His Coming Through Us To Others

 

 

“You have heard that I said to you, “I go away, and I will come to you.” If you loved Me, you would have rejoiced because I go to the Father, for the Father is greater than I. Now I have told you before it happens, so that when it happens, you may believe.” John 14:28 – 29.

 

Once again, we encounter the thread of Jesus going and coming, coming and going, going and coming – this dance will continue until His Great Coming and then we will learn a new dance – we can but rejoice in the hope of that glory! In the meantime, let us practice our steps in this dance, learning to look for Him every moment of every day and to follow His lead, for as many as are led by the Spirit of God are the sons and daughters of God (Rom. 8:15).

 

In our immediate context Jesus will soon go with the mob in the garden of Gethsemane, then He will go before the high priest, then Pilate, then Herod, then back to Pilate, then to Golgotha and the Cross, then into the tomb (speaking in the natural, for He is elsewhere), then in Resurrection out of the tomb and into the garden of a New Day…but then consider what He says to Mary Magdalene, “Stop clinging to Me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father…” (John 20:17a).

 

Now this is a mysterious saying, for before the end of that day He will be in the Upper Room once again, so while we may not grasp just what Jesus means in 20:17, we can see that there is yet another going and coming on Easter. Then we have His Ascension until the Day of His Great Coming, and yet between these “times” we continue to have His goings and comings, for not only does He appear to Paul on on the road to Damascus, but He has continued to appear in many ways to myriads of people down through the ages.

 

Now to some of us He has appeared in quite visible ways, while to most of us He appears in ways that we can “see” with our hearts and minds and souls – in fact, He appears in this way to all of His People, for one way or another, to belong to Jesus means that we have, by God’s grace, seen the Lord. Certainly to be in a relationship with someone means that we are able to “see” that person, communicate with that person, know that person – and since we are made by God, and since in Christ we are made new creations by God in Christ (2 Cor. 5:16 – 21), ought we not to anticipate that we will see Jesus and talk to Jesus and hear Jesus as Jesus draws us into an ever-deepening relationship with Himself?

 

What would be think of having someone live in our house or apartment without ever seeing that person or talking to that person? What would we think of someone riding in our car with us, being at work with us, going shopping with us…without us ever talking to or seeing that person?

 

Well, my dear friends, Jesus says that He will never leave us nor forsake us. Jesus says that He and the Father and the Holy Spirit will live within us. Do we believe Jesus or not? For it we believe Him – how can we not “see” Him or “hear” Him as our Way of Life? If sharing a physical house is intimate, how much more intimate is it when the Trinity lives inside us?

 

Can we not see that the Bible teaches us that we live in Christ and that Christ lives in us? How rude to have someone living in our house or apartment and never speak to them, never listen to them, never share life with them! O the falsehoods we have believed! O the barriers we have allowed others to place between ourselves and our dear Lord Jesus! Shame on the shepherds who would keep His flock from Him, the One who gave His life for His sheep.

 

Let us remind ourselves of John 14:20, “In that Day you will know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you.” Do we believe this? Do our congregations believe this? Are we living in this reality? Is this reality being lived out from us into the world around us?

 

Now dear friends, if He is coming to us every day, then we can expect Him to be coming through us to others every day – for He comes to us so that He can come to others through us, both those who are His already and those who will come to know Him.

 

“…what we have seen and heard we proclaim to you also, so that you too may have koinonia with us, and indeed our koinonia is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ.” (1 John 1:3).

 

Glory!!!

 

 

The Gift of His Peace

 

“Peace I leave with you; My peace 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.

 

In 14:1 Jesus says, “Do not let your heart be troubled,” then in 16:33, “These things I have spoken to you, so that in Me you may have peace.” In the Upper Room Jesus speaks of giving us His peace, His joy (15:11; 17:13), and His glory (17:22). Note that peace, joy, and glory are not things in and of themselves that we receive or consume or pass along or (sadly) merchandise. They are rather the peace of Jesus, the joy of Jesus, and the glory of Jesus – they are found in Him and in Him alone as we live in Him and He lives within us.

 

Consider that Jesus is about to pray in agony in the Garden of Gethsemane, that He will soon be betrayed and subjected to the mockery and torture of the high priest and Roman authorities. The shadow of crucifixion looms over the Upper Room as Jesus speaks of His peace, His joy, and His glory – tomorrow He will hang on a cross on Golgotha.  How can Jesus speak of peace, joy, and glory knowing what soon awaits Him?

 

How can we speak of peace, joy, and glory when we are called to experience what Paul terms, “the fellowship of His sufferings,” and are “conformed to His death”? (Phil. 3:10).

 

The Upper Room passage in the Gospel of John begins in 13:1:

 

“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.”

 

Throughout the Upper Room Jesus speaks of going to the Father, of preparing a place for us, of doing the Father’s will and commandments, of His love for the Father, of the Father and Jesus and the Holy Spirit living in us and us living in God.

 

Jesus is loving the Father and Jesus is loving us. Jesus is loving us more, and then more, and then even more. When Jesus prays in agony in Gethsemane He is loving us. When He is before the high priest He is loving us. When Jesus is brought before Pilate and Herod and then sent back to Pilate, Jesus is loving us. When Jesus is being mocked and tortured, He is loving us – when the flesh is being torn from His back, when the crown of thorns is pushed down onto His head…Jesus is loving us.

 

Along the Via Dolorosa Jesus is loving us. On the Cross, in those hours in which the holy Lamb of God presents Himself as the one and only offering on our behalf – Jesus is loving us.

 

Can we see that while betrayal and torture and crucifixion are overshadowing the Upper Room, that these things – as real and as dark and as hideous as they are – are themselves overwhelmed and engulfed and obliterated by the glory of the Father, by Jesus seeing the “joy that is set before Him” and Jesus despising the shame associated with the crucifixion (Hebrews 12:1 – 3)?

 

And so Jesus says to the Father, “But now I come to You; and these things I speak in the world so that they may have My joy made full in themselves.” (John 17:13).

 

If Jesus so loved us, and if Jesus so passed His peace and joy to us, ought not we to learn, in Him, to love others and give His peace and His joy to them? Ought we not, no matter our personal circumstances, to behold the joy set before us in Jesus Christ, to despise any shame the world may heap upon us, and to share the love and grace and joy and peace and glory of Jesus Christ with others?

 

Is this not, with Paul, desiring “to know Him and the power of His resurrection and the koinonia of His sufferings, being made conformed to His death”? (Phil. 3:10).

 

Jesus gives us His peace that we might be safe places of peace for others, that we might share His peace with others, that in a world gone insane, in a world committing collective suicide in myriad ways - there might be a People who will lay their lives down so that others may come to know the Prince of Peace, Jesus Christ.

 

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.” (Matthew 5:9).

 

Are we giving the gift of the peace of Jesus Christ to others?

 

Are we living as His sons and daughters today?

Our Teacher of Teachers

 

 

“These things I have spoken to you, while abiding with you. But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you.” John 14:25 – 26. (See also 14:16 – 17; 15:26; 16:5 – 15).

 

Christianity, a relationship with Jesus Christ, is personal but it is not exclusively private. Yes, we have communion with the Trinity deep within our souls, but it is also a shared communion beyond the veil (Heb. 10:19 – 25). The Holy Spirit does not so much teach us as individuals, but rather as the Body of Christ, rather as the People of God. What the Holy Spirit reveals to us as individuals, He gives to be shared with the Body and to be completed within the Body.

 

What I mean by completed within the Body is that we need one another to fully understand and see what the Spirit teaches, just as we need the entire Bible to see and understand any part of the Bible.

 

And so while it is true that we “have an anointing from the Holy One, and…know all” (1 John 2:20) and that “you have no need for anyone to teach you” because of the anointing of the Holy Spirit (1 John 2:27); let us remember that these words are written to a People in Christ – the Body of Christ does not need mankind to teach it because it has the Holy Spirit – but within the Body of Christ we need one another for teaching and learning and growing  - gifts are given to the Body of Christ, for the Body of Christ; that we all might be built up in Christ and that Jesus Christ might be glorified. (See Romans 12, 1 Corinthians 12, Ephesians 4).

 

As God’s People in Christ, we have the assurance that the Holy Spirit will teach “us” – a People. Then we have “and bring to remembrance all that I said to you.” Now while Jesus is speaking directly to the apostles in the Upper Room, I want to suggest that this is a promise to His Body down through the ages, just as all His promises in the Upper Room are for His Body down through the ages.

 

What does this mean? While it may be straightforward to see what it means to the apostles in the Upper Room, or what it means for other disciples who knew the incarnate Christ, what does it mean for succeeding generations?

 

Let me suggest two meanings. One is that we can trust the Holy Spirit to preserve Jesus’ Word within us as we read, hear, and obey His Word and mediate upon it. We can trust the Holy Spirit as individuals and we can trust the Holy Spirit as God’s People.

 

The second meaning is that the Holy Spirit will preserve the Word of God through the ages and that He will ever and always bring it to God’s People – no matter the fierceness of opposition, no matter the attempts to suppress Christ’s Word. Here we have the Holy Spirit working in and through “the communion of saints”.

 

The Word of Christ, the Scriptures, are miraculous on many levels – and while they are transmitted through human vessels, they are spirit and truth, they are Divine – and God will preserve what He has authored. The gates of hell will not prevail against the Church of Jesus Christ.

 

One of the things this means is that I do not want to ever preach or teach anything new or novel. I do not want to say or write anything that hasn’t been said or written before in the Kingdom of God, in the Body of Jesus Christ. To be sure I do want to communicate, by God’s grace, in ways that can be understood. I do want to speak, in Christ, within the times and seasons in which I live – but this, by the nature of the Word of God, will be counter-cultural, it will be against the grain of this world. God’s Word is a call to repent and follow Jesus, to turn from the world, the flesh, and the devil.

 

The Teacher of teachers for the Body of Christ must always be the Holy Spirit – He will make the Word of our Good Shepherd alive to our hearts and minds, He will tune our ears to hear Jesus, He will plant the Word of Jesus deep in our souls and cause it to grow and bear fruit.

 

We can trust the Holy Spirit.

 

Do we?

What Then Has Happened? (5)

 

“…and We will come to him and make Our abode with him.” (John 14:23b)

 

In 14:17 we have the promise of the Holy Spirit living within us. Here, in 14:23, we have the promise of the Father and Son living within us. In John 15 Jesus gives us the marvelous image of the Vine and the branches, with the branches drawing their life from the Vine. Throughout the Upper Room we are given the promise, again and again, of the Trinity living within us and of us living within the Trinity.

 

“In that day you will know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you.” (14:20).

 

This, my friends, is Christianity – God living within His People and His People living within Him. In our communion with the Trinity, loving obedience, treasuring and obeying the commandments of Jesus Christ, is our Way of life in Him. God’s enabling grace, and His very Spirit, live and breathe within us – and obedience produces obedience produces obedience – for our delight is to please the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, our joy is to serve God and to serve one another. If we would serve God we must serve one another, and if we will serve one another we will find ourselves serving God.

 

This is the principle we find in 1 John 4:20 - 21, “If someone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar; for the one who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from Him, that the one who loves God should love his brother also.”

 

Just as Jesus lived by the life of the Father, so we learn to live by the life of Jesus, for if Jesus did nothing out of Himself, surely we also must learn to do nothing out of ourselves – but rather to live by His life (John 14:10; 15:1 – 5; Gal. 2:20).

 

One of the distinctions between the Old and New Covenants is that under the former, obedience is impossible, while under the latter, obedience is the norm. Under the Law, we are powerless to keep the commandments of God, under grace we are empowered by the Holy Spirit to keep His commandments as our natural – supernatural Way of Life in Jesus Christ. How have we failed to see the glory of the New Covenant? Why do we insist on thinking that we are still in slavery? Why do we deny the glorious reconciliation that our Father has accomplished in Jesus Christ?

 

As messed-up as the Corinthians were, Paul nevertheless addresses them as “saints” who have been sanctified in Christ Jesus; affirming the grace given to them in Christ Jesus, testifying that they have been enriched in Jesus and that they are not lacking in any gift. Paul affirms that Christ “will also confirm you to the end, blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. (1 Cor. 1:1 – 9).

 

Why can’t we see our glorious present-day inheritance in Jesus Christ? Why do we insist on wearing grave clothes (John 11:44)?

 

O dear ones, the creation is awaiting and yearning for the manifestation of the sons and daughters of God, it yearns to be set free from the bondage of corruption into “the freedom of the glory of the children of God” (Rom. 8:18 – 25; 2 Cor. 3:17 – 18).

 

When will we finally say, “Enough of Egypt, enough of Babylon, enough of living like bottom-feeders; let us live in that day in which we know that Jesus Christ is in His Father, and that He is in us, and that we are in Him”?