When a church must rely on the power of force or compulsion
to insure its own preservation, it has lost sight of any truth it may have once
known. The God of both Old and New
Testaments has never compelled mankind to love and serve Him, for it is
impossible to “force” love. Love must
always be a choice if it is to be love.
Our God of love “chose” to save us, and take on our punishment in order
to redeem us. Our God offers us the
“choice” of being saved from the pain we inflict on ourselves and others. Our God longs to save us from the fate of
death that inevitably accompanies the evil we embrace. But He does not force us to make this choice. He cannot.
He can only offer. We are free to
accept or reject. It is our freedom to
choose hate and death; that makes it a true choice when we pick love and
life.
It was this same freedom that allowed Lucifer to break trust
with God, and choose to pursue his own wisdom instead of God’s; and evil which
had never been known, was born into the universe. Up until that time, Lucifer had chosen to
follow God and trust in God as had every other sentient being in the
universe. But up to that time the choice
was natural and logical. No one had ever
put themselves or their own wisdom ahead of God’s. No one had ever challenged love or its
motives. No one had ever looked to
themselves as a source of wisdom that might match or rival God’s; until Lucifer
made that choice. He broke trust with
God, and decided to follow self, and the negative spiral that ensued defines
the evil that now lies in the hearts of the Pharisees, who lead the church of
His day.
But the doctrine of Satan is nothing like the doctrines of
God. Where God would offer us a choice
to be free from self, Satan would gladly compel us to serve self with an
addiction we are unable to break. Satan
is uninterested in freedom, but keenly happy to enslave any who even briefly
look away from God. The doctrine of
Satan is most happy when it is able to compel others to submit to its authority. It is happier still when it can compel truth
to be silent, mix it with error, and present it as the “will” of God. The Pharisees had abandoned truth for power,
and in so doing were now doing the will of the father of evil. The doctrine that would compel the conscious
of others is authored and preserved by Satan himself. When a church adopts compulsion, it adopts
with it, Satanic doctrine from which it will be powerless to escape. Power and control have a high allure to
unconverted minds that know not what it means to truly love. This was the lot of the Pharisees in the days
of Christ, this was the path they had chosen.
I wonder, if the Catholic and Protestant churches of today, that claim
the name of Christ, would also be willing to completely abandon the power and
influence they seek to exert in the halls of governments around the world,
opting instead to offer only truth and love to all who have need?
But Jesus was not there to compel, He was there to make an
offer of freedom to His listeners. And
Christ knew something the people there did not: He would not always be with
them. There was a limit to the time He
would be permitted to spend with them.
His offer to them bore a sense of immediacy. He had a sense of urgency. There was a real need, that required a real
solution, and it required it now. To
those sent to take Him, Jesus responds in verse 33 … “Then said Jesus unto
them, Yet a little while am I with you, and then I go unto him that sent me. [verse
34] Ye shall seek me, and shall not find me: and where I am, thither ye cannot
come.” God longs to be with mankind, His
creation. Love longs to be with its
object. Every precious minute spent with
Christ, was one that Christ wanted to spend with us, and one we should have
treasured to spend with Him. The life of
Christ was not to be one that would last indefinitely with His people. His work required an end to His earthly life,
and a return to the Father who sent Him.
Once removed physically from our presence, we would be unable to follow
Him where He was going.
The offer of Christ was not that we should be saved from
evil within us, only at the last great day.
It was an offer of salvation that could begin immediately. Our pain does not delay, our cure must not
either. Christ had come to meet our need
of salvation, and meet it in the here and now.
He does not defer His offer until a last great day of judgment. He does not require us to live in the pain of
self-service the entirety of our lives, die, and only then be resurrected to
finally know the freedom from serving self that His offer truly brings. He offers it here. He offers it now. He offers that a belief in Him is able to
meet our most immediate need, it is able to end the pain we inflict on
ourselves and others in the here and now.
This is why He was so passionate with what time He had left among
us. It is why He so longed to free us,
because He saw that our need was so great.
He knew we would want to simply be with Him, for when we are in the
presence of Christ our pain is taken away.
He knew that when we seek Him, we find relief when we find Him. And He knew, that soon the punishment justice
would require would remove Him from our lives in a physical way.
Only Christ would transcend death, and be reunited to His
Father. Only Christ, being God, could be
something more than mortal. Christ knew
that even when we die, we do not escape our graves, we do not follow Him to
heaven. We sleep. If it were otherwise, His words that day may
have been different. He may have said,
fear not, when you die believing in me you will be instantly reunited with me
in heaven just after your death. Instead
He says … “where I am, thither ye cannot come”.
We are not immortal. We are not
transcendent. We do not enter the door
of death, only to re-emerge in some other higher state of being. We are dust, and to dust we return. We sleep when we die, knowing nothing. We sleep awaiting the last great day of
resurrection, and in that hope, but our consciousness ceases to exist. It is this truth that Christ knows, and His
listeners do not. Time for us, is not
without limits, at least not yet. We
have only the limits of our mortal existence in which to choose to be made free
from our pain and sin. We have only now
to choose to embrace life, and let go of the path of death that follows
trusting to self, instead of to God.
Jesus preaches with an urgency, to reach those that are listening. His would-be kidnappers are stopped in their
tracks, the urgency with which love calls to them, reaching into the innermost
parts of their hearts, causes them to completely lose track of the mission they
have been assigned.
But the leaders present at His sermon are not so moved, they
are puzzled. Beginning in verse 35 they
begin to wonder aloud where Christ might go that they could not find Him. Is He going to teach the Gentiles maybe in
some far off land? What on earth could
He mean that He is going somewhere they cannot go? This saying makes no sense to them, as once
again, they are thinking in physical terms and not in spiritual ones. This is often the case when unconverted minds
who trust not in any wisdom outside of their own, attempt to interpret
truth. When we decide it is our job to
“tell” God what truth is, we rarely get it right. What we do instead, is attempt to “tell” each
other what truth is, in no uncertain terms, and use this as a basis to form an
organized church. What Christ told His
listeners did not make sense to those who were not there to follow, but to
lead. Leaders could make no sense of
this. They had the means and power and
influence to track Christ down, no matter where He tried to run from them. But frankly to be rid of Him, was not an
unpleasant idea anyway. It was the
concept that having been rid of Him, they would only then want to actually find
Him that perplexed them. Why would they
want to find Him, after they had won?
This idea was troubling.
Time though, was growing short. The Feast was nearly over. People would be returning to their homes,
some of them may never have the chance to hear the author of truth and love
ever again. And so the urgency increases
even more, in verse 37 it states … “In the last day, that great day of the
feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto me,
and drink. [verse 38] He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out
of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. [verse 39] (But this spake he
of the Spirit, which they that believe on him should receive: for the Holy
Ghost was not yet given; because that Jesus was not yet glorified.)” Again Jesus quotes the scriptures of His day,
again Jesus ratifies that the Old Testament spoke truth despite what
misinterpretations the people of His day, or ours, had associated with it. Again Jesus speaks of “living” waters that
spring from “within” us. This is the
gift He is here to offer and His Holy Spirit will see fulfilled. We are not the source of this blessing, we
are the recipient of it. It is something
that will be placed within us, not grown there of our own deeds and
intentions. We that “believe” on Him
will see this transformation take place in our lives. We that “believe” on Him and not ourselves,
truth His wisdom and not our own, will see a river, not just a trinkle, but a
flowing river of living water flow out of us.
For it is His power, His love, and His truth that can flow through us,
when we submit ourselves out of His way.
When we submit to Christ, we can be a vessel for His Spirit; instead of
predisposed to wish credit for His actions, and fame for our part in His
service. But because Jesus was not
glorified yet, and was still with us personally, His Spirit had not yet been
poured out on His followers.
The words of Christ, like seeds on the ground, encountered a
variety of responses in the ears of His listeners. There were some who heard and did not fully
understand, but they knew His words had the ring of truth to them. Perhaps they could not fully understand them,
but they knew them to be true. These
would gladly call Him “the prophet”.
Others heard the love in Him, others knew that the source of love was in
Him like in no other man that had ever been, or would ever be. And so they gladly called Him the Messiah,
the Christ, the long awaited hope of Israel.
These were even more blessed. But
there were some, who though they were convicted He was the Messiah, could not
reconcile their own prejudices with what they knew of His background or
origin. They perceived Him to be from
Galilee and from Nazareth, not from Bethlehem of the house of David. After all, Herod had slaughtered all the male
children of Bethlehem about the time which Christ was born, no one had survived
to their knowledge, so even based on the scriptures they knew – the perceived
the facts could not line up with this Jesus being the Messiah. And verse 43 pens the painful reality of His
age, and of ours … “So there was a division among the people because of him.”
How painful it must be to Jesus our Lord, that so many
people who claim His name, are so divided from each other “because” of
Him? For He is one Lord, so why do we
divide ourselves from each other, while all still claiming our method of
following the one Lord is the only “one” He would approve of? It was not the Old Testament that was in
error in the day of Christ, nor the prophecies of His place of origin that were
mistaken, it was the understanding of the people who simply did not know, or
refused to accept, the truth of Him.
Christ was born in Bethlehem from the lineage of David, as the prophets
foretold. It was true. Whether people knew, or chose to believe it,
was the only question at issue. There
was no “real” need for division over the truth, for the truth was true, and did
fit the facts. It was us, in the
error. It was again when we applied
“our” knowledge of scripture and the facts, that “we” drew a different
conclusion and division arose. It is the
same today. We look at scripture and
attempt to teach, rather than to learn.
We apply our “knowledge” of the facts, and draw conclusions different from
each other. And we allow these differing
conclusions to become so important to us, that we separate ourselves from each
other over them. Instead of cherishing
the uniting principle and motive of love, that could supersede all other ideas
of truth; we allow our pride in our “understanding” of doctrine to keep us from
free association with fellow believers so as to keep “pure” our ideas of
doctrine, over simple love. The division
of His listeners is little different than the division of hundreds of protestant
churches who color the landscape of Christianity today.
Verse 44 continues … “And some of them would have taken him;
but no man laid hands on him.” Some of
the officers sent to take Him, now gave it careful consideration. But all in all, His passion, His love, and
His truth touched them deep in their minds and souls. The power of love in the message of truth was
so compelling, that men under orders who knew the penalty for failure, decided
they could not fulfill their mission.
Instead they return empty handed to the eagerly awaiting Pharisees, who
expected to judge Christ, condemn Him, and see Him killed in their
presence. They were to be
disappointed. When the soldiers appeared
without Him, the Pharisees demand to know why they did not bring Him? They could have lied. They could have simply told the truth that
there were so many there who did believe, it might have caused a riot to
attempt to grab Him then. The Pharisees
would have believed that answer, and likely been satisfied with it. But instead they told a different truth, the
real truth in verse 46 … “The officers answered, Never a man spake like this
man.” The power of truth in love had
reached the hearts of those sent to take Him.
To this the furious Pharisees ask … “are ye also deceived?” They add in verse 48 … “Have any of the
rulers or of the Pharisees believed on him?”
This they offered as “proof” He was not the Messiah. Since none of the church leaders of the day
had endorsed Him, He could not be the one.
As if truth and love, require the endorsement of the leadership of the
church, before they can be “truth and love”.
In verse 49, in order to further prove their point about
leadership knowing what is best, and simple parishioners not knowing that facts
they add the commentary … “But this people who knoweth not the law are cursed.” Simpletons.
These idiot guards are cursed for not knowing the truth the exalted
leadership knew. But in his account of
this incident, John did not go with allowing this unjust idea to stand. Instead it was debunked in real time. Nicodemus, a venerated leader, and one of the
Pharisees was in attendance that day.
Nicodemus, unbeknownst to any of them, had sought Christ out at night
and learned directly from Jesus the words of truth, love, and light. None of these men knew it. But Nicodemus did, and he was educated. Nicodemus then calls to their attention the
hypocrisy of claiming a curse on the uneducated guards based on the law, when
attempting to use the law to condemn a man without trial, and without even
hearing from Him? In verse 51 … “Doth
our law judge any man, before it hear him, and know what he doeth?” Salt in a wound there my friend, salt in a
wound. The stunned Pharisees hardly
could recover from this, one of their own just called them out on their
shenanigans. Now they are just plain
mad at Nicodemus for this humiliation and respond in verse 52 … “They answered
and said unto him, Art thou also of Galilee? Search, and look: for out of
Galilee ariseth no prophet. [verse 53] And every man went unto his own house.”
To the truth of the words of Nicodemus in exposing their
hypocrisy they offer further “prejudice” as proof. Asking if Nicodemus too was from Galilee
(knowing he was not), they ask him to ever disprove the notion that Galilee was
not a place from where great prophets ever came from. Of course this idea too, ignores that
Bethlehem was the place of His birth, and that He descended from the lineage of
David. But to keep this argument from
coming up, in verse 53 they take an immediate action – meeting adjourned. Better to go home disappointed they did not
get to judge Christ that night, than to have further conversations that may
reveal the truth of His heritage and origin of birth. If ever forced to confront the truth of Him,
they would be forced to admit they had no leg to stand on in regards to their
hatred of Him, other than He threatened their power over the minds of the
people. Satan HATES losing control over
his subjects. So too, do religious
leaders hate losing influence over the minds and hearts of their flocks. But truth needs no guardian. Love needs no army. The true power of the gospel is found in humility. The transformation that follows a real
encounter with Christ, cannot be stopped by edict, or any other device of
Satan. So it was in His day, and in ours
…
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