the entire Upper Room discourse, we will see that Jesus calls us to hear and see and live beyond the veil of natural hearing and seeing and understanding – “After a little while the world will no longer see Me, but you will see Me; because I live, you will live also.”

 

We simply cannot afford to live as earth dwellers, as bottom feeders, as orphans.

 

Can we not cry out to Jesus to raise us up on the winds of the Holy Spirit? Can we not cry out to Jesus to make His words in the Upper Room a present reality to us? Can we not plead with Jesus to set us free from the bondage of our natural understanding, including our natural “religious” understanding (see 1 Cor. Chapter 2), and to transform us into His image from glory to glory? (2 Cor. 3:17 – 18; Rom. 8:29 – 30).

 

“For you have not received a spirit of bondage leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons [and daughters!] by which we cry out, ‘Abba! Father!’ The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God…” (Rom. 8:15 - 16).

 

Let us, in Christ, live as the sons and daughters of our glorious Father today – let us not deny our birthright in Jesus, let us confess our Lord Jesus and our Father and rejoice in the Holy Spirit!

 

Glory!!!!!!!

The Holy Spirit

  

“I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may be with you forever; the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it does not see Him or know Him, but you know Him, because He abides with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.” John 14:16 – 17. (See also John 16:5 – 15).

 

The “Helper”, the Paracletos in Greek, comes alongside us as our Comforter, our Intercessor, our Advocate, our Helper. We are not left as orphans because our Advocate, the Holy Spirit, lives within us. But note, that not only does the Holy Spirit live in those who believe and trust in Jesus, but the Father and the Son also live in them, “…My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our abode with him” (John 14:23b).

 

God tabernacles within His People; Jesus first tabernacled among us (John 1:14), and now the Trinity tabernacles within us; in Christ we are the Temple of God (Eph. 2:19 – 22; 1 Peter 2:4 – 10).

 

Let us please not miss the significance of these words of Jesus, “…He abides with you and will be in you.”

 

During the Feast of Tabernacles, Jesus says (John 7:37 – 38), “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink. He who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, ‘From his innermost being will flow rivers of living water.’”

 

John, the Gospel writer, then adds in verse 39, “But this He spoke of the Spirit, whom those who believed in Him were to receive; for the Spirit was not yet given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.” (See also John 16:7 and Acts 2:32 – 33).

 

Are we experiencing rivers of living water flowing out from us to others? Is this our Way of Life in Jesus Christ?

 

How is it that on the one hand we preach that we must be born again of the Spirit of God, and on the other hand we live denying and ignoring and suppressing (if we can use such language) our new life in the Spirit? Jesus says, “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).

 

We often insist that the Holy Spirit conform to our notions of behavior and reasoning – and since God the Holy Spirit conforms to no man, we are left with our own diminished devices. We ignore the Holy Spirit epistemologically (1 Cor. 1:17 – 2:16), and we rationalize away our glorious inheritance as found in passages such as Romans Chapter 8. We think that the Holy Spirit can be confined and conformed to rationalistic and naturalistic wine skins (Mt. 9:16 – 17); (if we can use such language, for we are speaking of God).

 

O dear friends, when we live in the Throne Room, and the Throne of God is established in our hearts, His River flows to us and through us (Rev. 22:1; Ps. 46:4).  We become fountains of Living Water that others may drink from (John 4:7 – 14). Why is it that we insist on focusing on our supposed wants and needs when our Father has given us all things in Jesus Christ and we are to be about our Father’s business? Why do we not see that we are “heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ”? (Romans 8).

 

Why do we not confess that, “For all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God”? (Rom. 8:14).

 

If we consider 1 Corinthians 2:1 – 3:1 we see that there are “spiritual men” and “men of flesh” (1 Cor. 3:1); people who are learning to live in and by the Holy Spirit, and those who cling to the natural, the earthly and self – centered way of life. Paul is writing to those in the church, he is talking to Christians about Christians, he is writing to them about themselves.

 

O dear friends, Paul writes (1 Cor. 2:7), “…but we speak God’s wisdom in a mystery, the hidden wisdom which God predestined before the ages to our glory”! This wisdom, this Way of thinking, this Way of Life in Jesus Christ, can only be received, understood, and shared with others in and through and by the Holy Spirit. How have we become so naturalistic in our thinking, our teaching, our preaching, and in our way of church?

 

Paul writes that God’s hidden wisdom (in Christ, see Col. 2:1 – 3) is for our glory. Jesus says in John 17:22, “The glory which You have given Me I have given to them…”

 

The creation is travailing for the manifestation of the sons of God (Rom. 8:18), so that it might be set free into “the freedom of the glory of the children of God” (Rom. 8:21). Are we learning to live in His glory today? Are we living in the Holy Spirit as our Way of Life?

 

When we gather together, whether on Sundays or during the week, whether in large groups, small groups, or in simply meeting another Christian for coffee – are we gathering in His glory?

 

And lest you should misunderstand me, His glory radiates Jesus Christ, the Lamb slain who is Alive. His glory can be boisterous at times, it can be silent at times, it can be a whisper at times – this is not about artificial noise or artificial quiet or artificial decorum.

 

His glory radiates from the Cross, and it is Jesus Christ and Him crucified from whom all Life flows to us and in us and through us (1 Cor. 2:2 – 5). It is in the preaching of the Cross that we see the power of God, now and always. It is in the preaching of Jesus Christ crucified that we are transformed into His sacrificial image and participate in His sacrificial Life for His glory and the blessing of others (Phil. 3:10).

 

Are we knowing the joy, peace, power, and comfort of the Holy Spirit today? Are we trusting the Holy Spirit to lead us and guide us and teach us today? Is the Holy Spirit empowering our witness to Jesus Christ? Is the Holy Spirit our biosphere, or do we still breathe earth’s atmosphere?