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

When Jesus told Pilate that he would have no power over Jesus unless it had been given to him from above, Pilate would have understood Jesus to mean “given to him from Caesar”, when we as Christians understand Jesus to have meant, “given to Pilate by God.”  I believe that Jesus meant the traditional Christian understanding, but intended Pilate to take it the way that he did.  With that thought in his mind, Pilate would have found it difficult to oppose the argument that Jesus claiming a king made Him an enemy of Caesar.  There is another aspect of these two different possible meanings of Jesus statement about power being given from above, it highlights the idolatry which the Jewish religious leaders expressed when they said they had no king but Caesar.  A consistent theme throughout the Old Testament presented God as the king of Israelites.  The kings of Israel ruled as surrogates for God’s rule.  By declaring that Caesar was their only king, the Jewish religious leaders were denying a commitment to God as the highest authority.  More importantly for us, they were replacing God with the government of Caesar.  We must be careful not to make the same mistake: the mistake of allowing ourselves to think that the government can bring us salvation from whatever problems we believe are overwhelming.  We have just come off of an election where too many Christians put their hope for the future in voting, and thus in the government, when they should be putting their hope in 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 17-18.

A few weeks back I heard a sermon where the preacher said that our prayers should primarily be for our fellow believers.  I am really oversimplifying what he said here because he did not say that we should not pray for unbelievers (his point was not that we should pray for unbelievers less than we do, but that we should pray for believers much more than we do).  He based saying that on the fact that most of the prayers mentioned in the Bible are for believers (a large percentage of the prayers mentioned in the Bible are in Paul’s letters).  I fully agreed with everything that preacher said in that sermon, except his emphasis on focusing our prayers on believers (I didn’t exactly disagree, I just wasn’t sure that he was correct).  Which brings me to today’s passage.  In His final prayer before His arrest Jesus prays for His disciples, both those who followed Him during His ministry and those who followed Him based on the testimony of those who followed Him.

Jesus identifies those for whom He is praying by saying that they accepted the words from the Father which Jesus had given to them.  He prays that the Father protect them, but not by taking them out of the world, or even protecting them from the world.  Rather Jesus prays that God the Father will protect us (yes, those of us today who call upon His name are among those for whom He was praying) from the evil one.  We have been sent into the world by Jesus, but we are not to be of the world.  Jesus prayed that all believers would be brought to complete unity.  That unity should lead us to live our lives so that the world would know that He was sent by God.  I struggle with this because there are those who use Jesus’ call for unity among believers to interfere with rooting out of false teaching.

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.

In today’s passage Jesus tells His disciples, and us, that those who love Him will keep His commands.  He sums up all of His commands in telling us to love each other as He loved us, reminding us that He died for us (I use the past tense here because John wrote this after Jesus’ death, and is clearly referencing that death here even though at the time John was unaware to what Jesus was referring).   If we live according to Jesus’ commands, we will live in Him, and He will live in us.  That last part is what allows us to keep His commands, Jesus living in us will enable us to obey His commands.  That reciprocal relationship between obeying Christ’s commands and Christ living within us can be the hardest part of following Christ to understand and explain.  In order to obey Christ we must be in Him, but we must obey Christ in order to be in Him.  Only by being in Him can we bear the fruits of the Spirit, if we fail to bear the fruits of the Spirit, we will be cut off from Christ.  On the other hand, as we bear fruit, we will suffer being trimmed and pruned in order that we might bear more fruit.  Thus we should embrace what suffering we do experience as it will enable us to bear more fruit to the glory of 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 12-13.

As I read this through initially, I noticed that John connects the request from some “Greeks” to speak with Jesus to Jesus publicly predicting His coming death.  Most, if not all, of the other places where Jesus openly predicted His death were spoken privately to just His disciples.  I want to note that there is some disagreement about whether these “Greeks” were Jews who had adopted Greek culture or Gentiles.  I believe that John here is referring to Gentiles (as I understand the First Century, those who were not Romans but considered themselves cosmopolitan thought of themselves as “Greeks).  If I am correct, these would have been Gentiles who sought to worship God.  The arrival of these Greeks looking to meet Jesus which signaled to Him that the hour of His death, the time when He would be glorified, was upon Him.  And while this was the hour for the Son of Man, Jesus, to be glorified, Jesus chose to emphasize that it was really about glorifying God the Father.  So, we should live our lives such that God is glorified by our deaths.  Whether that means we die the death of a martyr, or die in our beds in a way which brings glory to God, we should strive for that.

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.

There are two things which Jesus says in today’s passage which I want to write about today.  First, He tells the Pharisees that His Father loves Him because He lays down His life, clearly stating that His crucifixion was not something forced upon Him, but something which He voluntarily experienced.  He goes on as part of that statement that God gave Him the authority to lay down His life, and to take it up again.  A little later when asked to state clearly whether or not He was the Messiah, Jesus says that the works He does in God’s name testify answer that question.  He then follows that up by saying that they do not believe because they are not His sheep, that His sheep listen to His voice and follow Him.  He gives those sheep eternal life and no one will take those sheep, those followers of His, from Him.  The Father has given those followers to Jesus and no one is able to take those followers from God.

All of this comes together to give us great hope and confidence.  Jesus did not die at the hand of the Romans, nor of the Jews: Jesus died because He laid down His life as a sacrifice for our sins. But He did not do so as a suicide, not even as a “suicide by cop” (or in this case by judicial execution).  No God, the Father, had given Him the authority to lay down His life, and to take it back up again.  The same God who has given us, if we are His followers, into His care.  Since no one and nothing is able to snatch us away from God the Father no one and nothing is able to take us away from being Jesus’ followers.  This gives us hope in the most desperate of situations, as well as confidence in those some situations.  Jesus had the authority to lay down His life, and to take it back up again.  Which allows us to know that if He asks us to lay down our lives in His service, He will also take our lives back up again to be with Him throughout eternity.  Today’s passage reminds us that suffering and death in Christ’s service is not forever.  It will be followed by an eternity of joy at His side.

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.

As I study today’s passage I see Jesus trying different ways to express the same idea while those listening to Him keep missing His point.  John has written about Jesus teaching about light before this, but starts today’s passage with Jesus telling those who followed Him that those who  follow Him will always walk in the light.  From there He goes on to say that if we do not believe that “I am he” we will die in our sins.  Jesus then returns to His theme, if we hold to His teachings we will know the truth and the truth will set us free.  Which led those listening to dispute that they needed to be freed.  Jesus answered them by saying that those who sin are slaves to sin.  Those to whom He was speaking were unwilling to accept this, revealing themselves to be more invested in a lie than in hearing the truth.  Finally we get to the account of the man born blind.  When the Pharisees questioned the man born blind about his healing they said, “We know this man is a sinner.”  To which the man born blind replied, “One thing I know, I was blind and now I see.”  The Pharisees heard what Jesus said and saw what He did, but refused to believe and so were made spiritually blind.  The man born blind had faith and thus was given sight, both physically and spiritually.

Some people say that there are many paths to God.  This is often said as a criticism/contradiction of the claim by Christians that no one can come to God except through Jesus.  I want to say that I agree that one can follow one of many different paths in order to find God…but they all lead to Jesus.  No matter what path one chooses to follow in seeking God, that path will sooner or later either lead you to Christ, or it will never lead you to God at all.

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.

So, after Jesus taught that only those who ate His flesh and drank His blood would have eternal life, many of His disciples had trouble accepting His teaching.  When Jesus heard their complaints He further clarified His teaching on this subject.  Which led many of His disciples to leave off from following Him.  So, what was it about Jesus’ follow-up which was the point of no return for so many of those who had followed Him up until then?  It was when He said that the flesh counts for nothing.  At this point they realized that following Jesus was not going to get them a “place” in the power structure of this world.  Jesus was neither going to lead a revolt to overthrow the Romans, nor was He angling for a “place at the table” within the existing power structure.  When Jesus asked the Twelve if they wanted to leave as well, Peter answered for them, revealing that he, and the rest of the Twelve (well, perhaps not Judas Iscariot), understood and accepted this.  Peter and the others realized that what Jesus was teaching was much more important than overthrowing the existing power structure, or finding a place within it.

There is truth in what I wrote above, so I am going to leave it in, but it does not capture the thoughts I was going for when I began to write.  As a result, I am going to discuss the other thought I had about this passage.  When Jesus talks about our need to eat His flesh and drink His blood, He is talking about our need to re-imagine the pyramid of needs.  The pyramid of needs has food and water as our most basic needs: the needs that people must satisfy to some minimum level before they will seek to meet any other need.  Jesus was telling us that He fulfills our most basic need, even before physical food and water.  This is a difficult thing for us to accept, and we can only do so if God draws us to Him.  In fact, part of what makes it so difficult is that we can in no way satisfy that need by our own actions.  We must accept that our most basic need is satisfied only because God offers it to 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 4-5.

Usually when we think about the Samaritan woman at the well we do not actually think about her.  We think about the fact that she was a Samaritan, and the issues with a Jew, especially a religious Jew, talking with a Samaritan.  Or, we think about the fact that she was a woman, and the issues with a religious Jewish man talking to a woman who was not his wife or his mother.  And sometimes we think about the fact that she was a Samaritan woman, and how that made combination exacerbated the two problems.  We do not think about the fact that the people of that town would have considered her a woman of low moral character; she had had five husbands and now was not married to the man she was living with.  The context makes it likely that at least several of her marriages had ended in some way other than the death of her husband.  Yet, this was the woman to whom Jesus chose to preach the Gospel in order to reach the people of her town.  More importantly, she was the right person to whom to preach the Gospel in order to reach the people of her town.  Of course, what makes this even more amazing, and more of a lesson for us, Jesus did not talk to her in order to preach the Gospel to the town.  He didn’t even talk to her in order to preach the Gospel to her.  No, both of those things happened because of what she said to Him and how He just replied with what came naturally to Him.  Jesus reached this town of Samaritans with the Gospel because He talked to a stranger who could do nothing for Him except damage His reputation.  The lesson on how to preach the Gospel: talk to strangers about every day things.

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.

When Jesus was talking with Nicodemus He said that God had sent His Son into the world to save the world, not to condemn the world.  That whoever believes in the Son is not condemned, but those who do not believe in Him are condemned.  Which brings us to what I want to write about today.  Jesus tells us that the verdict by which they were condemned was that Light had come into the world, but people preferred darkness to light.  Those who do evil hate the light , want to stay out of the light, because they know that the light will expose their deeds.  On the other hand, those who seek the truth and to live by the truth, come into the light so that they do can be seen.  They want everyone to see that they are not afraid for their actions to be seen by God.  This fits in with Luke’s reports of Jesus saying that everything which is hidden will be revealed.  All of this leads me to the understanding that if we wish to not be condemned we need to be willing to have our actions exposed to the light.  Not because we have lived perfect lives, but because we are willing to be held accountable for our sins and our mistakes.  We need to be willing to stand before God and man and acknowledge that we are broken sinful people who need forgiveness from God and our fellow man.  We need God to transform us so that we do not continue to sin, and we need the help of those around us to live as God’s Spirit directs.

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

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

Pilate tried to find a way to avoid ordering Jesus’ crucifixion because he did not believe him guilty of any crime deserving of crucifixion.  We can see that he became frustrated at Jesus’ refusal to make any arguments in His own defense.  Jesus’ response to Pilate is something we should bear in mind if and when we find ourselves facing government persecution for following our faith in Him: Pilate only had power over Jesus because it had been given him from above.  In the same way, the government only has powers over those who serve Jesus if God gives it to them.  I will also note that Jesus did not tell Pilate that he was not guilty for ordering the execution of One he knew to be innocent of the crimes with which He was charged.

When Mary Magdalene first saw the empty tomb, it must have been a real gut-punch for her.  She was already grieving the horrible death of someone she had loved, now she couldn’t even get closure by finishing the preparation of his body for burial.  Peter probably also felt even worse when he found the empty tomb, but for different reasons.  On one hand, perhaps someone had stolen to body for who knows what nefarious purpose.  On the other hand, perhaps Jesus had risen, after Peter had betrayed Him by denying that he knew Him.  Then came the joy!  For Mary it came quickly.  Jesus appeared to her and she realized that He had risen.  I want to take a moment to emphasize that John tells us here that a woman was the first witness to Jesus rising from the dead, and the first to believe that He had risen.  Once again, God did not first reveal Himself to those the world considered important.  If John was making this story up, why wasn’t the first to see the risen Jesus one of the male disciples?  OK, back to my main point here.  It took a lot longer for Peter to feel the joy of Jesus’ resurrection, because he had to deal with the fact that he had denied Jesus at the critical moment.  And yet the joy he must have felt when he realized that Jesus asked him three times if he loved Him for a reason.  Jesus gave Peter the opportunity to declare his love once for each of the time he denied Him.

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