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

The part of this passage where a group of “Greeks” requested to see Jesus seems odd to me. (I am not sure if John means “Gentiles” or “Hellenized Jews” when he writes “Greeks” here, probably the latter).  So, here is what John tells us: a group of Greeks came to Philip with a request to see Jesus.  Philip takes that request to Andrew, then he and Andrew take the request to Jesus.  Then Jesus talks about how His hour has come.  We never learn if the Greeks got their audience with Jesus.  John never explains the connection between what Jesus said and the Greeks requesting to see Him.  Actually, writing that makes me wonder if perhaps my default reading that John meant Hellenized Jews is wrong.  Perhaps, the connection has to do with the idea, which I am not convinced of, that during Jesus’ earthly ministry, His message was directed solely at those who followed the Law of Moses (Jews and Samaritans*), while His death began His message being directed to all people.

In any case, the request from the Greeks to see Him triggered Jesus to declare that His hour to be glorified had come.  He begins by saying, “…unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. ”  We frequently read this as being directed at us as His followers, and we are not wrong to do so.  However, I also believe that He was saying that He had to die in order to produce followers who were transformed to be like Him by the Holy Spirit.  Now, as I said, this also applies to us as He explained in the next bit.  We must be willing to lose our life, and the things of this world which we value, in order to gain the life which God offers through Jesus.  What Jesus is saying here follows up on what I wrote about yesterday.  The members of the Sanhedrin tried to preserve what they had, and as a result, they lost it.  Jesus’ disciples (except for Judas Iscariot), on the other hand, gave up all that they desired in this world in order to obtain the life Jesus offered them.  Finally, Jesus told us that those who wish to serve Him need to follow Him.  He said this as the beginning of the week which would end with His crucifixion.  If we wish to serve Christ, we must follow Him to the cross.  We need to accept that following and serving Him may lead to us being tortured and killed, not just accept, but embrace that.  Not everyone who serves Christ will find that end, but everyone who serves Him must be willing and eager to do so.  If that day comes for me I am not sure I am able to eagerly embrace it.  I pray that God will give me the grace to do so if He leads me there.

I was going to end there, but one more thing hit me as I began to write my title for today’s blog.  Christ was lifted up, then put into the ground, and as a result He produced many seeds.  Many of His followers(those seeds) since then have died and produced even more seeds.  This reminds us that persecution of Christians in an effort to get rid of Christians is always counter-productive.  As an example, Europe was once a safe haven for those who followed Christ, and the Church in Europe has almost died.  Europe today is hostile to Christianity, yet the Church in Europe is seeing signs of growing for the first time in what is probably a century.

*Samaritans interpreted the Law of Moses differently from the Jews, but would almost certainly have claimed that temple worship was a distortion of the Law of Moses (at least, that is what I understand from what I have read about Samaritans, both in the Bible and elsewhere).

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

I have created a Patreon page for those who would like to support me in writing these blog posts every day: https://patreon.com/AttilaSoldus

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

I have loved the story of the man born blind which John recounts here.  When the Pharisees questioned the man the second time about how he was healed, they began by saying that the man needed to keep in mind as he told them how he was healed that they knew that Jesus was a sinner.  The man born blind gave a great summation of faith.  Which I will paraphrase thus, “I am not a learned man, so I can’t debate with you about whether He is a sinner.  All I know is that I was blind and now I see.”  When we look at our lives, we need to keep it simple.  When people try to make things complicated, keep it simple.  Rather than worrying about what we do not know, let us focus on what we do know.  When someone claims that Christianity is flawed because of “X”, and you do not know how to answer.  Take your time, focus on what you do know about Christ, and say, “I do not know about that.  Let me look into it and get back to you.”  Then, pray for God’s guidance, study Scripture, speak to those who have studied Scripture, and pray some more.  And do all of this humbly.  The man born blind was humble.  He admitted that he did not know whether Jesus was a sinner, but pointed out that if Jesus was not from God, He couldn’t do the things He had done.

In his wrap up of the story, John tells us that Jesus said that He had come into the world so that the blind may see and those that see become blind.  Some of the Pharisees who were present asked if that meant that they were blind.  To which Jesus replied, “If you were blind, you would not be guilty of sin; but now that you claim you can see, your guilt remains.”  The man born blind humbly admitted that he did not know and that Jesus had given him his sight.  The Pharisees arrogantly claimed that they knew, and Jesus declared that that made them blind.  It reminds me of a Christian apologist I occasionally watch videos of.  On several occasions people have asked them if such and such a person is in heaven, of is going to heaven.  He always answers that he does not know, God is the one who makes that decision and he, the apologist, does not know what that person thinks and believes (or thought and believed) in their heart. that they might be truly repentant for any terrible deeds which they committed.  He neither says that he thinks they are saved nor that they are not.  The apologist humbly admits that he only knows that he himself has declared that Jesus is Lord and repented of his sins, and thus God has forgiven him.  We are not responsible for what other people decide to do with Christ, we are just responsible for turning to Him ourselves and telling others about Him.

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

I have created a Patreon page for those who would like to support me in writing these blog posts every day: https://patreon.com/AttilaSoldus

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

I had an idea about what I was going to write about today, but as I started to write it was not coming together.  So, I read through the passage several times trying to figure out how to get it to work.  As I was doing so, I came across Jesus saying this, “Anyone who chooses to do the will of God will find out whether my teaching comes from God or whether I speak on my own.”  Notice how Jesus places this.  He does not say that if you listen to His teaching and do what He says you will be doing God’s will.  He says that if you choose to do God’s will, you will realize that Jesus’ teachings come from God.  This reminds me of what Paul writes in Romans chapter 1. There he says that people are without excuse because God’s qualities are evident from creation.  If we truly seek to do God’s will, if we truly seek to know God, we will see that what Jesus teaches is from God.  God gave us minds for a reason.  We can apply what Jesus says here to other people who claim to preach God’s word.  If they seek their own glory and to gain for themselves, they are not from God.  On the other hand, if they seek to bring glory to God, than they are speaking God’s message.  Jesus did not seek power and glory.  Instead He washed His disciples feet and sacrificed Himself for all of mankind.

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

I have created a Patreon page for those who would like to support me in writing these blog posts every day: https://patreon.com/AttilaSoldus

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

I am currently in the middle of taking a course designed to empower the entire body of the Christian Church to missions.  So, when I read what Jesus said to His disciples after speaking to the Samaritan woman at the well, it really struck me.  After saying the phrase which I used as my title today, Jesus told His disciples that He had sent them to reap, to harvest, a crop for eternal life.  Further, He tells them that He sent them to harvest the crops that another had sown.  I see this as explaining why we see the Apostles and other disciples primarily preaching the Gospel to Jews and Samaritans at the beginning of the Book of Acts, and only see a major outreach to the Gentiles after Paul’s conversion.  Jesus sent His disciples first to harvest souls for eternal life from among the Jews and Samaritans, whom others (Himself, John the Baptist, and unnamed others) had sown the good news about the kingdom of God.

The other thing which I see fortuitously is when Jesus is speaking to the royal official whose son was sick.  When the official begs Jesus to come and heal his son, Jesus replies, “Unless you people see signs and wonders, you will never believe.”  The official’s reply is essentially, “I just want my son to live.”  Jesus then heals the boy and sends the official on his way.  Note that the boy was not present and the official did not learn until he was on his way home that his son was healed.  The reason this struck me is that I have been watching videos of Christian apologists debating Muslims and one of the things which come up is that the Koran says that Mohammed did not perform miracles because previous prophets had performed signs yet people did not believe them.  Here Jesus pointed out that people refused to believe without more signs, even though He had already performed signs for them.  Yet, He healed the official’s son.  Further, at the beginning of this section of the Book of John, John told us that Jesus had already said about the area this takes place in that a prophet was without honor in his own country (which this was).  Jesus continued to perform miracles despite the overall lack of faith. 

Which leads me to a final point, which I consider related: one thing which I have struggled with is why we do not see more miracles in the modern Church.  One point I made is that maybe we do see them and fail to recognize them, or, perhaps, they are not well publicized.  Shortly after I formulated that thought and began praying that God would open my eyes to see His power miraculously displayed, while watching videos of Christian apologists, I heard Wes Huff tell the story about how he recovered from an autoimmune induced paralysis in a way which his (non-believing) doctors called miraculous (If you want more information I am sure an internet search based on those search terms will yield a video where he describes that).  Then, over this past weekend, I was watching another Christian apologist who mentioned two people who had clearly documented recoveries from disabilities in ways which modern medical science cannot explain.  Those two people were Bruce Van Natta and Marlene Klepees.  While I am confident that these will not convince those who are skeptical of the possibility of miracles, they are well enough documented to overcome my skepticism of most miracle stories (which comes from the number of charlatans who claim miraculous powers in order to profit).

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

I have created a Patreon page for those who would like to support me in writing these blog posts every day: https://patreon.com/AttilaSoldus

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

What first struck me with this passage was verses chapter 3, verses 19 through 21.  It is not clear to me whether or not these verses are part of what Jesus said to Nicodemus, or if they are the Gospel writer’s commentary.  I do not really think that it matters either way.  The key portion is actually in verse twenty where it says, “Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed.”  This explains so much of the hostility that many have for Christianity and Christ.  I think these verses build on the verses from the beginning of chapter one, in particular verse five.  There it says, “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome^[a] it.” The translators’ note there says that could also be translated as “understood”.  Today, I think the best way to understand that verse is to realize that evil can neither understand nor overcome good.  Every time I read what John writes here about Jesus being light, I think of what Jesus said in Matthew 16:18. “And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”  This passage speaks to what Jesus said there.  Light does not fear darkness.  Light does not fight against darkness.  When light is present, darkness goes away.  In the same way, as we walk closer with Christ, as we allow the Holy Spirit to transform us into His image, evil and sin disappear from our lives.  In the same way that light overcomes darkness, Christ’s Church overcomes the strongholds of wickedness and death in this world.  As the prophet Zechariah says, “Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the Lord of hosts.”  We do not overcome evil by using the tools of this world, we do not overcome evil with force, or violence.  Rather we overcome evil by God’s Spirit, and God’s Spirit overcame through the death of Jesus on the cross.  In the same way, we overcome by welcoming the suffering which comes from refusing to give into evil.  The world, the darkness, does not understand that, but it is also overcome by it.

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

I have created a Patreon page for those who would like to support me in writing these blog posts every day: https://patreon.com/AttilaSoldus