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

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Reading today’s passage I was reminded of a commentary about how John describes Jesus’ arrest in today’s passage.  The commentator made note that when Jesus told those who had come to arrest Him, “I am he,” those who had come to arrest Him drew back and fell to the ground.  The commentator said that they did so because of the power of Jesus’ supernatural presence as the Son of God.  I had never really noticed that John said that they drew back and fell to the ground.  I cannot say definitively that John does not mean to suggest what the commentator I read said about this, but it seems a more natural explanation suggests itself.  The men who came out to arrest Jesus expected to be met by a group of insurrectionists planning a revolution.  So, when Jesus presented Himself to them, they fell back as the natural reaction of a mob who all expect someone else to “throw the first punch.”  It also explains why a fight did not break out immediately after Peter used his sword.

Another thing I want to comment on.  Non-believers often suggest that John could not have written this Gospel because he was “a poor, illiterate fisherman.”  However, this passage mentions that an unnamed disciple followed after Jesus as He was taken to Annas’ house.  The passage also tells us that this unnamed disciple was known to the high priest well enough that he was allowed into the courtyard, and was able to get them to let Peter in as well.  It is generally accepted that this unnamed disciple was John.  Someone that well connected is not a “poor, illiterate fisherman.”  Rather, he is someone of consequence, or, at least, the son of someone of consequence.  This mention of John’s connection to the high priest suggests to me that John was certainly not poor, and that he had likely been taught to read and write.

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.

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Jesus tells us, “Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me.”  When we face the difficult things in this life, we should not let our hearts be troubled.  Jesus told His disciples, and, through them, us, that we know the way to where He was going.  When Thomas asked Him how they could know the way, Jesus told him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”  I was not going this direction, but as I typed that it reminded me of something very important that we need to remember.  Many people say that there are many different paths to God.  As Christians, our instinct is that they are mistaken, and we are not completely wrong in that instinct.  However, the mistake we make is forgetting that Jesus is God.  So, I can both say that there are many ways to God AND that no one comes to the Father except through Jesus.  Most of those who say that there are many ways to God mean that you do not have to believe in Jesus to get to God.  They are wrong.  But there are indeed many ways to God…all of them lead to Jesus.  So, when I say there are many ways to God, I am saying that people who genuinely seek God will find Jesus, no matter what path they start out on.  The problem is that most of the people who are seeking God by other paths started out by rejecting Jesus, by rejecting God.  Fortunately, some of those who started out rejecting Jesus are actually only rejecting the false Jesus, the idol, with which some of those who call themselves Christian have replaced the real Jesus.  I will repeat, those who genuinely seek God will find Him, will find Jesus.  We see some of that search in what Jesus’ disciples said to Him here.  They too struggled with finding God through Jesus because they kept replacing the Jesus with whom they walked with a false idea of who He was.  Jesus worked with them and brought them to actually see God in Him, to see that He was God.

A couple of times in today’s passage Jesus tells His disciples, and through them us, that if they ask anything in His name, they (and we) will receive it.  We need to understand that asking in His name means that we are asking for it to accomplish His will .  Or as James tells us, “You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on you passions.”  If we ask to spend it on our passions we are not truly asking in Jesus’ name.  On the other hand, if we ask for that which brings glory to Jesus, we will do even greater works than those which Jesus performed on this earth.  However, it won’t really be us, because it will be God doing it and whatever it is will bring glory to God, not 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 12-13.

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Ok, John writes that some Greeks who were among those who went up to worship at the feast approached Philip and requested to see Jesus.  Philip went to Andrew and the two of them went and told Jesus of this request.  I cannot for the life of me understand how that narrative connects with Jesus’ answer.  What does the fact that some Greeks who had come to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover feast have to do with Jesus saying that His hour had come?  And, when John writes that they were Greeks, does he mean that they were Greek Gentiles?  Or. just that they were Hellenized Jews?  And why did Philip go to Andrew before telling Jesus?  I mean, after all, what’s the big deal with going to Jesus and saying, “There are some Gentiles who want to meet you?”  My personal opinion, and that of most commentators, is that John was referring to Gentiles.  I would further conclude that the phrasing of their request was intended to imply that they desired to become disciples of Jesus.  Which would explain why Philip did not approach Jesus directly, but instead first went to Andrew.   What I know of first century Judaism suggests that no Jewish Rabbi would take Gentiles as disciples.  And that provides the connection to Jesus’ answer.

Jesus ended His answer to the request of the Greeks by saying that when He was lifted up He would draw all people to Himself.  Clearly, if Gentiles were starting to seek to be His disciples then the day when He would be lifted up must be at hand.  Having announced that His hour had come, Jesus told His followers that He struggled with facing the suffering and death which was about to come upon Him, but that He chose to face it because that end was what His entire ministry had been about.  John writes this to counter those who thought that Jesus’ prayer in the Garden showed that Jesus had a will contrary to the will of the Father which He submitted to the Father’s will.  Rather, John says that Jesus did not want to face pain and suffering any more than we do, but that He nevertheless chose to do so.

Which brings out another theme which John wove throughout this passage.  If we serve Jesus then we are not greater than He.  He chose to serve people by suffering and dying to bring them salvation.  We must be willing to do likewise.

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.

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Reading today’s passage I realized that we normally misread Luke 10:38-42 incorrectly as telling us that Mary was a more devout follower of Jesus than was Martha.  I am not going to go back and comment on that, but I realized that Luke does not say that.  In today’s passage it was Martha who went out to meet Jesus when word reached them that He was coming, while Mary remained at home grieving.  Further, while both Martha and Mart greeted Jesus with the same opening statement, Martha added that even after the death of her brother that God will give Jesus whatever He asks of Him.  Mary did not add that qualifier.  Martha, in her grief, reiterated her faith in Jesus.  I don’t want to make too much of this difference since when Mary heard that Jesus was calling for her she immediately rose and went to Him.  

In many ways the account of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead is a microcosm of His disciples dealing with Jesus’ death and resurrection.  When Jesus said that Lazarus would rise again, Martha understood Him to mean the resurrection of all people to face judgement.  Even after Jesus clarified to indicate that He meant now, she didn’t really get it.  We know this because when they got to the grave and Jesus told them to roll away the stone, Martha objected that by now the body would stink.  Which brings me to the reason this event took place.  John recounts this event to dispel the idea that Jesus’ resurrection was just spiritual.  Just as Lazarus rose in the body, so did Jesus physically rise from the dead.

Finally I want to touch on the reaction of the chief priests and Pharisees.  They believed that Jesus had raised Lazarus from the dead, but that did not lead them to believe in Him.  It did not even cause them to question their conclusion that Jesus was a problem to be solved.  They saw that God worked through Jesus, but their faith in God was less than their fear of the Roman government.  They valued their position of power under the Romans more than they valued doing God’s will.  Let us turn towards God rather than towards the government.

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.

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I love the story of the woman at caught in adultery.  I think it tells us something about how we should live as followers of Christ.  It tells us that we are not to condemn sinners.  However, we are to tell them to go and, from now on, sin no more.  Having said that, as I read the passage today it was clear to me that the story was not in the original Gospel of John.  If you go back and read John 7 then skip forward and start reading at verse twelve of chapter 8, you see a continuity of style which is missing from the story of the woman caught in adultery.  I believe that God intended for us to read and learn from that story, but it was not originally in the Gospel written by John.

Going on in today’s passage John uses an interesting choice of phrase.  He writes that Jesus said to “the Jews who had believed in Him, “If you abide in my word. you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”  Before I start looking into what Jesus meant there, I want to look at what John wrote.  At this point I am confident that all of Jesus’ disciples were Jews.  Yet John seems to be making a distinction between Jesus’ disciples and the Jews who believed in Him.  I think that John is saying that all of those whom Jesus was addressing here considered themselves His disciples, but not all them actually were.  This is something which crops up repeatedly in the Gospels…not everyone who proclaims themselves a disciple of Jesus truly is a disciple of His.  And I think Jesus’ answer to them when they questioned what He meant by them being set free tells us how we recognize whether we are HIs disciples, or just “Jews who had believed in Him.”  Have we allowed Jesus to free us from our slavery to sin?

That point is clarified at the end of the account of the man born blind.  After the man said to Jesus, “Lord, I believe,” and worshiped Jesus, Jesus said that He came so that those who do not see may see and that those who see may become blind.  The Pharisees who were nearby (whom I believe are some of the “Jews who believed in Him” from earlier), asked if He was saying that they were blind?  Which brings us back to how we can tell if we are the “Jews who believed in Him”, or if we are His disciples.  The men who brought the woman caught in adultery were sure that they could see what was right and what was wrong and thus sought the woman’s death.  The woman was told to go and sin no more.  The Pharisees who confronted the man born blind declared that Jesus was a sinner.  The man born blind said, “I don’t know about that.  I know one thing. I was blind, and now I see.”  I want that to be my statement.  All I know is that Christ came into my life and now I see His glory.

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.

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Today’s passage contains the justification for the Catholic teaching of transubstantiation.  Transubstantiation is the idea that when the priest blesses the bread and wine during Communion, or the Lord’s Supper, they become literally the flesh and blood of Jesus.  I think that today’s passage provides support for that idea, although I think that the Catholic Church takes it too far.  I don’t want to really go down that line.  The reason that the various controversies and disagreements over what this passage means when combined with the passages about the Lord’s Supper results from our no longer understanding what happened with sacrifices in the Ancient World, and where the meaning existed.  We view sacrifices as something given up to propitiate God, or the gods, for going against the will of the Divine.  While that was an element of those sacrifices, a greater portion of the symbolism was the community sharing a feast with the gods, or with God.  Jesus is the bread of life, He is the sacrificial feast which God has provided for us.  Unless we partake in that feast, we cannot enter into community with God’s people and with God.  So, just as previously you could not be part of the people of Israel if you did not eat the meat of the sacrifice which you brought to the various feasts prescribed for them, now you cannot be part of the people of God if you do not eat of the meat of the sacrifice which God brought to this final feast.  Or another comparison, God had sent manna down from heaven to the children of Israel while they were in the wilderness and in order to have life in the wilderness they ate the manna.  In the same way God sent Jesus down to the earth to His people today and we need to eat Jesus flesh and drink His blood in order to have eternal life.

There is a saying, “You are what you eat.”  That saying applies to this teaching by Jesus.  We need to eat Jesus’ flesh and drink His blood so that we become like unto Him.  Finally, I want to look back at what Jesus said to His disciples when they offered Him food after they found Him speaking to the Samaritan woman.  He said,  “My food is to do the will of Him who sent me and to accomplish His work.”  In the same way we symbolically eat Jesus flesh and drink His blood when we partake of the Lord’s Supper while literally eating His flesh and drinking His blood when we do His will on this earth.  

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.

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In the account of the Samaritan town where Jesus met the woman at the well John writes that many of the people from that town believed in Jesus because of the woman’s testimony.  Because they believed in Him, they asked Him to stay with them.  Then John writes that many more believe because of His word.  This tells us something about spreading the Gospel.  As we tell others about our experience with Jesus, some, perhaps even many, will come to believe in Him because of what they hear from us, but some people, many people, will not come to believe Him until they experience Him for themselves.  So, we should not be disheartened by those who do not believe when we tell them the Gospel message.  Rather, we should invite them to come and experience Him for themselves.  We should pray that Jesus walk alongside and reveal Himself to them, either through us, or through others whom they encounter.  We should pray that Jesus walk beside them and speak to them directly.  Many may believe in Jesus because of our testimony, but many more will believe when they see Him in us.

This is another one of those days where I know what I see in the passage, but I feel like I cannot get the words to fully express what is in my mind.

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.

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I am not sure what I should write about today.  Do I write about John’s introduction?  Where Jesus is the Word, the Logos, or thought of God and is light which shines into the darkness.  Or do I write about John the Baptist being the voice of one crying in the wilderness to make straight the way of the Lord?  Do I write about John the Baptist calling Jesus the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world?  Or Jesus calling His first disciples?  Or His exchange with Nathanael?  Perhaps I should write about Jesus turning water into wine, or clearing the Temple? Maybe I should write about His conversation with Nicodemus?  I started with this introduction because these are all things in today’s passage which speak to me.

When I finished writing that paragraph my screen showing the Bible passage was on the paragraph of John 3:16-21, where John comes back to his metaphor about light.  Here he writes that people loved the darkness rather than the light.  Those who do wicked things hate the light because light exposes that which they wish to keep hidden.  That takes me back to the beginning of the passage where John wrote that the light shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot overcome it.  This passage began to take on more meaning to me once I came to understand that evil is like darkness in that neither one is something in themselves.  Both darkness and evil are defined as the absence of somethin rather than as the presence of something.  Darkness is the absence of light and evil is the absence of good.  More accurately, evil is the absence of God.  And that is John’s message here when he speaks about Jesus as the light which came into the world.  Light drives out darkness, but sometimes objects in the light cast shadows.  Objects cast shadows because they obstruct the light.  In the same way, people cast shadows of evil when they obstruct God’s will.  Let us strive to become transparent to God so that we do not obstruct His will.

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