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Lucifer became Satan.
The archangel became the devil. A
universe of perfect love to others, had been corrupted into a self-absorbed,
self-focused, acquire-at-all-costs emptiness that could never be filled. To look back at the perfect peace unfallen
beings maintained, and witness the perfect love of service the unfallen beings
lived, elicits only one response in the fallen – hate. It is torture to live in self-inflicted pain
while witnessing the unbridled joy of another.
Their peace only fuels the passionate hatred of the one who will not let
his own misery go. That impossible focus
on self, only deepens the hatred for everything, when seen against the
perfection of love and service and joy that is unavoidable from living as God
ordained. So when evil encounters love,
its response must be one of two – submit to love and embrace it, or resist love
and respond in hate. As love is more
powerful than hate, it requires more determination to hate, more anger to
maintain, more energy to resist. It
requires an unrelenting choice to keep up the hate. But for one who will not trust to anyone
other than self, it is the only choice to be made despite its difficulty.
This was the reaction of the religious leadership of the
day, to the Messiah they had waited for so long to see. This was the response of the wicked and
fallen angels to the arrival of Christ, who lived His life in perfect service
and love. The only thing evil knows to
do when confronted with love, is to hate.
If one lets go of hate even momentarily one may be drawn to a love that
would not let you go, one that would free you from hate, so as never to return
to the power of its embrace. That kind
of redemptive love is what Christ introduced into our reality. And the Pharisees hated Him for it. The very redemptive love He offered to all,
even to them, was refused because it required submission, it required an
acceptance that indeed they did not know it all. They were not the final arbiters of truth,
they were witness to truth incarnate in the humble life of this servant of all. This they could not, and would not
accept. So they responded to love with
hate. The learned elders of the one true
religion, became the biggest proponents of hate in the very name of that
religion. The Pharisees would seek to
kill the author of love, rather than be remade by that love. Are we any different? Do we prefer ourselves the way we are, than
to be remade by Him and perhaps lose parts of ourselves we hold dear? Do we carry placards that espouse love that
transforms or hate that condemns?
John records the words of Christ now in chapter 15, as they
near or perhaps enter the garden of Gethsemane.
Judas is not with them as he is already leading those who intend to kill
love to their target. Time is very
short. So Christ tries to explain the
mystery of iniquity and hate to His followers so that they will not be
surprised by what they encounter. In
verse 18 He explains … “If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before
it hated you. [verse 19] If ye were of the world, the world would love his own:
but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world,
therefore the world hateth you.” Evil
hates love. When we reflect the love of
Christ to others, we should not expect to see love returned as it would be in
perfection. Rather we should expect to
see hatred, for evil struggles to the death to hold on and resist the love of
God. When we find ourselves in disfavor
with society, when we are punished for the acts of love we do on behalf of
another, when our reputations are mud for the sake of our relentless love in action
– it is because evil resists the power of God who loves.
However, when the world seems to have no problem with us;
when we present no threat to it; when we are every bit as angry, and hostile,
and judgmental as our accuser is; we can and will be loved by the world. Satan has no problem with our hateful speech,
couched in the name of God – that is a technique he pioneered for us. Our Pharisee forefathers killed God in an effort
to keep religion pure. So when we hold
our signs and placards that condemn the world for its sins, we join with Satan
in persecuting those in the deepest need of His love; so pushing them farther
from it, while carrying and maligning the name of Christ, and of
Christians. This activity brings little
condemnation from the world, because the world is steeped in evil and loves the
hypocrisy of accusing others while being every bit as guilty in our own hearts
and desires. But, by contrast, when we
love unconditionally and without reservation, to those who no-one else would
dare to love – we present a real and present threat to the kingdom of evil and
hate. It is then that we are out of
harmony with the kingdom of evil and hate, and must be “dealt with”. For if left unchecked, a love without
reservation or limitation, that is only consumed with the benefit of another,
has the power to change lives, hearts, minds, and wills and could make converts
to the kingdom of Christ. When these
converts discover the freeing power of love, the salvation Christ does to
liberate and change them from their former selves into servants equipped with
the power of transformative love – the kingdom of evil loses a soul forever to
the power of God’s love. Thus when we
love like Christ loved, we become hated quickly by the world.
Jesus continues in verse 20 … “Remember the word that I said
unto you, The servant is not greater than his lord. If they have persecuted me,
they will also persecute you; if they have kept my saying, they will keep yours
also.” When we serve God we encounter
those who have refused Him, and thus will refuse us as well. Be they church leaders at the highest levels,
or desperate sinners at the lowest rungs of society, those who refuse God and
His love, will not accept our own any better.
But those who hear the voice of the Lord, will make themselves humble
enough to hear His voice through His servants in whatever form that comes. It is not only through a preacher that the
word of God is offered. It is offered
through the mouth of the child, who can barely grasp the depth of the words
they speak. It is offered through the
mouth of the downs-syndrome-afflicted who understands love so well, but
intellect so little. It is offered
through the mouth of the sick and the dying as they face what we all fear, and
now understand what is truly important.
If we are humble enough to hear it, we can ignore the faults and
imperfections of the vessel, and instead hear only the pure word of God spoken
in love regardless of its source. It is
not the denomination, or age, or gender, or sexual orientation, or known
history of sin that either qualifies or disqualifies a person from speaking the
truth of our God – it is instead only the content of what they say, and the
love in which they say it, that either offers us the word of God, or the folly
of men. It is instead our arrogance that
predetermines “who” is qualified to speak for God, and our standards lead us to
miss His words, in favor of those that please our own ears.
Jesus continued in verse 21 … “But all these things will
they do unto you for my name's sake, because they know not him that sent me.” In the days of Christ as well as in ours,
there will be those who refuse to accept Jesus as Lord. To identify Christ as the Son of God, is to
invite persecution – either from within the church as we transfer the attention
away from traditions and self-reliance and on to Christ – or outside of the
church as we identify the real meaning of love and not the perversion of self-service the devils
offers as its poor substitute. Those who
do not know God, do not know love, and evil has only one response to love. Jesus further states in verse 22 … “If I had
not come and spoken unto them, they had not had sin: but now they have no cloke
for their sin.” In the days of the
Pharisees Christ had spoken in their presence, they bore witness to His love,
and therefore had no excuse to cloke their sin.
In our day, the love of the Lord is no less present. We do not casually live our lives in blissful
ignorance of the love of God, instead the love of God to redeem us is
constantly offered, and we must by conscious choice ignore and disregard
it. So what was true for our Pharisee
forefathers will be no less true for ourselves.
Jesus states in verse 23 … “He that hateth me hateth my
Father also.” There is no subdividing
God. There are not many pathways to
God. There are not many deities that can
legitimately claim to be God. There is
only one God. God the Father, God the
Son, and God the Holy Spirit – three who are united in purpose and one. To hate one of them, is to hate all of
them. You cannot hate one third of God,
but love another third. To love God, is
to accept God as He is. We do not get
the choice of picking and choosing which parts of God we think are real and
worth loving or not. For if Christ always
did the will of His Father, who is it we truly hate – the God who performed the
miracles, or the God who ordained them to be performed? Those who offer Buddha, or Krishna, or
Mohammed, or any other purported deity to augment the place of God, offer only
false ideologies that cannot find truth in the reality of who God is. The Father cannot be separated from the
Son. To deny the divinity of the Son, is
to deny the divinity of the Father, for it was the Father’s own voice who
proclaimed Christ as His own Son, and who empowered Christ to bend the rules of
physics to heal and create, and restore all the countless broken ones he
encountered during His life here on earth.
It is both Father AND Son who are united in the plans for our redemption
and salvation.
Jesus offers evidence again in verse 24 … “If I had not done
among them the works which none other man did, they had not had sin: but now
have they both seen and hated both me and my Father.” The miracles of Christ should have been
enough to prove His divinity. He created
food where there was none. He healed
diseases and birth defects and the demon possessed. He woke Lazarus from the grave after 4 days
of decomposition. Every act of love for
another should have been more than ample evidence of His divinity. To require more “proof” is empty words, proof
and truth were already there for those who did not refuse to see. Jesus continues in verse 25 … “But this
cometh to pass, that the word might be fulfilled that is written in their law,
They hated me without a cause.” The
rejection of Christ had been foretold.
It was even sadder still though, that this prophecy found fulfillment in
the leadership of His own religion and faith, instead of merely in the
government of Rome and the world. I
wonder if our modern Christian churches are any different. Do we too reject Christ as the author and
finisher of our salvation, choosing like Lucifer to put our trust in our own
wisdom, logic, interpretation, and will power to save us from our sins?
Jesus then tells His followers, that for them even more
evidence will be received in verse 26 He continues … “But when the Comforter is
come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth,
which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me: [verse 27] And ye
also shall bear witness, because ye have been with me from the beginning.” The Holy Spirit will come to His followers
and continue to declare in the Truth of the Father, that Jesus Christ is the
Son of God and source of our salvation.
The Holy Spirit does not disagree with the accounts of scripture, rather
He verifies them. The miracles the
disciples would perform were not of their own strength, but done in the name of
Jesus Christ, by the power of God. If
the life of Christ were a lie, if He were not our God, His name would have no
effect. We could not break the rules of
physics and modern medicine by the power of our own names, or the random name
of some mere historical figure, even if that figure was a “good man” or known
to be a “prophet”. But the name of
Christ, and the power of love of God that He embodies, has seen the impossible
become possible. To be made free from
the addiction of sin and self is in itself a miracle we will never fully
understand, for it is His work in us, and none of our own, that sees it
accomplished.
Jesus continues and wraps up this part of His communion on
the responses the disciples should expect in chapter 16 starting in verse one …
“These things have I spoken unto you, that ye should not be offended. [verse 2]
They shall put you out of the synagogues: yea, the time cometh, that whosoever
killeth you will think that he doeth God service.” The worst irony, the saddest expectation,
would be that the center of persecution would not be in the world, but within
the church. It would be those who favor
religious zealotry, over actual love for others, who would be most willing and
eager to kill in the name of God. The
Romans would hardly care less which God you worship as long as you paid your
taxes and did not attempt rebellion. In
this, Christians were wholly compliant.
But the Jews believed the introduction of the doctrine of the Messiah
having been fulfilled was the destruction of their faith, traditions, and
powerbase, thus to kill to end this “heresy” would become a top priority within
the faith. Christ explains all of this
to his disciples in advance. He explains
why they will do this in verse 3 … “And these things will they do unto you,
because they have not known the Father, nor me.”
Here the message of Christ is powerful both then and
now. Those who would hate or kill in the
name of God DO NOT KNOW GOD at all. They
neither know God the Father, or God the Son.
Those who respond to love with evil and hate, know only evil and hate. God does not kill those who disagree with
Him. If that were true Satan would
simply have never existed. Instead God
creates all with freedom to choose to trust and love or not. God does not change who He is, instead He
attempts to lure us back to Him with the power of His so great love. He does not kill us all because we sin, or
have sinned. Instead He looks to free us
from our sin, and offer us love and joy in its place. He takes pain and death away from us, and
offers us life and love instead. Those
who offer death for disobedience follow the doctrines of Satan alone, not of
our God. It is Satan who kills those who
disagree with him, or disobey him, or fall away from his cause. God attempts to redeem the lost. Satan would kill any who stray from his cause
of evil. The religious zealots of the
time of Christ who kill in the name of God, were doing so at the express desire
of Satan himself. The religious zealots
of today who espouse hate to those still caught in sin, follow the same path of
Satan, and do nothing to advance the cause of God or the redemption those
sin-sick souls are in such desperate need of.
Only love will ever reach them, hate and death will accomplish nothing.
Jesus concludes his predictions by stating one last time in
verse 4 … “But these things have I told you, that when the time shall come, ye
may remember that I told you of them. And these things I said not unto you at
the beginning, because I was with you.”
Everything He was telling them was prophetic, and true, and would help
prepare them for the future they faced.
The message is every bit as relevant for us today as it was then. When we are transformed by the love of
Christ, we will become different people than what we were. We will value different things, love
differently, want different things. When
we begin to reflect the love of Christ through us more perfectly, we will draw
the ire of the world around us. Satan
will not leave us free to love as Christ loved without making every attempt to
draw us away from Christ. He will tell
us that “we” have accomplished our spiritual awakening by our own great power
and intellect. He will do everything he
can to convince us that even our religious life is about us, our salvation
attributable to our works and will power and understanding of scripture. He will do anything he can to keep us from
focusing on Christ. We cannot expect a
life of ease as a servant of love.
Instead we can expect a life of hardship, and of perfect peace,
contentment, fulfillment, and joy. For
it is not our conditions that define our responses, it is the power of His love
within us. We will find perfection from
the work He does. We will find peace in
KNOWING that it is He who saves us from the people we once were. Our salvation is His gift to us, and the way
we love is also the result of His gifts.
Nothing can take that away, whether from within our churches, or outside
of them.
And communion was not over yet …
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