Today, I am reading and commenting on  John 19-21.

When Jesus appeared to His disciples after His resurrection He told them that He was sending them into the world as the Father had sent Him.  He followed that up by telling them to receive the Holy Spirit and that if they forgive anyone’s sins, those sins are forgiven, and if they do not forgive those sins, those sins are not forgiven.  From one perspective, Jesus was sent into the world to forgive people’s sin.  So, Jesus sent His disciples, and us, into the world in order to forgive people’s sin. This has some serious implications.  First, Jesus carried out His mission to forgive sins by dying n the cross, so we should expect that we may be called upon to suffer and die for others.  Not all of those present when Jesus said this died as martyrs, so not all of us will either.  I also want to stress the importance of forgiving the sins of those we meet.  Jesus told us that those we do not forgive will not be forgiven.  Of course, He also told us that if we do not forgive others, we will not be forgiven.

I want to add one final note: while it is important that we forgive the sins of others, there must be some sins which we should not forgive.  If the latter was not the case, Jesus would not have granted the Church the power to refuse to forgive some people’s sins.

Note: the Church is the Body of Believers. That is, each one of us who put our faith in Jesus Christ represent one portion of the Church.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on  John 17-18.

I am going to start today’s blog from the end of the passage with Jesus’ exchange with Pilate about truth.  When Pilate asks Jesus for the second time if He is a king, Jesus responds by telling Pilate that “king” is his word, not Jesus’ word.  Then He tells Pilate that He to testify to the truth and that everyone on the side of the truth listens to Him.  To which Pilate replied with “What is truth?” and walked away without waiting for an answer.  Like so many people today, Pilate did not believe that there was such a thing as objective truth.  Which brings us to the first step necessary to faith in Christ: you need to believe that there is such a thing as objective truth.  You don’t have to believe that you know what that truth is, or even that you can know what that truth is.  You just have to believe that truth exists, and that Jesus embodies Truth.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on John 14-16.

Today’s passage teaches some important lessons.  It starts with Jesus telling His disciples, and us, that they, and we, know the way to where He is going.  When His disciples asked Him how they could know the way, He replied that He was the way, the truth, and the life.  Jesus goes on to tell us that those who believe in Him will do the works He had been doing, and even greater works.   Overall, I want to note that today’s passage is a very difficult passage, starting with that right there.  I don’t know that I have done the works which Jesus did when He walked with His disciples, and if I have not, does that mean that I am not truly in Him?

Fortunately, Jesus goes on from saying we will do works like His that He will ask the Father, and the Father will give us another advocate.  That advocate will be the Spirit of Truth.  And who will He ask the Father to send that advocate to and for? Those who live Him.  He tells us that if we love Him, we will follow His commands.  Repeatedly, Jesus had told His disciples that His command was that we love each other and that we love our neighbor as ourselves.  The Advocate, the Spirit of Truth, will remind us what those commands are and teach us how to follow them.  And Jesus answered the question I asked at the end of the first paragraph today by telling us not to let our hearts be troubled, telling us not to be afraid.  Jesus is in the Father, and we are in Him.  In order to bear the fruit which Jesus desires us to bear, we must remain in Him.  Here is the key, as we remain in Him, and His words remain in us, everything we ask of God will be done.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on  John 12-13.

I am going to write some thoughts today which I have not completely worked through, so I am not convinced that I will be able to express them without allowing them to be understood as meaning something which is sacrilegious.  Jesus said that if we wish to serve Him, we must follow Him and that if we are His servants we must be where He is.  I understand this to mean that we must be willing to face a death as painful as His if that is where He leads us.  From there He tells those listening to believe in the light while they have the light.  Then,  a little further on He says that the one who looks at Him see the One who sent Him.  Finally, He says that He came into the world as a light so that no one who believes in Him should stay in darkness.  Therefore, as we live our lives those who look at us will see the one who sent us.  If that One is Jesus, they will see the light and have the opportunity to believe in Him, becoming children of light just as we have become children of light.  Let us strive to allow the light of the Spirit to shine through us so that others have the opportunity to walk in the Light of God’s love.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on  John 10-11.

I was struck that Jesus implies that not all of the sheep in the sheep pen are His.  He tells us that He calls His sheep by name and leads them out.  Then He says that after calling all of His own sheep out through the gate, He goes on ahead of them.  This suggests that there are sheep which are not His, which do not follow Him.  Having made note of that I want to point out that Jesus has called each of His sheep by name.  There is something very comforting in knowing that the Creator of the Universe has called me by my name to follow Him.  As importantly, Jesus tells us that His sheep will only follow His voice, that they will run away from the voice of a stranger.  I think this helps explain why we sometimes feel that certain preachers are not to be trusted, even before they have said anything we can point to as wrong.

The account of Lazarus’ death and resurrection contains many things which advance our understanding of Jesus’ message.  However, I want to look at what we learn from the Sanhedrin’s response to it.  A couple of days ago I wrote about the human tendency to ask God for a sign after He has already given us the very sign for which we are asking.  Here the Sanhedrin recognized that Jesus had given signs which supported His message and were more concerned that people might believe His message than they were in what message He had for them.  They believed that Jesus had raised Lazarus from the dead, but that did not inspire them to believe that God was working through Him.  Instead, it inspired them to fear that His actions would lead to them being removed from their positions of power.  These men, who claimed to lead their people to worship God properly, were more concerned with their positions and power than they were with listening to God’s message.  They were afraid that if people listened to God’s message, the temple would be destroyed.  How often do we today become more worried about the survival of our congregation than we are with its members doing God’s will?

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on  John 8-9.

Today’s passage begins with the account of the woman caught in adultery.  The oldest sources do not contain this story, which suggests that it was not in the original.  Nevertheless, I think the fact that it became ubiquitous in later versions of the Gospel of John suggests that God intends for us to learn lessons from it.  I think the most important of those comes from Jesus’ final statement to the woman.  “Neither do I condemn you.  Go now and leave your life of sin.” (or, as other translations put it, “Go, and sin no more.”)  We should not condemn those who sin, but we should call them to stop sinning (just as we should strive to stop committing whatever sins come into our lives).

This passage contains two stories I think teach us a lot about following Christ.  The first I wrote about in the first paragraph.  The second is the story of the man born blind.  Jesus’ disciples thought that the man had been born blind either because of sins he later committed, or because his parents had sinned.  That is a potentially interesting theological debate, which the disciples took to Jesus, probably because they thought that His answer would reveal a lot about His understanding of God.  And it did, but not in the way in which they expected.  His answer tells us that people do not necessarily experience what we consider suffering because of sin.  In this case, the man was born blind so that Jesus could demonstrate God’s power through him.  When we see people suffering, our question should not be about why they are suffering.  Our question should be, “How can God’s power be displayed through relieving the suffering so that people will glorify God?”  When we see people suffering we should seek ways to relieve that suffering in a manner which brings glory to God.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on  John 6-7.

We often focus on what Jesus meant in this passage by telling the people that unless they eat His blood and drink His blood they have no life in them, and I will get to that.  However, I find it interesting that those to whom Jesus spoke were from among the five thousand He had fed with just a few loaves of bread and a couple of fish.  When Jesus told them to believe in Him, they asked Him for a sign, giving the example of manna which Moses gave their ancestors in the wilderness.  I am quite confident that John was completely aware of the irony of the people demanding a sign comparable to the people being fed manna in the wilderness just after being fed in the “wilderness”.  I don’t want to stop there.  We see this behavior a lot.  We even exhibit it.  Asking God for a sign, after He has already given us one.  Asking God for direction in our lives after He has given us guidance as to what we should do.

Which brings me to my understanding of what Jesus meant when He tells us that unless we eat His flesh and drink His blood we will not have life.  As I read this passage I saw it as mirroring the construction where Jesus told those who wished to follow Him that they must be willing to give up their lives for Him.  Here Jesus tells us that we must make Him part of us, that we must be prepared to experience suffering just as He was soon to experience suffering.  We must allow God’s Spirit to transform us to be like Him.  Jesus called for us to faithfully do God’s will even when it means ostracization and persecution.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on  John 4-5.

When the Jewish leaders began to persecute Jesus because He healed on the Sabbath, He defended His actions by saying that the Son can only do what He sees the Father doing.  I was struck by the thought that just as Jesus could only do what He saw His Father doing, we should only do that which we see Jesus doing.  As the well of living water which He has given to us springs up within us, let us share that water with others so that they also may no longer thirst.  Then that well will reside within them as it resides within us.

I want to also write about Jesus teaching that we must worship God in spirit and in truth.  I am convinced that this connects with what I wrote in the first paragraph, but I could not find words to express that connection.  I find it interesting that the NIV translates it that true worshipers will worship God in “the Spirit and truth”, while other translations state it as I did above.  I think that there is something to be learned from the juxtaposition of these two ways of translating the phrase.  We can only worship God in spirit and in truth by worshiping Him through His Spirit.  Which really provides the connection between this and what I wrote in the previous paragraph.  The well of living water which Jesus has placed within us is God’s Spirit, and we can only worship God in spirit if that Spirit is within us.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on  John 1-3.

Ever since I reached adulthood I have loved the story of Jesus at the wedding in Cana.  Typically when I talk about it I talk about how it can inform our attitude towards alcoholic beverages.  However today I want to look at what the banquet master said to the bridegroom about the wine which Jesus made.  It struck me today that John included it as a message about more than the wine which Jesus made.  The banquet master said, “Everyone brings out the choice wine first and then the cheaper wine after the guests have had too much to drink; but you have saved the best till now.”  On the surface this tells us something about the quality of the wine which Jesus made.  While I definitely believe we are supposed to reach that conclusion, I think John included that statement to communicate more than just that Jesus made really good wine.  In the same way that the banquet master told the bride groom that he had saved the best wine for now, John is telling us that God had saved His best for us in Jesus.  God had spoken to mankind through Noah, Abraham, Moses, and other prophets of old, but He had saved His best for last.  Now He was speaking to us directly through Jesus.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.