The Origin of Life (witness number seventeen) ...

Where do you come from?  Is your heritage of birth something you take pride in?  Or perhaps, is the lineage of the great patriarchs of your faith something you have grown comfortable resting within, leaning on, and somehow have come to believe their faith and accomplishments transfers in some way to you?  The Pharisees in the days of Christ had this in their Patriarch Abraham.  He was both progenitor and founding icon of the Jewish system of belief.  And thus the Pharisees took pride in their lineage; and in the comparative wisdom of their faith over the ideas of the heathen, idol-worshipping, ignorant lot of the surrounding nation states.  The Pharisees reasoned they descended from greatness, and therefore must also be great in some way.  But are we any different?

While our parentage may not trace back to Abraham, the founding icons of our various faiths are often something we take pride in.  Whether it be a particular Papal leader, or Martin Luther, or John Wesley, or Joseph Smith, or Ellen White, or Billy Graham, or Joel Osteen; often modern Christians seem to look backwards for those who performed great deeds of sacrifice, or spoke great words of inspiration, or penned great books of enlightenment.  We believe, like our spiritual Pharisee forefathers, that the actions of the founding fathers of our particular faith, transfer to us a richness of heritage that somehow allow us to share in their deeds.  But most of us, have accomplished no such similar feats of faith or inspiration.  In truth, our only connection to them, may be that we share their ideals, while falling short of their actions and examples.  The idea, that we are somehow “better” because of where we come from, is a delusion the devil is all too happy to foster within us.  For the idea lulls us into inaction, and causes us to measure our faith and “goodness” against those around us, who because they do not share our brand of Christianity, must by definition be “ignorant”.  Comparative holiness, is not holy at all.  The myth that where we come from matters was a myth Christ must now redirect.

And so in John’s gospel account, in chapter eight, in verse 37, we resume the Sermon Christ would give in dialogue with His Pharisee accusers.  Christ had already identified Himself as the origin of light, and then the origin of truth.  Now He must add to this, that He was the origin of life itself.  The Pharisees offered the idea that since they descended from Abraham, they were somehow better than those around them, not bound to any man, or to sin itself.  Their pride, and self-reliance, stemmed from a false idea of transference from their ancestry.  But Jesus could not allow this idea to stand, if they were to be saved, they must cease from looking backwards, and begin to see the source of their salvation was standing in front of them.  We must seek the origin of life, and abandon the origins of pride.  So in verse 37 Christ responds to them … “I know that ye are Abraham's seed; but ye seek to kill me, because my word hath no place in you. [verse 38] I speak that which I have seen with my Father: and ye do that which ye have seen with your father.”

Ancestry does not transfer to us, when our actions are in conflict with the source of salvation.  Abraham had been saved by faith (as pointed out in the book of Hebrews).  It was not faith in himself, that had saved Abraham, it was faith that God would save him.  This was faith the Pharisees had abandoned in their day, they were not looking to be saved by any Messiah from outside of themselves.  They did not believe they needed to be saved from themselves or from evil.  The only freedom they were looking for was from Roman oppression.  As far as spiritual matters went, they were fully comfortable that the forms of religion Abraham had given them were enough to keep them pure.  Here Christ cuts through the pretenses and articulates their supposedly hidden plans and motives – they plan to kill Him.  He then goes further and offers motive; they want to do this, because they do not want to accept the ideas or words of Christ, that they are in fact servants of sin, bound to it, and require salvation from outside of themselves.  The only response evil has for love is to kill it.  Their ancestry offers nothing to stop this.

Christ then identifies that the source of all evil began with the “father” of evil.  He contrasts the deeds of love that His Father is pleased by, with the intentions of these religious leaders to kill Him, in order to maintain their wealth, power, and control over the people.  Those actions trace to a source far earlier than Abraham, they trace back to Lucifer.  When once Lucifer chose to break trust with God, and pursue a course of self instead of service, evil was born into him, and into the universe.  The choice not to love was at the heart of evil itself.  And the addictive, degenerative nature of evil, spiraled Lucifer out of control, until Satan was the only name that fit him.  It was Satan who now stood masked within the crowds standing in that temple.  He strongly influenced the minds of religious leaders, who refused to accept the love standing in front of them, and instead only fueled their hatred as a response.  Their actions were not the heritage of one saved by faith, but instead the heritage of one steeped in evil.

In verse 39 they repeat to Jesus … “They answered and said unto him, Abraham is our father. …”  This was all they had to offer to Christ who only seconds before had revealed plans and motives they thought were completely hidden to Him and the crowd.  The best defense they could muster.  But then, often when we are caught in our sin, when our true motives are revealed publicly to our surprise, we have little to say.  It takes our minds time, to find a lie that might cover our sins, or make us appear less evil than we truly are.  But as Christ was speaking truth, he needed no time to think to continue; and so he responds continuing in verse 39 … “Jesus saith unto them, If ye were Abraham's children, ye would do the works of Abraham. [verse 40] But now ye seek to kill me, a man that hath told you the truth, which I have heard of God: this did not Abraham. [verse 41] Ye do the deeds of your father.”  Ouch.  The source of their intent to murder Christ could not be traced back to Abraham in any way.  All those present knew that Abraham was not a murderer.

The beauty of the truth Christ had offered them came from His Father.  The beauty of salvation, the offer of love, the chance to be “made free” from sin by Him, the Truth, and the Light, was something Christ brought to them in concert with His Father.  He contrasts His own record of action and love with what they intend and again points out that only the devil is the author of this kind of behavior.  At this revelation, they forget for a moment that they do not to accept that Christ descended from God the Father.  They fully understood what He was pointing out, and they were not going to sit still for it.  So instead they too want to claim God as their father continuing in verse 41 … “Then said they to him, We be not born of fornication; we have one Father, even God.”  Again they introduce ideas of their own about how holiness is achieved.  They claim that since their parents were married, and committed no sin in the origin of their birth, they are somehow pure and descend from God the Father.  This was a not too subtle dig at the idea that Mary was pregnant before she and Joseph were married.  In effect, they are calling Christ’s birth into ill repute compared with their own.  They continue to ignore the revelation that they intend to kill Christ, and that this alone could not be reconciled with the God of love.

In verse 42 Jesus responds … “Jesus said unto them, If God were your Father, ye would love me: for I proceeded forth and came from God; neither came I of myself, but he sent me.”  Notice that Jesus does not respond defensively to the slight about His own birth.  But instead restates that His birth was orchestrated by God the Father.  He was not here by chance, but by design.  And He further reveals that “love” is the hallmark of descending from His Father.  For His Father is the Father of love.  I wonder how often the reputation of modern Christians is associated with a people who are known first and foremost for the love they show to the world around them.  More often, the association that springs to mind when contemplating modern Christianity is one of judgment, condemnation, and a propensity to “defend” our moral rights with the full force of the power of the state to compel by law.  Perhaps we too have lost sight, of what the hallmark of following our God reveals most within us.  If we too descend from God, we would “love” and not judge or condemn.

In verse 43 Jesus continues … “Why do ye not understand my speech? even because ye cannot hear my word.”  When we walk away from Christ, when we look to self, and our heritage to save us, instead of to the source of Light and Truth, we become unable to perceive truth even when it is right in front of us.  This was the state of the Pharisees that day.  Is it also the state of our faith today?  Have we too decided to look into the mirror to find relief from sin, and a source of truth and light?   Jesus continues in verse 44 … “Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it. [verse 45] And because I tell you the truth, ye believe me not.”  When we look to self, we embrace the path of Satan.  It is self-gratification that lies behind every deed of depravity and evil.  It is the quest to please self, that can embrace the idea, that we could take from others if we believe it is something we need.  It is the embrace of self, that would allow us to rationalize that if we need to kill another to take what we deserve, or defend what is ours, that these actions are acceptable.  And to cover our deeds, both to others, and to ourselves, we embrace the lies we tell ourselves.  The path of Satan rejects truth, because it prefers a lie.  A lie feels better than a revelation of the evil of “who” we are.  Darkness for our deeds is better than light that shows them for what they really look like, and who they hurt as we commit them.  This was the contrast the savior was laying out for the men who were on that day refusing to see Light, or hear truth.

In verse 46 Jesus continued … “Which of you convinceth me of sin? And if I say the truth, why do ye not believe me? [verse 47] He that is of God heareth God's words: ye therefore hear them not, because ye are not of God.”  Here Christ challenges them to prove that anything He has said or done is something that is sin.  This is particularly poignant since one of the supposed crimes Christ committed was to restore a lame man to complete health on the Sabbath day.  Despite their dislike of this action, none of the educated men of the law, were able to prove this act of love was in any way wrong.  Jesus then asserts a logical conclusion, if He is speaking the truth (otherwise they could prove He lied and was sinful), then the fact that they refuse to hear Him and His truth, indicates “who” they can truly trace their origins back to.  Those who look to God, hear God; those who look away do not.

This infuriated the Pharisee accusers who stood in that crowd.  They would now question his Jewish purity by calling Him a Samaritan, and take it further to say He was completely crazy, perhaps possessed by a devil as in verse 48 they retort … “Then answered the Jews, and said unto him, Say we not well that thou art a Samaritan, and hast a devil?”  My guess is the Samaritan reference was based on His known interactions with the Samaritan woman and her village, as well as the fact that Christ was raised in Nazareth (where no good thing had ever come from).  Again the Jews are attempting to say that His origin makes Him unfit to be the Messiah.  They ignore their own intentions and motives, and instead try to cast focus on the qualities of Christ they believe make Him unfit by comparison.  How often do we modern Christians when caught in our sins, try to cast the blame on others who either joined us in our sins, or committed “worse” ones that we are aware of.  We do nothing to accept our own condition, and instead try to rationalize that we are still better than some other folks we know.  Comparative holiness is not holiness at all.

Jesus simply responded in verse 49 … “Jesus answered, I have not a devil; but I honour my Father, and ye do dishonour me. [verse 50] And I seek not mine own glory: there is one that seeketh and judgeth.”  Ouch.  Did you hear that modern Christians, and the guy who stares back at me in the mirror; there is “one” that seeketh and judgeth – It is not Christ that does that – it is the father they serve – Satan.  When Christians are known more for their judgment than their love, it is not Christ they truly serve, but His enemy instead.  The hallmark of those who follow the God of love, is that they love, without precondition or restraint.  The hallmark of those who demand justice, and seek to judge, is of the enemy of love, not its author.  Forgiveness after all, is an expression of continued love, in the face of wrong doing and pain and hurt.  This is the response our God offers our slights, our misdeeds, and our actions that cause Him and everyone pain as we try to serve self.  He does not judge, He is bent on redemption and salvation and reform and freedom from this condition.  Sin condemns itself.  It needs no help from God on this matter.  It is Satan who demands we “pay” for what we have done, and continue to do.  It is Satan who relishes when we spend our time focused on the sin of others, rather than on how to love them back to Christ.  The lesson of the rebuke of Christ to the religious leaders of His day, is NO less relevant to us today.

But in a last plea to those who hate Him, despise Him, and are bent on killing Him; Christ reveals one more truth to them regarding origins.  He reveals that life itself originates within Him.  In verse 51 He continues … “Verily, verily, I say unto you, If a man keep my saying, he shall never see death.”  Christ is not talking about the mortal death that comes with age or misfortune.  He is referring to the only death that matters, the second death, the death that results in eternal non-existence.  Those who followed Him that day all died and sleep in their graves.  But sleep lasts but an instant for those engaged in it.  When they awake to the resurrection of the righteous, they will sleep no more the sleep of death.  Those however, who refuse the offer of redemption and salvation, will awake only to see the result of their choices played out for a short time.  They will then taste of the eternal death in the lake of fire until finally death itself is consumed there.  This second death is the only one that truly matters, for from its grasp there will be no escape, or additional resurrection.  It is the eternal sleep of the second death that Christ is here referring to.  It is that death that those who believe on Him will never taste.  For Christ reveals here, he is the origin of our life.

The listening Pharisees however, did not see this larger view.  They thought only that Christ was making an offer of immediate immortality, and believed now for sure they had Him.  In verse 52 they answer … “Then said the Jews unto him, Now we know that thou hast a devil. Abraham is dead, and the prophets; and thou sayest, If a man keep my saying, he shall never taste of death. [verse 53] Art thou greater than our father Abraham, which is dead? and the prophets are dead: whom makest thou thyself?”  This was an attempt to get the other people listening, to see Christ as having an ego the size of the great outdoors.  If they could get the people to believe this was pride talking, they could win the debate.  Human mortality was something they were certain of, the idea of a second death never crossed their minds, nor did the concept that God being the author of all life, could restore that which evil had taken away.

To their attempts at associating Him with pride Jesus responds in verse 54 … “Jesus answered, If I honour myself, my honour is nothing: it is my Father that honoureth me; of whom ye say, that he is your God: [verse 55] Yet ye have not known him; but I know him: and if I should say, I know him not, I shall be a liar like unto you: but I know him, and keep his saying.”  Christ is not here to seek glory for Himself, but for His Father.  It is the revelation of the love of God the Father that glorifies Him.  If those who stood accusing Christ, truly knew the love of God His Father, they would have rejoiced at the offers of love Christ was extending to them and to all who would choose to believe.  But the proof is in the pudding as they say, those accusers were all too happy to lie to themselves and to those around them about where the origins of Christ were. 

The learned men in front of Him, had studied Abraham well, and were familiar with the stories of sojourning, looking for the promised land.  They knew of his trip to Egypt and the miraculous way in which God restored Sarah back to him from the grasp of the Pharoah.  They knew of the miraculous birth of Isaac when both parents were long thought to be beyond the ability to conceive.  They knew of the visit by God and his two angels on the way to survey the evil of Sodom, and the deal which Abraham proposed to God to spare the city if only 10 righteous people could be found in it.  Jesus now appeals to their study as he further states in verse 56 … “Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day: and he saw it, and was glad.”

Christ is here referring to the visit He paid Abraham while traveling to survey the city of Sodom.  It was to Abraham’s great joy that He was able to spend time with His God, face to face, attempting to serve a meal to His honored guests.  Christ here reveals it was Him who Abraham met with on that day, and with Him that Abraham tried to negotiate a deal around Sodom.  But His accusers could not accept this idea either.  Human logic dictates that Christ is nowhere near old enough to have met Abraham.  They counter Him in verse 57 saying … “Then said the Jews unto him, Thou art not yet fifty years old, and hast thou seen Abraham?”  They expected this would end the argument in their favor.  First they believed Christ was boasting about being able to offer life to those who would believe on Him.  Then they thought they had Him, on claiming to have seen Abraham.  For sure they had proven to the crowd that Christ was a mad man at the least.  They never imagined the response that would follow.  To quote the words offered Moses when He asked for the name of God to reveal to the Israelites who would want to know who sent him to them, Jesus now applies to Himself.

In verse 58 He exclaims … “Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am.”  Only God had ever uttered these words.  Only God could legitimately state them, as only He would be our creator, the author of the life given to us as a gift.  Being the “I am” was a term that could ONLY be associated with God.  And the response of evil in the face of love, was to kill it.  The Pharisees would not hear this idea, and in a fruitless effort to silence the truth, they took up stones to stone Him with.  Had it been the appointed time of His sacrifice, they might have succeeded.  Surely the devil longed to see God’s creations reject His offers of salvation, and take up stones to kill their very creator.  It would be the ultimate irony to have the objects of so great love, kill that love as a response.  But the time was not yet.  And so Jesus hid himself from them and left the temple, passing right through the midst of them.  John does not omit this detail, because again, it is a miracle that the mob was unable to kill Him.  It is beyond the realm of human possibility that He could have passed right through the middle of a mob bent on stoning Him, without so much as a pebble being cast His way.  His offer of light, of truth that changes who we are, of life that has no end and of love to His accusers was rejected again.  But love is never too busy to notice one in need …

 

The Origin of Truth (witness number sixteen) ...

When we choose to remain blind to the truth, the truth we will never see.  In our last account of the sermon of Christ to those in the treasury of the temple, Jesus had revealed Himself as the origin of light.  Those who submit their lives to His light will be made able to see.  But those who shut their eyes, or turn away from the Light, will find only darkness.  It is hard to find truth in the dark.  So it was that the Pharisees who had chosen to reject Christ as the Messiah, and discard the witness to His divinity, had chosen to walk away from the Light, and away from the truth.  The scriptures themselves are not the source of Light, they are a vehicle to reveal God, who alone is the source of Light and Truth.  The Pharisees had put their trust in their own wisdom, and in their own ideas about the interpretation of scripture.  But instead of leading them to the true Messiah, they used scriptural interpretation to vaunt up pride, and boost self-sufficiency.  They did not see their need.  But Christ did.  He knew the painful consequences they would face, from choosing to remain in darkness while opportunity was right in front of them, still offering them a way to the Light.

And so in verse 21 of John’s gospel account in chapter eight, Jesus warns His prideful accusers … “Then said Jesus again unto them, I go my way, and ye shall seek me, and shall die in your sins: whither I go, ye cannot come.”  Christ would be returning the side of His Father, God.  The perfection of Christ would allow Him to return into the perfection of the source of all love, without regret, or fear, or the revealing of evil within Himself.  The Pharisees who were present would be unable to do this.  Not simply because they were mortal and would sleep until a final resurrection, but because even when returned to life, the evil within them would still be in control of “who” they were.  They would die in their sins.  Seeking after another Messiah who would not come, as only one would ever exist; the Pharisees looked in the mirror for truth and salvation and would never find it there.  Only by looking to the light would they finally see.  Only by putting their own ideas of wisdom and scriptural interpretation on the altar of humility, would they finally allow themselves to embrace the truth of the Messiah, and the vehicle to their salvation.  As we follow Christ, we are changed by Him.  We are made pure, we do not simply evolve that way.  Nor do we find perfection by the strength of our will, our knowledge, or our beliefs and intentions.  We find perfection or the complete removal of evil from within us, by submission to Christ, and in no other way.

The Pharisees though, missed the warning of remaining in sin, because they had rejected the only source that could externally change them, and remove the sin from them.  Again they focused on the idea that Christ would somehow elude them to a place they could not follow.  A perplexing concept.  And so in verse 22 they ponder to each other … “Then said the Jews, Will he kill himself? because he saith, Whither I go, ye cannot come.”  The only place Christ could conceivably escape them was in the grave, for that was the one place none of them would dare to venture to find Him.  Perhaps even more perplexing was the idea that they would want to find Him at all.  At present, they would have been all too happy to be rid of Him completely.  If Christ had decided to move to China, they would have been happy to pack His bags and send Him on His way.

But Christ was not done focusing on origins, in verse 23 He answers … “And he said unto them, Ye are from beneath; I am from above: ye are of this world; I am not of this world. [verse 24] I said therefore unto you, that ye shall die in your sins: for if ye believe not that I am he, ye shall die in your sins.”  First, in the history of mankind, not a single soul has ever reached perfection through their own strength.  The mechanism for salvation has always, and will always be, a full submission to God.  This was a secret Enoch had discovered.  To be human, is to be born into a condition our first parents embraced for us, a native propensity to serve self, the very nature of evil itself.  It is naturally a part of who we are.  Therefore, salvation must come from outside of ourselves.  Perfection must come from a source not within us, but external to us.  We must be made perfect; we will not achieve it any other way.  Christ states to His errant religious leaders, that only a belief in Him, and His longing to save them, will ever see them saved from themselves.  This is not a threat.  This is not a punishment.  This is a statement of fact, and an offer of love.  Even now, He longs to see them saved.  Even now, the very ones intent on killing Him, are the ones He is reaching out to.  He is warning them of the natural results of the choices they are making.  But His warning is not full of condemnation, and absent all hope, it is still a chance to change, a chance to turn away from self, and turn towards the source of all salvation.

The offer of Christ to the Pharisees, and the warning of us dying in our sins, is no less relevant today.  It is NOT the wish of Christ or His Father that any of us should perish.  But He cannot compel us to choose Him, or to choose to love.  He can offer to remake us, but we must accept that offer if we are to see ourselves remade.  Our belief in the truth of the written word is NOT enough to save us, any more than it was for the Pharisees who stood before Him still attempting to accuse Him and using the Word to do it.  The scriptures were no less true then, than they are now.  But their minds were clouded by their pride and their arrogance in their interpretations of the written word.  And they chose to reject Christ, while still clinging to the written word that pointed unmistakably right at Christ.  We are at no less risk.  There is a reason why there are hundreds of different Christian denominations and interpretations of the same written words.  It is because we have allowed ourselves to believe only our own ideas of the Bible are the right ones, to the exclusion of all others.  We build walls between ourselves based on the differences we see in the same written words.  And so in the process, we forget, that ALL the words point us back to Christ, not deeper into the book.  Christ is the central point of scripture, not just more scripture.  And for both the Pharisees and us, we must let go our ideas of truth, and find truth were it lives, above us, from the source of truth, Christ alone.  Only then can the written words reveal the truth, and what we will find in them is only more about Christ.

In verse 25 the Pharisees challenge Jesus to ask “who” does He think He is, as they say … “Then said they unto him, Who art thou? …”  What makes you think you can do for us, what you point out, that we have been unable to do for ourselves?  Verse 25 continues … “… And Jesus saith unto them, Even the same that I said unto you from the beginning. [verse 26] I have many things to say and to judge of you: but he that sent me is true; and I speak to the world those things which I have heard of him.”  Here Christ reminds them, that He has not changed His position on “who” he is.  He is the same Messiah He has always been.  But far more important than that, He is speaking the truth to those who are listening, the same truth He learned from the side of His Father who is from above.  Here again, Christ is revealing the mind and will and motives of His Father, the God of the universe.  He is revealing to those who will listen, the precious truth of salvation, the precious origin and offer of redemption.  All they need do is believe; all we need do, is the same.  Believe in Christ, and not in ourselves; believe in His ability and desire to remake us, and not in our own strength or abilities.  Here again is the united vision of the Godhead to save us from ourselves.

But John notes in verse 27, as it was evident to him, that the Pharisees had no idea Christ was talking about His Father God.  They refused to accept this idea, so to them they must have assumed, Christ had learned His ideas of truth from the side of His earthly father, who was obviously not present.  So to insure they do not keep with this misconception Christ makes a prophecy regarding His near future, in verse 28 He continues … “Then said Jesus unto them, When ye have lifted up the Son of man, then shall ye know that I am he, and that I do nothing of myself; but as my Father hath taught me, I speak these things. [verse 29] And he that sent me is with me: the Father hath not left me alone; for I do always those things that please him.”  Christ predicts for all to hear, that soon He will be crucified.  The term “lifted up” had that special significance.  What is more, the precious truths of redemption that flow from Him are in perfect concert with the will of the Father.  Christ is not alone, His Father is with Him, and His Father delights in the actions Christ takes.

Think of it.  The healings Christ has done, even the one on Sabbath that caused such disdain among the leaders, was an action that “pleased” God the Father.  The redemption of Mary Magdalene caught in the very act of adultery, but spared, and freed from the bondage of sin was an act that “pleased” the Father.  The feeding of the hungry, the provisions made at the wedding feast in Cana, the selection of the disciples, even of Judas himself, were all actions that “pleased” the Father.  It is not the mercy and love of Christ alone in the Godhead; it is shared equally with the Father.  Their actions are in harmony.  They are one in purpose, and one in love for us.  We are not loved by Christ, and merely tolerated by His Father.  We are actively loved by God the Father, He may even think of us as His grandbabies (as Christ is our Creator).  The actions to redeem us, and bring us home, are not just the work of Christ in isolation, they are the work of God, all three parts.  It is both Father AND Son who are pleased at the ideas of saving us from the pain and death that evil brings.  The Holy Spirit acts as the mechanism to achieve that transformation as we let Him in.  Here in this simple verse of scripture recorded by John, is a revelation of WHO GOD IS.  Here is a revelation about the mind and heart of God, both Father and Son.  This is the God we serve, the one who delights in our salvation, both physical and spiritual.

The passion of divinity flashed through Him, and His words carry fire into the hearts of His listeners.  They have seen His patience with His accusers.  Now they see that the love He bears, is shared by His Father, to the point that He would sacrifice Himself to take on their punishment and save them eternally from the pain of evil.  These are words such as they have never heard.  This is hope.  This is a reason to live.  This is something more than they have ever been offered by any man, as man could not make this offer.  Only God could.  And so in verse 30 John records the response of the great many who were in attendance … “As he spake these words, many believed on him.”  His sermon was now bearing immediate fruit.  His passion, His love, His consistent reach to save, had persuaded them.  And salvation was to be had, right there, and right then.  It was not a future promise His listeners were to cash in, it was a promise in the here and now.  They would leave that place changed by an encounter with God.  A personal encounter as if He spoke only to them.  This is a hallmark of truth.  Truth has an effect.

Now Jesus, as He ALWAYS does, acknowledges and accepts those who have only seconds ago, decided to believe in Him.  He says in verse 31 … “Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him, If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed;”  We do not have to follow Christ in person, then or now to be considered His disciples.  It is enough that we allow Him to save us just where we are, and in the condition we are in.  Our transformation starts as soon as we let it.  No need to wait.  No need to be home in heaven to get started changing, we start right here and right now.  We simply follow His words.  We simple hear Him, and let Him transform us.  We come to Christ FIRST, it is only then that our transformation into His true disciples can begin.  The Pharisees had an extensive knowledge of the word, but lacked Christ, so their knowledge did not transform them, or illuminate their vision of truth.  Had they come to Christ, their knowledge would have been deepened and they would have seen truth more clearly.  It is after we come to Christ, that the words He would then utter become relevant to us.

Christ then says in verse 32 … “And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”  Christ is the truth.  Not the Old Testament, or the New Testament, or the Law given on Mt Sinai, or the great Revelation enumerated by John and expounded on by the Prophets – ONLY Christ is “the” Truth.  Through Christ, can all those scriptures finally be understood properly, without Him they are sounding brass, and tinkling cymbals.  For it is only Christ that can “make us” free.  The Law and the Prophets do NOT make us free.  The Bible does not “make us” free from sin, or our slavery to serve self.  The written word does not have the power to transform, only to reveal us for who we really are.  But Christ, the origin of truth, the shared source of truth with His Father God, CAN actually MAKE US free.  It is a work only He can do, and only as we let Him.  It was not the interpretation of the Pharisees of the written words that would liberate them from their pride, but it could be Christ if they let Him.  It will not be our doctrinal differences that define our denominations that will “make us” any more free than were those Pharisees in the days of Christ.  It is Christ alone that can “make us” free.  Our freedom is not some sort of hidden discovery, or achievable work ethic, or something we can earn for ourselves.  It is something that happens TO us, that is done BY Christ, FOR us.  We are “made” free, and find freedom from sin in no other way.  This is the central tenant of the gospel and the entire point of the Bible.  This is the definition of our Salvation, and first truth Christ reveals to His new followers.

Come to Christ, find truth in Him, and be made free.  But the freedom Christ was offering from slavery to self was not something his accusers would choose to comprehend.  They interpreted His words to be related to physical slavery of the poor to the rich, or the weak to the powerful.  Since they were not bound to the superstitions of the idolatrous nations around them, and wealthy enough never to have tasted the servitude of debtors, or even the enslavement of Rome itself; they looked to their heritage as a mark of their freedom.  They responded in verse 33 … “They answered him, We be Abraham's seed, and were never in bondage to any man: how sayest thou, Ye shall be made free?”  Their pride was revealed again.  They took their ancestry as a sign of their spiritual prowess, and their apparent lack of bondage to other men at the moment, as plain reasons they did not need to be “made” free.  How dangerously like us.  We look to our “Christianity” and our study of the word, and decide we are better than those around us, and do not need to “made” free from anything including our sin.  We will simply stop sinning, when we choose to, or when we get around to it, or at some distant point in our future after we have had a little fun.

But Christ was not talking about being bound to another man, or governmental power, He was talking about our slavery to sin.  So in verse 34 He answers … “Jesus answered them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin.”  There it is in a nutshell.  The nature of evil is addiction we are unable to control.  When once embraced, evil takes us over, and we are NOT free to remove it from ourselves.  Adam and Eve created in perfection were unable to rid themselves of it.  Lucifer who spent eons in the perfection of eternity was unable to rid himself from it, when once he chose to forsake the wisdom of God, and trust instead to himself.  Evil is degenerative.  Evil is addictive.  Evil removes control from self, and makes self the only God worth serving.  It results in an empty meaningless existence that offers nothing but pain, and death.  Only death can stop the degeneration,  unless redemption halts the process.  To commit sin, is evidence, that control is ALREADY gone.  This is why Truth must “make us” free.

Christ continued in verse 35 … “And the servant abideth not in the house for ever: but the Son abideth ever. [verse 36] If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.”  Here Christ makes an analogy their culture could understand.  A slave or servant was not the same kind of family member or friend as the Son was.  Servants were not always welcome in the home.  But family was.  Here is Christ saying, let me free you from your servitude to sin.  Let me make you over again, and remove from you, what you cannot remove from yourself.  When the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed.  We do not trade the slavery to self, for slavery to Christ.  When once the slavery of evil is removed, we are then free to love others.  To love others is our choice, not our requirement, it becomes natural to us, instead of foreign to us.  We become in harmony with the law of God, instead of constantly rebelling against it.  Our choice to love, literally liberates us from the need for laws of restriction.  Our freedom to do rightly, and to love fully, make us fit citizens of a perfect culture and government where the need for laws regarding limits to the service of self, are simply a thing of the past.  Evil requires restriction, love does not.  It is this kind of freedom ONLY the Son can offer us.

Christ is the origin of truth.  He is the origin of Light.  In His Light we can finally see His Truth.  When we see, and we embrace, we find He is next the origin of even something more …

 

What is Perfection ...

Could one define perfection as the complete acquisition of everything one desires?  Or rather is the pursuit of what is desired considered perfection?  Even under these possible definitions, perfection is elusive at best, impossible at worst, and its attainment seems always just out of reach.  Given the state of the world around us, we hardly consider the attainment of perfection as plausible and consequently each of us learns to settle for a degree of mediocrity we are comfortable with.  We do not expect perfection in our relationships as we know we bring none to the table.  We do not measure ourselves against the standards of spiritual perfection, as for so long we have made abysmal failures of that quest.  So perhaps it is difficult for a finite mind to imagine a perfection it has never seen.  It must be a matter of imagination as none of us seems to be able to personally attest to having witnessed perfection in any area of our lives.  But despite our lack of personal experience perfection is held out to us as a reality.  The marketing machine on 5^th avenue attempts to color our ideas of perfection with imagery designed to sell products.  And scripture details a time before time when perfection was the norm of the day.  So if perfection does exist, what is it?  How do we measure it?  How will we know when we have achieved it?

Scripture says when God looked at the newly created world … “He saw that it was good” (Gen 1:31).  By contrast when scripture describes God it says … “as your Father in heaven is perfect” (Matt 5:48).  When the perfect God of creation looked upon the work of His hands, He saw that it was very good.  But Moses did not describe the wondrous beauty of Eden as being perfect, only that it was very good.  Perhaps perfection would have required the absence of potential for evil.  Perhaps since Adam and Eve had not made a final choice either for obedience or not, perfection was elusive in our first garden home.  But then on closer examination, despite all the glorious language describing the beauty of heaven, the city of our God, it too does not often if ever get described as perfect.  The term perfect does appear many times in scripture but seems to always be applied as a characteristic for us as people – either striving for perfection in how we live, or being made perfect by our Lord Jesus Christ.  It does not seem to be used to describe inanimate objects.  Perhaps this is because perfection cannot be found in or around our settings, our possessions, or our environments.  It may be that perfection itself is something that cannot be achieved in our surroundings as no matter how wonderful they may be, they could always be improved in some manner.

When God looked at His creation of this world, He spent time (6 days) in the infinite details of plant life, rocks, trees, seas, lakes, and all the living beings that would live in the nature He created including us.  But having created them, and having had Adam give names to all the animals, the remainder of His attention in our Genesis turns to the things God values most – namely us.  Perhaps this is because even God looks at the universe He has made, and can imagine new ways to see it improved.  Perhaps His own ideas of perfection include constant innovation and Genesis-style creation.  But regardless of His opinions of the environments He is able to create, where God centers His attention, His time, and His value is in the origination of man He intended to spend eternity with.  We were intended to be the perfect creation, His crowning achievement, patterned after His image and set just a little below the angels, it was to be us who would offer the universe an even clearer picture of what love is – and perhaps in so doing, offer a better picture of what perfection is.  This model however would stand in stark contrast to the idealization of “things” and would find fulfillment only in the actualization of “love”.

Our constant failures, inherent short comings, and repeated losses have trained us to become comfortable with mediocrity.  Compromise is the rule of our day, whether we curb our desires to what we believe to be attainable, or sacrifice our values to attain something we desire just a bit more than we value our ethics, compromise is our mantra.  For generations after the fall of mankind this was so, no less in our own day.  Therefore when something identified to be perfect comes along; it causes us to see our own imperfections in its reflection.  The law of God was such a thing.  The Ten Commandments given at Mount Sinai carved by the finger of God Himself in the stones of the cliffs and handed to Moses to take to His people were perfect.  “The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul” proclaimed David as He pondered God’s revelation of love in his Psalms (19:7).  God’s law was a beginning revelation of the nature of His love.  Well beyond merely a list of do’s and don’ts His precepts were summarized by Christ as loving God first, with all our hearts, minds, and souls, and our neighbors as ourselves (Matthew 22:37-40).  Christ did not focus on the particular points of the law; instead He focused on the motives behind it, something His contemporaries seemed to have lost sight of.

Perfect love revealed by God in His law, and by Christ in His life, reveals to us our own failures by contrast.  We see in the deeds that contradict the prescriptions outlined in His commandments that love of others does not always govern our motives and behaviors.  The law points out to us when self-love is responsible for what we do, more than self-less-love that the law proscribes.  When we examine the deeds, words, and motives of Christ, we see perfect compliance to not only what the law proscribes but to the motives that were its underpinning.  To attempt to discard the law, to state that grace has somehow overcome the law and made it of no effect, is to attempt to remove love as having meaning from the character of God.  Since God is love, this is simply impossible.  The freedom our God gives us is actually defined in His laws.  Consider for a moment what the law forbids; murder, lying, adultery, lust, dishonor to our parents, the pursuit of other gods, devaluing our God in vanity, discrediting His acts of creation, etc..  All of the things God’s law proscribes against limit our own self-interests that would come at the expense of another.  God’s law protects the rights of another person from us damaging them by our actions.  In essence, God’s law limits evil.  It does not however as Christ pointed out in His very words, put a cap on how much one can express love to God, or limit the expression love to someone else.  We are “free” to love others as much as we want, free without limits, free without proscriptions.  Christ Himself demonstrates just how far love will go as He offers His own life in exchange for ours.  Christ shows to love another is the nature of perfection.  His law shows to love self, is the nature of evil.

Our “human” limitations and history of failure to achieve perfect compliance to the law of God have caused us to believe it is an impossible standard.  We aspire to act as Christ acted, but find our implementation far from what He achieved.  So even within our churches and our Christian ideologies we begin to seek for excuses as to why we do what we do.  We offer reasoning that since we are unable to “keep” the laws of God, He must not have intended for us to do so.  Our ideas of spiritual perfection have been tainted with the reality of our expression.  Too often our failures and manifestations of self-love over self-less-love color our very ideas of what perfection should be.  As we lose sight of even the possibility of perfection, we lose the desire to be perfect.  We begin to think that God will “wink” at our imperfections.  We think His forgiveness will cover our actions, no matter how intentional, or repeated they are.  This is the thinking that springs from tainted minds, looking through tainted realities, at a future we can no longer imagine.  But it is not the reality God offers.  His ideas of perfection for us, can no longer originate within us.  Adam and Eve lost us this birthright at our origin, and in choosing to embrace evil began a legacy of inability on our part to achieve the high standard of love our God would outline in stone, and live in the flesh of His Son.  Instead we would require a Savior to save us from ourselves and our self-love.  We would require outside intervention, from a God of creation, who could re-create us from the inside out.  We would need not only a rebirth, but a continual reengineering of our daily lives until He returned and would be able to finish the work He started within us.

It would take more than 6 days to recreate a damaged human heart and psyche.  Not because God has limitations in His own abilities to create, but because the clay of our hearts and minds He is forced to work with now is so steeped in evil and selfishness it rebels against His work of recreation every time it has a chance.  Our greatest hope now lies in our pursuit of total submission, not total conquest.  Everything we have been taught in a society of self-reliance, and self-help, stands in stark contrast to the gift of salvation from self our God offers.  We are not to seek perfection in the strength of our characters and actions, but rather on our knees in submission to the only savior who is able and eager to remove from us what we cannot remove from ourselves.  It is in perfect surrender that we will finally find perfection achieved.  It is because we can only be made perfect, through the act of recreation, the discarding of all that is evil, and remaking of all that is love.  In this alone to we find hope.  In this alone is the grace of His forgiveness coupled with a change we so desperately need in our day to day expression of His ideals.  It is through our salvation from self-love that we find natural and perfect obedience to a law that is steeped in love itself.  And through the salvation from slavery to self, we finally see the freedom He truly offers us.  A life lived beyond the basics proscribed by His law, a life that is free to explore the infinite expressions of what love to another is all about.

Our interactions when fully surrendered to the process of His recreation of love within us, are no longer focused on what we cannot do to another person – but on what we might do to bring someone else joy, peace, life, and fulfillment.  Merely not killing, not coveting, not lying, and not defiling are way too small concerns for a life that is remade in the image God intended.  Instead, the quest becomes one of how to make the life of another wonderful, fantastic, and so much better, despite the circumstances we find ourselves in.  The life of Christ was set in difficult times where hard physical work was required to survive, when political turmoil threatened your very existence, where taxation was unjust and crippling, where the poor had great need and little help, where the spiritual leaders of the day had perverted a religion of love to one of aggrandizement at the expense of illiterate.  But Christ did not use the hardships of His day and circumstances as an excuse to love less, to do less, to show us less what He only “intended” to do.  Instead His actions were not bound by His environment.  Indeed no-one and nothing could prevent Him from showing us the love He came to show.  He was always tender, merciful, and redemptive to everyone He met.  He sought out the poor and downtrodden, He went to them not requiring them to find Him.  Where He met with the religious leaders of His day, He tried to teach them how far they had strayed from the God of love behind their laws and more importantly their traditions (which had no actual divine origins). 

The Pharisees and Sadducees of His day could not even agree on all points of religious doctrine, arguing over the resurrection.  They had taken the laws of Moses given beyond the Ten Commandments, which were given in a time in Israel just out of slavery, and extended their limitations even farther.  Instead of recognizing the progress that living a self-less kind of love will do to a person, they focused only the “justice” aspects of punishment that unrepentant evil would deserve.  They ignored all the proscriptions for mercy found within these same laws for anyone willing to seek forgiveness, and instead only focused on the penalties that would come to those who did not value forgiveness.  The religious leaders in the days of Christ made the laws of Moses seem the same as the laws of the Ten Commandments, even though the entire sanctuary services would find their fulfillment in the coming of the Messiah.  They equated all laws as being everlasting, all punishments as mandatory regardless of the pursuit of forgiveness, and thus all responsibility for achieving perfection would be left to the strength of the penitent.  This is what Christ would strive to correct, from the three days He spent in the temple when we was lost to Mary and Joseph on His twelfth birthday, to His endorsement of the ministry of John the Baptist, to His counsels on His travels throughout the countryside.  Christ outlined to Nicodemus, one of these leaders, the true nature of salvation – a rebirth to spiritual perfection that ONLY the Messiah could bring.  Perfection would not be found in the leadership of His religion, but in submission to the God of His religion.  Christ did reach a few of the religious leaders of His day, but too many were more comfortable with ideas of self-reliance that had led to such vast personal gain.

Is it any different for us today?  Our society values self-reliance, a good personal work ethic, and has little sympathy for the downtrodden and unfortunate we come across.  These values invade our Christian ideologies until we begin to believe that our salvation is our own responsibility, and that those who suffer in life do so for transgressing the will of God.  Like the Pharisees of old, we see those who are poor as being “responsible” for their own conditions either through being lazy and unmotivated, or from committing various acts of evil.  It even goes so far as to see diseases like Aids and STDs as punishments from God, instead of the natural consequences of sexual promiscuity.  Earthquakes and natural disasters get tagged as “acts of God” instead of merely natural phenomenon influenced by how we treat our planet.  In short even those of Christian ideology of today choose to focus on the punishment of unrepentant evil, rather than on the true transformation, and rebirth Christ would offer to all who will seek Him.  Salvation is not only for the rich, or for the poor, but for any who would wish to have a better life here and now.  Salvation from self-love was not supposed to be something that waited to only find fulfillment in heaven, but rather as a process that begins here and now, and reaches its maturity in the heaven we seek.  Christ said … “the Kingdom of God is come”.  Obviously He was not referring to streets of Gold, and pearly gates of His city.  He was referring to the establishment of His kingdom in the hearts and minds of mankind.  He was referring to wonderful gift of recreation He would offer us.  A beginning to the achievement of perfection was to be His gift.  We could not earn it.  We would not deserve it.  But we could finally attain it, by merely accepting it.

The religious leaders of His day rejected Christ because they did not want to remove the quest for perfection from their own hands and place it humbly in the hands of our God.  They wanted rather to believe they were good, and worthy to be saved, from the great deeds they did; not be forced to admit their hearts had not been truly changed.  They were still slaves to self-love.  They were still addicts to self-serving, even if it came at the expense of another.  Today, we cling to a similar ideology that states we find our salvation in the strength of our characters, or we negate its need clinging to the idea that forgiveness is offered even before we need it for the deeds we are about to commit.  It robs us of the power of our religion, and makes Christianity a joke to those who witness us committing the same acts, at the same frequency, as those who do not claim Christ as their savior.  If Christianity can only offer forgiveness for wrong doing it is indeed a poor religion.  Muslims share this ability, as do our Jewish brothers.  All three religions share the ideology of the great forgiveness of our God.  Christianity distinguishes itself in that Christ, being the son of God, offers us more than mere forgiveness, He offers us reform.  A true change in not only what we do, but in how we think; this is the gift of Christ to us.  He re-creates us anew, and re-establishes perfection within us as we surrender to Him.  It is NOT our own perfection that is created in us, but His perfection that reflected through us.  We become vessels of perfection, not fountains of it.  And when we finally reach our heavenly home, it is this work of creating perfection within us that is finally and fully completed – not started, and then ended.  It starts today.

In this sense, we need not run from the standards of Gods law as being unachievable.  Instead we can recognize our inability, and rest knowing that He will remake us until we find harmony with His laws our natural state of being.  We need not seek to delay our freedom from slavery to self, in order to continue committing acts of evil that hurt us and everyone around us.  Instead we can seek His salvation from evil and the pain it causes immediately, and begin a life of reformation today, powered by Him, and founded in our submission to Him.  As we surrender, our ideas of perfection are restored to what He intended.  The taints of our evil, and our genetics, are undone by the power of a regenerative God, who is able to create in us a clean heart, and a clean mind.  As the influences of evil are removed, our ideas of perfection become greater and more noble.  We begin to see what is truly possible, unbound by mediocrity we have come to accept.  We realize that we wish no more a compromise with evil, but its complete and utter destruction within us.  Perfection is so much more than we had hoped.  Perfection is so much better than anything we could have experienced.  And it is indeed plausible, possible, and part of our reality as we embrace our surrender to our Messiah of Love.  Christ offers what no other deity has ever purported to do, to reach within us (His enemies) while we are yet His enemies, and change the very nature of who we are, freeing us from evil, as His gift to us, if we but accept it.  It is the acceptance that we could not achieve this ourselves that is required of us.  It is the recognition of our dependence that is the beginning of the road to perfection.  And it is the embrace of His gift that can then transform our lives from the mediocrity of evil, to the infinite that perfection has to offer.

To begin to see perfection, to understand it, we must move past our “human” limitations.  To delve into what is by nature infinite; we must allow our creator, to remove what binds us and taints us.  We must let Him change the very nature of “how” we think.  Unbound by our past and our perspectives, we can begin to see perfection for what it truly is.  We can begin to appreciate it.  And through our submission to Christ, we can begin to see its potential within us.  Perfection then becomes more than an aspiration we can barely hope to achieve, but a daily reality that can be reflected in how we love another.  Our relationships will dramatically improve as we have something of His to bring to the table.  Our perspectives and priorities of what is truly important will alter as we forsake the pursuit of Madison Avenue suggestions of acquisition, and begin the pursuit of character transformation Christ alone can bring.  We can finally and fully embrace the Kingdom of God in the here and now, restoring the power of Christianity which is based in the power of love to others.  We can show to the world a reason to see this ideology as being superior to others.  Not because we are superior, but because we reflect a superior love through us.  In our weakness, in our surrender, we come to find that which is infinite, that which is perfect, the God of love within us.