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<p><em><a href='B:500 4:24'>Joh 4:24</a></em>&nbsp;<em>God is Spirit, and they that worship Him must worship in spirit and truth</em>-</p><p>"But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and truth: for such doth the Father seek to be his worshippers" (<em><a href='B:500 4:23'>Joh 4:23</a></em>) was spoken by the Lord early in His ministry. Even at that stage "and now is::.", there were some worshipping in spirit and in truth. If the Lord is referring to the disciples, and if the "truth" in <em><a href='B:500 4:24'>Joh 4:24</a></em> is to be understood in theological / doctrinal terms, then "the truth" which they at that time possessed was very far less than what we might think today. The disciples at that time had many misbeliefs and misunderstandings; they believed in demons, were unclear about important aspects of the Lord's work, death and resurrection, and believed in ghosts. But they worshipped in spirit and in truth. However, I suspect that "spirit and in truth" doesn't refer to 'A spiritual attitude&nbsp;<em>plus</em>&nbsp;theological purity' (which none of us have anyway). That was how I once read the phrase. But "truth" would seem to me to refer more to truthfulness, and to reality as opposed to shadow- e:g. Jesus as the true light, the true bread refers not to His intellectual purity but to the way in which He was the fulfilment of the things of "the true tabernacle" as Hebrews puts it, and thus His truth / reality stood over against the shadows. In the context, the Lord is making a point to the Samaritan woman about where geographically God's house and place of worship should be- Zion or Gerizim. And as He often does, the Lord takes the question onto another level. 'The place of worship doesn't matter, the worship must be in spirit and in truth', i:e. the presence of God in the temple was to be ended, the Mosaic worship system with its need for geographical place and focus was about to end, and worship was to be internal, in the heart. And some, the Lord noticed, had already perceived that. So the context of <em><a href='B:500 4:24'>Joh 4:24</a></em> wasn't about the need for doctrinal / theological / intellectual truth. In <em><a href='B:500 4:18'>Joh 4:18</a></em> the Lord commends the woman because she "spoke truthfully / truly" about her marital state. As the Father was seeking "spirit and truth" worshippers, it was apparent to the disciples that the Lord Jesus was "seeking" this woman for God (<em><a href='B:500 4:27'>Joh 4:27</a></em>). Her honesty meant she was beginning to worship in truth. And so He goes on to encourage her to worship God in spirit and truthfullness; her humble recognition of failure was the "truth" required for worship. But she needed to also accept the Spirit. She had the mind of David, who worshipped with 'truth in the inward parts' after recognizing his sin with Bathsheba. Notice how David says that God 'desires truth in the inward parts' (<em><a href='B:230 51:6'>Psa 51:6</a></em>), and the Lord seems to be alluding to that when He says that God desires worship in spirit inward parts and truth. The context of sexual failure is the same for both the Samaritan woman, and David. If my reading of the allusions to David and Psalms 51 is correct, then the Lord wasn't talking at all about "truth" in the sense of pure theology. Rather was He referring to the "truth" of confession of sin and worship with a humble heart. It is the desperately repentant person who will fall down and worship God (<em><a href='B:470 18:26'>Mat 18:26</a></em> s:w:); this is the "spirit and truth" worshipper. And such a spirit is ultimately "the truth" which we are to finally arrive at.</p><p>The Jews and Samaritans had the idea that all they needed to do was to occasionally visit a place of worship in order to have a relationship with Him. The Lord, as His manner was, cut right across this by saying that as God is Spirit, so the true worshippers would worship Him in Spirit. If we believe that God is Spirit, if all He does and says constantly expresses His Spirit, then our lives likewise must be of non-stop worship, not through going occasionally into a temple or ecclesial meeting, but in living a spirit of life that worships Him in every situation (<em><a href='B:500 4:20-24'>Joh 4:20-24</a></em>).</p><p>"God is a Spirit"<br/>God’s spirit is His power or breath by which His essential self, His being and character, is revealed to man through the actions which that spirit achieves. Thus “God is spirit”, as <em><a href='B:500 4:24'>Joh 4:24</a></em> should be properly translated (see R:S:V:, N:I:V:), because His spirit reflects His personality.<br/>God is described as being many things, e:g.<br/>- “Our God is a consuming fire” (<em><a href='B:650 12:29'>Heb 12:29</a></em>)<br/>- “God is light” (<em><a href='B:690 1:5'>1Jn 1:5</a></em>)<br/>- “God is love” (<em><a href='B:690 4:8'>1Jn 4:8</a></em>)<br/>- “The word (Greek&nbsp;<em>logos</em>&nbsp;- plan, purpose, idea) was God” (<em><a href='B:500 1:1'>Joh 1:1</a></em>).<br/>Thus “God is” His characteristics. It is clearly wrong to argue that the abstract quality of love is ‘God’, just because we read that “God is love”. We may call someone ‘kindness itself’, but this does not mean that they are without physical existence - it is their manner of literal existence which reveals kindness to us.</p><p>The spirit being God’s power, we frequently read of God sending or directing His spirit to achieve things in harmony with His will and character. Examples of this are numerous, showing the distinction between God and His spirit.<br/>- “He (God) that put His Holy Spirit within him” (<em><a href='B:290 63:11'>Isa 63:11</a></em>)<br/>- “I (God) will put My spirit upon him (Jesus)” (<em><a href='B:470 12:18'>Mat 12:18</a></em>)<br/>- “The Father give(s) the Holy Spirit” (<em><a href='B:490 11:13'>Luk 11:13</a></em>)<br/>- “The Spirit descending from heaven” (<em><a href='B:500 1:32'>Joh 1:32</a></em>)<br/>- “I (God) will pour out My Spirit upon all flesh” (<em><a href='B:510 2:17'>Act 2:17</a></em>).<br/>Indeed, the frequent references to “the spirit of God” should be proof enough that the spirit is not God personally. These differences between God and His spirit are another difficulty for those who believe that God is a ‘trinity’ in which God the Father is equated with Jesus and the Holy Spirit.</p><p>Very importantly, a non-personal God makes a nonsense of prayer - to the point where prayer is a dialogue between our consciousness and a concept of God which just exists in our own mind. We are continually reminded that we pray to God who is in heaven (<em><a href='B:250 5:2'>Ecc 5:2</a></em>; <em><a href='B:470 6:9'>Mat 6:9</a></em>; <em><a href='B:470 5:16'>Mat 5:16</a></em>; <em><a href='B:110 8:30'>1Ki 8:30</a></em>), and that Jesus is now at God’s right hand there, to offer up our prayers (<em><a href='B:670 3:22'>1Pe 3:22</a></em>; <em><a href='B:650 9:24'>Heb 9:24</a></em>). If God is not personal, such passages are made meaningless. But once God is understood as a real, loving Father, prayer to Him becomes a very real, tangible thing - actually talking to another being who we believe is very willing and able to respond.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 4:25'>Joh 4:25</a></em>&nbsp;<em>The woman said to him: I know that the Messiah is coming (he that is called Christ). When he comes, he will declare to us all things-&nbsp;</em>The Lord had just declared to her all about her previous immoral life. So her statement here may not be scepticism, but rather daring to join the dots and make the connection that this tired, dehydrated Jew sitting before her was in fact Messiah.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 4:26'>Joh 4:26</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Jesus said to her: I that speak to you am he</em>- This is one of the clearest statements the Lord ever makes as to His self-identity. And even here, I suggest He is confirming as correct the woman's hunches about Him as being Messiah (see on :25).</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 4:27'>Joh 4:27</a></em>&nbsp;<em>And upon this scene came his disciples, and they marvelled that he was speaking with a woman. Yet no one said: What are you seeking? Or, Why do you speak with her?</em>-<em>Seek</em>&nbsp;for response in people. As the disciples came upon the Lord talking to the woman by the well, it looked as if He were&nbsp;<em>seeking</em>&nbsp;something (<em><a href='B:500 4:27'>Joh 4:27</a></em>). But they didn’t ask what- for it was obvious. His body language reflected how He was&nbsp;<em>seeking</em>&nbsp;her salvation. He seeks the lost until He finds them, even now (<em><a href='B:470 18:12'>Mat 18:12</a></em>; <em><a href='B:490 15:8'>Luk 15:8</a></em>); as He looked up into the branches of the sycamore tree seeking Zacchaeus, He was epitomising how He came (and comes) to seek and save&nbsp;<em>all</em>&nbsp;the lost (<em><a href='B:490 19:5'>Luk 19:5</a></em>; <em><a href='B:490 19:10'>Luk 19:10</a></em>). Our preaching to others isn’t a cold-hearted witness, or a theological debate; it is a&nbsp;<em>seeking</em>&nbsp;of glory to the Father; we exhort one another,&nbsp;<em>considering</em>&nbsp;how we may provoke to love (<em><a href='B:650 10:24'>Heb 10:24</a></em>).</p><p>The Rabbis taught that a man should not salute a woman in a public place. For Jesus to talk to the Samaritan woman at the well (John 4) was therefore an indication of his studied disregard of local tradition concerning women when it clashed with spiritual principles. The incident was “a strange innovation on Rabbinic custom and dignity”. The Talmud taught: “Six things are a disgrace to a disciple of the wise: He should not…converse with a woman in the street” (Babylonian Talmud: Berakoth “Benedictions” 43b). A woman could only be alone with two men, never with one, and this was within a town; outside a town, she had to be in the presence of three men (Babylonian Talmud: Kiddushin “Betrothals” 81a). But the Lord spoke to her alone. A woman could even be divorced for speaking to a man. “What conduct transgresses Jewish custom? If she…speaks with any man” (Mishnah: Ketuboth “Marriage Deeds” <em><a href='B:500 7:6'>Joh 7:6</a></em>). There can be no doubt that the Lord didn’t accept the prevailing view of women. The Lord's conversations with Nicodemus and the Samaritan woman are recorded in an intentional parallel in John 3, 4. The man doesn't get it, he fails to perceive the double entendre in the Lord's words, and struggles with their deeper meaning. The Samaritan woman gets it straight away, and even responds to the Lord with the same kind of language.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 4:28'>Joh 4:28</a></em>&nbsp;<em>So the woman left her waterpot and went away into the city, and said to the people</em>- She had once been rather proud that she had something to draw with, and the Lord didn't. Leaving her waterpot was a statement that now she had found the living water which quenched thirst, and she no longer needed the natural water. She specifically "said to the men" (as AV). Were these "the men" of her former life? Why go to men in particular? The same word is used in :29 about the "man" she had found who she thinks is the Christ. She went to those with whom she had sinned.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 4:29'>Joh 4:29</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Come, see a man who told me all things that I have ever done. Can this be the Christ?</em>- She tells the men with whom she had sinned (:28) that she has found a man who told her all about their sins. There were no secrets anymore; one man at least knew the entire story. And she believes she may well have found the Messiah. He let Himself be encouraged by her response to Him, even though her comment “Could this be the Messiah?” (<em><a href='B:500 4:29'>Joh 4:29</a></em>) implies she was still uncertain. Raymond Brown has commented: “The Greek question with&nbsp;<em>meti</em>&nbsp;implies an unlikelihood” (<em>The Gospel According To John</em>, Vol. 1, p. 173). But we see throughout this incident how faith in Him as Messiah passes through stages- and of course John is appealing in his Gospel for others to likewise come to this faith to follow the path of this woman. She now understands Messiah as most importantly one who realizes our sins and can deal with them- rather than as some conquering hero. And this again was a necessary issue to emphasize in preaching in John's context.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 4:30'>Joh 4:30</a></em>&nbsp;<em>They went out of the city and came to him</em>- There was something in the frank witness of this sinful woman which was compelling. Just as biography is always interesting to us fellow humans, so confession of sin and faith it has been dealt with in Christ is the most compelling witness. 'Coming to Christ' is very much the language of conversion.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 4:31'>Joh 4:31</a></em>&nbsp;<em>In the meantime the disciples pleaded with him, saying: Rabbi, eat</em>- The disciples are presented here as focused on the material rather than the spiritual and symbolic. And it is John himself writing or speaking the Gospel message in this way, like the woman, admitting his own weakness in order to bring others to the Lord.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 4:32'>Joh 4:32</a></em>&nbsp;<em>But he said to them: I have food to eat that you do not know</em>- Dehydrated at the well, very hungry, the response of the Samaritan woman revived His spirits to the point that the disciples assumed He must have been given a meal (<em><a href='B:500 4:32-33'>Joh 4:32-33</a></em>). He goes on to say that working with a woman like that is His "meat" or food, the 'doing of the will of him that sent Me and to accomplish His work' (<em><a href='B:500 4:34'>Joh 4:34</a></em> RV). Yet the will of God and accomplishing of His work was evidently the cross (<em><a href='B:490 22:42'>Luk 22:42</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 6:38'>Joh 6:38</a></em>; <em><a href='B:650 10:9-10'>Heb 10:9-10</a></em>). In preaching to that woman and converting her, the Lord was living out the essence of the crucifixion that awaited Him. Preaching work isn’t glamorous. It is a living out of the cross.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 4:33'>Joh 4:33</a></em>&nbsp;<em>The disciples queried each other: Has anyone brought him something to eat?</em>- As noted on :31, the male Jewish disciples are presented as lacking the spiritual perception of this female Gentile. The disciples in their own preaching of the Gospel, of which John's Gospel is a transcript, were admitting their own petty literalism. And urging others to not be as they had been.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 4:34'>Joh 4:34</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Jesus said to them: My food is to do the will of Him that sent me and to accomplish His work</em>- See on :32. After the Lord converted the Samaritan woman at the well, He commented to His disciples that such work was His food- "to do the will of Him that sent me and to finish His work" (<em><a href='B:500 4:34'>Joh 4:34</a></em>). But soon afterwards He claimed that "the works which the Father has given me to finish, the same works that I do, bear witness of me" (<em><a href='B:500 5:36'>Joh 5:36</a></em>). It's tempting to think that the "works" He spoke of were His miracles- but the linkage with <em><a href='B:500 4:34'>Joh 4:34</a></em> suggests that they were also references to the change He achieved within people. These transformed people were His witness- and the Samaritan woman is a classic example. For when He had done the Father's work in her, she rushed off to witness to the world. In <em><a href='B:500 6:28-29'>Joh 6:28-29</a></em> the Lord seems to consciously steer us away from understanding His "works" as merely the miracles of e:g. feeding and physical healing. In response to the question "What shall we do, that we might work the works of God?" He responds: "This is the work of God, that you believe on Him whom He has sent".</p><p>The Lord saw His preaching work as a carrying of the cross. He spoke of how His witness to the Samaritan woman was a ‘finishing of the Father’s work’ (<em><a href='B:500 4:34'>Joh 4:34</a></em>). The ‘finishing’ was clearly only accomplished upon the cross, when He cried “It is finished”, and He “fulfilled” or s:w. “finished” the Scriptures (<em><a href='B:500 19:28'>Joh 19:28</a></em>). Thus in His life, He lived out the essence of His future cross by witnessing to others. Like Paul, we need to grasp what this means for us in practice. Crucifixion was a public, painful, sacrificial act; and true effort in witness will be the same. And this is exactly why Paul can speak of “the preaching of the cross”, the preaching which&nbsp;<em>is</em>&nbsp;the cross (Gk:). In His preaching to the woman at the well, the Lord saw Himself as ‘finishing God’s work’ (<em><a href='B:500 4:32'>Joh 4:32</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 4:34'>Joh 4:34</a></em>). And yet John evidently intends us to connect this incident with the Lord’s final cry from the cross which he records: “It is finished". Only on the cross was the work finished; but by pushing aside His own hunger, tiredness and desire for solitude in order to convert that woman, the Lord even then was ‘finishing the Father’s work’, in that in essence He was living out the spirit of crucifixion. And so with us; the life of ongoing crucifixion demands that we consciously push ourselves in the service of others. The finishing of the Father’s work was accomplished in the cross- hence the final cry of triumph, “It is finished" (<em><a href='B:500 19:30'>Joh 19:30</a></em>). But this meat was not appreciated by them in His lifetime. The work of sharing in Christ’s cross should be our meat and drink, to the eclipsing of the pressing nature of material things. For this was the context in which the Lord spoke; His men were pressing Him to attend to His humanity, whereas His mind was filled, even in tiredness and dehydration, with the living out of the cross unto the end. As He was exhausted and dehydrated by the well, so He was on the cross. He saw that “meat" in the conversion of the Samaritan woman. He saw the connection between His cross and the conversion of that woman; thus “the meat::. the will::. God’s work" was the cross, and yet it was also the conversion of the woman. The cross is essentially the converter of men and women, and thereby our crucifixion-lives are likewise the power of conversion.</p>


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<h4><em><a href='B:500 4:35'>Joh 4:35</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Do you not say: There are yet four months and then comes the harvest? Behold, I say to you, Lift up your eyes and look on the fields, that they are white, ready to harvest</em>- If they lifted up their eyes, they would see a file of Gentile men headed by a fallen woman coming towards them. And this was the whiteness of the harvest. Grain turns from green to yellow to white. Those people who were apparently expressing an initial interest were seen by the Lord as ready for harvest. Be believed the process of conversion could happen that quickly. And His disciples, from that day to this, struggle to believe it. They want to first see some course of instruction and a socializing of converts into their community. However it must be also noted that harvest in Palestine typically began after Passover; so the Lord may be hinting that it was after His death that the harvesting would begin. But then on the other hand, He has said that His "hour" of death was right then, it was both coming and yet "now is" (see on :23). The way of the Spirit involves working outside of time as we know it; as the essence of the hour of the cross was then, so the moment of sowing was also that of harvesting, the Spirit was not yet given because the Lord was not glorified, yet it could still be given; and so eternal life could be given now to people who remain still mortal.</h4><p>The Gospel writers were preaching the words of the Gospels in response to their Lord’s command to go preach. Yet <em><a href='B:500 4:35'>Joh 4:35</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 4:38'>Joh 4:38</a></em> records them recognizing that they didn’t appreciate how great the harvest was, and indeed the harvest was spoilt because of the weakness of the disciples. For the whiteness of harvest rather than it being yellow might hint that it was overdue for harvest. The Lord Himself was of the persuasion that people are more interested than His brethren may think. "You say 'Four months from sowing to harvest: the time is not yet'::. But I say that the fields are already white for reaping. Already the reaper is taking his pay" (<em><a href='B:500 4:35'>Joh 4:35</a></em>). Four months was the time reckoned proverbially for the sown seed to come to harvest in Judea. It seems that the disciples thought there had to be a gap between sowing and reaping, whereas the Lord is saying that people were more ready for harvest than His preachers thought. The Kingdom prophecies speak of a time when the sower shall overtake the reaper, i:e. there is immediate fruition of the crop planted. And so it was in the Lord's spiritual Kingdom; the seed had fruit immediately. And it can be the same with us- our insistence that there has to be a respectable gap between sowing the Gospel and reaping the harvest isn't a concept upheld by the Lord. There's more of a harvest out there than we think. And perhaps the relatively poor response to the preaching of Jesus in AD30-33 was because His disciples didn't do their part?</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 4:36'>Joh 4:36</a></em>&nbsp;<em>He that reaps receives wages, and gathers fruit to everlasting life; that he that sows and he that reaps may rejoice together</em>- The reapers were the disciples (:38). If they reaped, they would receive wages, and the fruit of the converts they gathered would be that those converts received eternal life. Not just at the last day, but in the sense John's Gospel speaks of- receiving the gift of life after the pattern of the Lord's life, right now. The "wages" surely suggests that work with the likes of the Samaritan woman has its blessings in this life, as well as having eternal consequence.</p><p>The experience of preaching is in itself a foretaste of the future world-wide Kingdom. The harvest is both at the end of the age, according to the parables of Matthew 13, but also is ongoing right now (<em><a href='B:500 4:36'>Joh 4:36</a></em>) as we gather in the harvest of converts. The Lord in <em><a href='B:500 4:35-36'>Joh 4:35-36</a></em> took this figure far further, by saying that the harvest is such that the interval between sowing and harvesting is in some sense collapsed for those who engage in preaching. The reaper was already collecting his wages; the harvest was already there, even though it was four months away (<em><a href='B:500 4:35'>Joh 4:35</a></em>). This clearly alludes to the promises that in the Messianic Kingdom there would also be no interval between sowing and harvest, so abundant would be the harvest (<em><a href='B:30 26:5'>Lev 26:5</a></em>; <em><a href='B:370 9:13'>Amo 9:13</a></em>). And hence, we are impelled to spread the foretaste of the Kingdom world-wide by our witness right now.</p><p>The final judgment will be of our works, not because works justify us, but because our use of the freedom we have had and exercised in our lives is the basis of the future reward we will be given. Salvation itself is not on the basis of our works (<em><a href='B:520 11:6'>Rom 11:6</a></em>; <em><a href='B:550 2:16'>Gal 2:16</a></em>; <em><a href='B:630 3:5'>Tit 3:5</a></em>); indeed, the&nbsp;<em>free gift&nbsp;</em>of salvation by pure grace is contrasted with the&nbsp;<em>wages</em>&nbsp;paid by sin (<em><a href='B:520 4:4'>Rom 4:4</a></em>; <em><a href='B:520 6:23'>Rom 6:23</a></em>). And yet at the judgment, the preacher receives&nbsp;<em>wages</em>&nbsp;for what he did (<em><a href='B:500 4:36'>Joh 4:36</a></em>), the labourers receive&nbsp;<em>hire</em>&nbsp;(s:w. wages) for their work in the vineyard (<em><a href='B:470 20:8'>Mat 20:8</a></em>; <em><a href='B:530 3:8'>1Co 3:8</a></em>). There is a&nbsp;<em>reward</em>&nbsp;(s:w. wages) for those who rise to the level of loving the totally unresponsive (<em><a href='B:470 5:46'>Mat 5:46</a></em>), or preaching in situations quite against their natural inclination (<em><a href='B:530 9:18'>1Co 9:18</a></em>):&nbsp;<em>Salvation</em>&nbsp;itself isn’t given on this basis of works; but the nature of our eternal existence in the Kingdom will be a reflection of our use of the gift of freedom in this life. In that sense the judgment will be of our works. There are many passages which teach that our salvation will be related to the extent to which we have held forth the word&nbsp;both to the world and to the household (<em><a href='B:240 11:3'>Pro 11:3</a></em>; <em><a href='B:240 24:11-12'>Pro 24:11-12</a></em>; <em><a href='B:340 12:3'>Dan 12:3</a></em>; <em><a href='B:480 8:38'>Mar 8:38</a></em>; <em><a href='B:490 12:8'>Luk 12:8</a></em>; <em><a href='B:520 10:9-10'>Rom 10:9-10</a></em> cp. <em><a href='B:500 9:22'>Joh 9:22</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 12:42'>Joh 12:42</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 1:20'>Joh 1:20</a></em>; <em><a href='B:670 4:6'>1Pe 4:6</a></em>&nbsp;Gk:). Those who reap the harvest of the Gospel will be rewarded with salvation (<em><a href='B:500 4:36'>Joh 4:36</a></em>). Such work&nbsp;<em>isn't</em>&nbsp;just an option for those who want to be enthusiastic about it.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 4:37'>Joh 4:37</a></em>&nbsp;<em>For herein is the saying true: One sows and another reaps</em>- This is perhaps John's equivalent to the parable of the sower in the synoptics. The Lord is the sower. The Lord likened His preachers to men reaping the harvest. The implication is that He had done His work with the woman, and they were to now work with the crowd of Gentile men she was bringing to Him. He speaks of how they fulfilled the proverb that one sows and another reaps (<em><a href='B:500 4:37-38'>Joh 4:37-38</a></em>). Yet this ‘proverb’ has no direct Biblical source. What we&nbsp;<em>do&nbsp;</em>find in the Old Testament is the repeated idea that if someone sows but another reaps, this is a sign that they are suffering God’s judgment for their sins (<em><a href='B:50 20:6'>Deu 20:6</a></em>; <em><a href='B:50 28:30'>Deu 28:30</a></em>; <em><a href='B:220 31:8'>Job 31:8</a></em>; <em><a href='B:400 6:15'>Mic 6:15</a></em>). But the Lord turns around the ‘proverb’ concerning Israel’s condemnation; He makes it apply to the way that the preacher / reaper who doesn’t sow is the one who harvests others in converting them to Him. Surely His implication was that His preacher-reapers were those who had known condemnation for their sins, but on that basis were His humbled harvesters in the mission field.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 4:38'>Joh 4:38</a></em>&nbsp;<em>I sent you to harvest that upon which you have not laboured; others have laboured, and you are taking over their labour</em>- Harvesting what one has not worked for is the language of Israel receiving the promised land (<em><a href='B:60 24:13'>Jos 24:13</a></em>). The Kingdom blessings were to be understood spiritually- harvesting people for the Lord for whom they had done none of the hard, preparatory ground work. "Laboured" is used only elsewhere in John in :6 about how the Lord sat at the well "wearied" or 'laboured'; He had laboured, although He graciously includes others in His work, and He invited the disciples to now go reap the harvest for which they had not laboured. Perhaps the others who had laboured is some reference to an outreach toward Samaritans made by John the Baptist and his disciples. The language of taking over their labour would be appropriate to how the Lord's disciples were to build upon the earlier spade work done by John's ministry. Or perhaps the other labourers referred to the Samaritan woman and her initial group of converts; the idea would then be that the disciples ought to return to the area and secure a great harvest as a result of their witness. But such was their slowness to perceive the Lord's openness to Samaritan Gentiles that the disciples did not do this in time. To see themselves as taking over the labour of despised Samaritans was too much for them; their prejudices had been too great. And perhaps John records this in order to demonstrate the weakness of himself and his team, a lament over the potential they had let go:&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 4:39'>Joh 4:39</a></em>&nbsp;<em>And from that city many of the Samaritans believed in him because of the word of the woman, who testified: He told me all things that I have ever done</em>- The Samaritan woman at the well had a sense of shame and deep self-knowledge over her, as she realised that Christ knew her every sin. It was with a humble sheepishness that she confessed: “I have no husband", because she was living in sin. She was converted by that well. Immediately she "left her waterpot, and went her way into the city (the record inviting us to watch her from a distance), and saith to the&nbsp;<em>men</em>&nbsp;(significantly), Come, see a man::. is not this the Christ?" (<em><a href='B:500 4:17'>Joh 4:17</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 4:28-29'>Joh 4:28-29</a></em>). There was a wondrous mixture of enthusiasm and shyness in those words: "Come, see a man::.". It is a feature of many new converts that their early&nbsp;preaching has a similar blend. It is stressed that men believed because of the way the woman told them “He told me all that ever I did” (<em><a href='B:500 4:39'>Joh 4:39</a></em>). He had recounted her past sins to her (<em><a href='B:500 4:18-19'>Joh 4:18-19</a></em>). And she now, in matchless humility, goes and tells her former life to her associates, using the very words of description which the Lord had used. He convicted her of her sins, and this conviction resulted in her unashamed witness.</p><p>We see how belief is predicated at times upon the word of a third party other than the Lord. We can bring people to faith, and also stumble them in their walk.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 4:40'>Joh 4:40</a></em>&nbsp;<em>So when the Samaritans came to him, they pleaded with him to stay with them; and he stayed there two days</em>- Coming to Jesus in John's Gospel means to believe in Him. They wanted Him to "stay" or "abide" with them, a common theme in John of the Lord abiding in the hearts of believers. They are set up as model converts, in whom the Lord 'abode' after conversion. As John's Gospel later explains, this is achieved by Him through His Spirit, which means that He is present as really as if He were physically present with us. His abiding by the Spirit is a sign of acceptance, and His abiding with them at a time when a Jew like Peter could not go inside the home of a Gentile was surely a public indication of His acceptance of Gentiles. Peter and others who so objected to such fellowship after His resurrection were clearly forgetting, wilfully, the implication of such incidents.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 4:41'>Joh 4:41</a></em>&nbsp;<em>And many more believed because of his word</em>- Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by God's word; it's as if these Gentile converts are being set up as role models for all who should thereafter believe. Their belief was as valid as those who believed for the sake of the woman's testimony, that she had met a man who knew all of her sins, and was thereby, by implication, able to deal with them. This large scale conversion is significant because there is no hint that any miracle was done in order to provoke faith. It was conversion on the basis of the Lord's power to know human personal history and to forgive. It becomes even more programmatic for all who would afterwards believe.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 4:42'>Joh 4:42</a></em> - see on <em><a href='B:500 20:31'>Joh 20:31</a></em>.</p><p><em>And they said to the woman: Now we believe, not because of your speaking; for we have heard for ourselves and know that this is indeed the Saviour of the world</em>- They realized that the true Messiah was not Saviour solely of Israel, but of the&nbsp;<em>kosmos</em>, which John has defined in the prologue as the new world of persons who believe in Him. <em><a href='B:510 5:31'>Act 5:31</a></em> defines His 'salvation' in terms of Him giving both repentance and forgiveness to people; and this is exactly what the Lord had done to the woman and other Samaritans. He had given provoked in her repentance, and empowered her forgiveness. This is all the work of the Spirit.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 4:43'>Joh 4:43</a></em>&nbsp;<em>And after two days he left for Galilee</em>- Perhaps He wanted to give the disciples a break from attention, and so He went somewhere where He thought they would not have much acceptance nor attention (:44). But in the same way as during His working life the Lord could have made technical mistakes in His manual work, so here, things didn't turn out as He had perhaps intended. In John's Gospel more than the others we see the Lord's deep humanity, mixed with the highest terms of praise for Him.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 4:44'>Joh 4:44</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Jesus himself had testified that a prophet has no honour in his own country</em>- As noted on :43, the Lord assumed He would not be welcomed there and He could have some quality time teaching the disciples in their native environment. The common proverb was repeated or testified to with approval by the Lord. But things turned out not as He had expected (:45)- another window onto His humanity, as is the description of Galilee as "His own country". See on :48.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 4:45'>Joh 4:45</a></em>&nbsp;<em>So when he came into Galilee, the Galileans welcomed him, having seen all the things that he had done in Jerusalem at the feast. For they also had gone up to the feast</em>- As noted on :43 and :44, this welcome was perhaps not what the Lord had expected. Their belief however was because they had seen miracles at the feast (<em><a href='B:500 2:23'>Joh 2:23</a></em>); unlike the Samaritans, of whom we have just read, who believed without having seen miracles.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 4:46'>Joh 4:46</a></em>&nbsp;<em>He came again to Cana of Galilee, where he made the water wine. And there was a certain nobleman, whose son was sick at Capernaum</em>- The Lord's return to Cana was perhaps as a follow up to His witness there previously. Perhaps He sought to try again with Nicodemus, whom I suggested on <em><a href='B:500 2:1'>Joh 2:1</a></em> was there. His attempt to follow up with individuals, despite the large scale of His ministry, is a reflection of the huge value the Lord attached to the individual.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 4:47'>Joh 4:47</a></em>&nbsp;<em>When he heard that Jesus had come out of Judea into Galilee, he went to him and pleaded that he would come to Capernaum and heal his son. For his son was at the point of death</em>- To make that 20-mile journey over mountainous terrain displayed quite some faith. Perhaps this nobleman was one of those who had encountered the Lord at the feast in Jerusalem (:45). The fact he came personally rather than send messengers or servants again indicates a genuine personal faith. The Greek is literally "come down to Capernaum", which reflects the topography (as <em><a href='B:500 2:12'>Joh 2:12</a></em>); all encouraging confirmations that we are reading a genuine account rather than one fabricated for personal reasons.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 4:48'>Joh 4:48</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Jesus replied to him: Except you see signs and wonders, you will in no way believe</em>- The Lord criticized the people for their refusal to believe apart from by seeing signs and wonders. In line with this, the Lord attacks Nicodemus’ belief on the basis of the miracles, saying that instead, a man must be born again if he wishes to see the Kingdom (<em><a href='B:500 3:2-3'>Joh 3:2-3</a></em>). But later He says that the disciples were being given miraculous signs greater than even healing to help them believe (<em><a href='B:500 11:15'>Joh 11:15</a></em>); He bids people believe because they saw signs, even if they were unimpressed by Him personally (<em><a href='B:500 5:20'>Joh 5:20</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 10:37'>Joh 10:37</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 14:11'>Joh 14:11</a></em>). Clearly enough, the Lord was desperate for people to believe, to come to some sort of faith- even if the basis of that faith wasn’t what He ideally wished. And it’s possible that His initial high demand for people to believe not because they saw miracles was relaxed as His ministry proceeded; for the statements that faith was not to be based upon His miracles is found in John 3, 4, whereas the invitations to believe because of His miracles is to be found later in John. This challenges the attitude that sets a bar of faith and understanding over which people must first leap before we work with them.</p><p>I noted on :43 and :44 that the Lord had expected little response in Galilee, and yet there was response. In this we have a window onto His utter humanity. Likewise, perhaps in this comment that faith would only come from&nbsp;<em>seeing</em>&nbsp;miracles; for the nobleman did not see the miracle, but believed.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 4:49'>Joh 4:49</a></em>&nbsp;<em>The nobleman said to him: Sir, come before my child dies</em>- The man thought that the Lord's physical presence was required for the miracle. His faith was therefore incomplete, but all the same, the Lord worked with Him. And just as He does today with us, sought to stretch the faith of the man.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 4:50'>Joh 4:50</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Jesus said to him: Go your way. Your son lives. The man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him, and he went his way</em>- The man of course could have disbelieved; yet the Lord had done the miracle anyway. So the Lord was as it were desperately hopeful that his challenge to the development of the man's faith would work- and it did. And yet his faith was still immature; for although it is stated that the nobleman believed the Lord’s words, it was only once his son was healed that he&nbsp;<em>really&nbsp;</em>believed (<em><a href='B:500 4:50'>Joh 4:50</a></em> cp. 54).</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 4:51'>Joh 4:51</a></em>&nbsp;<em>And as he was going home, his servants met him, saying that his son lived</em>- They would have known that he had gone to Cana to seek the Lord Jesus and healing from Him. They were so thrilled that they began the 20 mile journey to meet Him. They met their master as he "was going down" (AV)- i:e. as he was coming down the final slope toward Capernaum. We wonder why they had delayed coming to him; perhaps they wanted to be sure the child had really recovered. All this has the circumstantial ring of truth to it which permeates the inspired records.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 4:52'>Joh 4:52</a></em>&nbsp;<em>So he inquired of them the hour when he began to get better. They replied to him: Yesterday at the seventh hour the fever left him</em>- If "the seventh hour" means 1 p:m. assuming counting time from sunrise- although there are various possibilities; Roman time would have been 7 p:m:, then the man would have walked or travelled home through the night, arriving the next day, so that the servants spoke of "Yesterday". Travelling overnight was a risky undertaking as Galilee was full of road thieves. But he was so eager to see the result of faith. "Began to get better" is also an indication of incomplete faith; he imagined that the Lord's healing word would have only gradual effect, whereas the child had perhaps died and been resurrected at that time "your son lives". In any case, the fever abruptly "left him" at a specific time and not as part of any gradual process of feeling better, as the nobleman with his limited faith had imagined.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 4:53'>Joh 4:53</a></em>&nbsp;<em>The father knew that that was the hour when Jesus had said to him: Your son lives. And so he and his household believed</em>- As noted on :50, the man's initial belief had not been strong; but now it became stronger. Or it could be that he had set himself the condition to the effect that if his son was really healed, then he would believe; and that condition was met. Christ saw that man's low level of faith, and took him where he was, with the result that he soon rose up to a higher level. The Lord must have reflected on the wide differences between the various levels of faith and commitment He encountered. Jairus besought Him to lay His hands on his daughter (<em><a href='B:480 5:23'>Mar 5:23</a></em>); whilst the Centurion's attitude was "say the word only" (<em><a href='B:490 7:6'>Luk 7:6</a></em>). His faith was undoubtedly on a higher level (<em><a href='B:490 7:9'>Luk 7:9</a></em>), but still the Lord accepted the lower level of Jairus and worked with it. He was manifesting His Father in this. Reflect how Daniel refused to eat the food sent to him from the King of Babylon; but God arranged for this very thing to be sent to Jehoiachin as a sign of His recognition of his repentance (<em><a href='B:300 52:34'>Jer 52:34</a></em>) God saw that Jehoiachin wasn't on Daniel's level, and yet He worked with him.</p><h4>The idea of whole households "believing" is common in the New Testament; the early church was largely a network of household churches.</h4>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 4:54'>Joh 4:54</a></em>&nbsp;<em>This was the second sign that Jesus did, when he had gone from Judea to Galilee</em>- There is a question as to whether this is the same miracle of the centurion's servant being healed in Capernaum which we have in <em><a href='B:470 8:5'>Mat 8:5</a></em> and <em><a href='B:490 7:2'>Luk 7:2</a></em>. I would argue that they are similar, but different:</p><p>(1) Here a ‘king’s man’ pleads for his son; there a centurion for his servant.<br/>(2) Here he pleads in person; there the Jewish elders plead for him.<br/>(3) Here the father is probably a Jew; there the centurion is certainly a Gentile.<br/>(4) Here the healing words are spoken at Cana; there at Capernaum.<br/>(5) Here the malady is fever; there paralysis.<br/>(6) Here the father wishes Jesus to come; there the centurion begs him not to come.<br/>(7) Here Christ does not go; there apparently he does.</p><p>The similarity I suggest is that the faith of the Gentile centurion is presented as far stronger than that of the spiritually immature Jewish nobleman. The similarities suggest that perhaps that Gentile had heard of the healing of the nobleman's child, and was motivated by it to complete faith, just as we are motivated by accounts of faith rewarded in others' lives to ourselves have even stronger faith than in the cases we heard about.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 5:1'>Joh 5:1</a></em>&nbsp;<em>After these things there was a feast of the Jews; and Jesus went up to Jerusalem</em>- So often John describes what the Old Testament repeatedly calls "the feasts of the Lord" as "feasts of the Jews". They had hijacked Yahweh's religion and turned it into their own, just as so many do today.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 5:2'>Joh 5:2</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Now there is in Jerusalem</em>- It's worth noting the evidence that the entire New Testament was written before AD70:<br/>- If any of the Gospels were written after AD70, their total silence as to that cataclysmic event is strange. The synoptics all record a prophecy of the events of AD70, and yet there is no reference by any of them to its fulfilment; whereas the Gospel writers aren't slow to comment on the way the Lord's words came true. <em><a href='B:470 24:20'>Mat 24:20</a></em> speaks of those events as being in the future- "Pray that it may not be winter when you have to make your escape". Surely there'd have been some reference to the fulfilment of the Olivet prophecy, if the records were written after AD70? <em><a href='B:500 5:2'>Joh 5:2</a></em> speaks as if Jerusalem and the temple area were still standing when John was written: "Now there&nbsp;<em>is</em>&nbsp;at Jerusalem by the sheep market a pool". The record of the Jews' proud comment in <em><a href='B:500 2:20'>Joh 2:20</a></em> that Herod's temple had taken 46 years to build includes no hint nor even presentiment that it had now been destroyed.<br/>- Paul on any chronology died before AD70, so his letters were all before that. We need to marvel at the evident growth in spirituality and understanding which is reflected within Paul's letters, and realize that he grew&nbsp;<em>very</em>&nbsp;quickly:&nbsp;<br/>- Hebrews speaks of the temple and sacrifice system in the present tense, as if it were still operating (note <em><a href='B:650 10:2'>Heb 10:2</a></em>; <em><a href='B:650 10:11'>Heb 10:11</a></em>; <em><a href='B:650 10:18'>Heb 10:18</a></em>). The 40 years of Israel's disobedience in the wilderness are held up as a warning to an Israel approaching 40 years of disobedience after the death of Jesus (<em><a href='B:650 3:7'>Heb 3:7</a></em> to <em><a href='B:650 4:11'>Heb 4:11</a></em>). "You have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood" (<em><a href='B:650 12:4'>Heb 12:4</a></em>) sounds like Nero's persecution hadn't started:&nbsp;<br/>- The letters of Peter warn that a huge calamity is to come upon the Jewish churches, couched in terms of the Olivet prophecy. Thus they were written before AD70. 2 Peter also speaks as if Paul is still alive at the time:&nbsp;<br/>- Acts stops at the point where Paul is living in his own house in Rome quite comfortably, and spreading the Gospel (<em><a href='B:510 28:30'>Act 28:30</a></em>). And yet we know from 2 Timothy 4 that ultimately he died in Rome, presumably after being released and doing more work for the Lord. The obvious conclusion is that Acts was written before Paul died. Acts also implies that Jews were living at peace with Rome (<em><a href='B:510 24:2'>Act 24:2</a></em>; <em><a href='B:510 25:1-5'>Act 25:1-5</a></em>; <em><a href='B:510 15:13'>Act 15:13</a></em> to <em><a href='B:510 26:32'>Act 26:32</a></em>)- a situation which didn't apply after AD70.</p><p><em>By the sheep gate a pool, which is called in Hebrew Bethesda, having five porches</em>- The five porches could refer to the five books of Moses, the Torah, which failed to provide healing. "Bethesda" is obviously significant in meaning, because attention is called to the Hebrew name. The Hebrew is literally&nbsp;<em>beth</em>&nbsp;house&nbsp;<em>chesed</em>, the Hebrew word usually translated "mercy" and about the nearest the Old Testament comes to speaking of "grace". But beneath the five porches of the Mosaic law, the Torah, there was no grace or mercy being found by those who sat beneath them. They hoped for it, but Israel did not find that which he looked for. "Bethesda" may well have been a kind of institution providing very basic care for the incurables and handicapped whose families would not care for them. Hence&nbsp;<em>beth</em>, "house", can mean both a house as well as a family. It really was a picture of stricken humanity, whom legalism couldn't help. Yet before them was the pool or "bath", as Adam Clarke suggests the Greek should be rendered. Immediately we make the association with baptism. There are Old Testament prophecies of how in the Messianic Kingdom, healing water would come forth from Jerusalem (<em><a href='B:360 3:18'>Joe 3:18</a></em> etc:). The Lord was going to demonstrate that in His gift of the water of life, the essence of the future Kingdom was to be experienced right now. The sheep gate was on the east of the temple (<em><a href='B:160 3:1'>Neh 3:1</a></em>; <em><a href='B:160 3:32'>Neh 3:32</a></em>; <em><a href='B:160 12:39'>Neh 12:39</a></em>), from where Messiah was to enter in the day of His Kingdom (<em><a href='B:450 14:4'>Zec 14:4</a></em>).</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 5:3'>Joh 5:3</a></em>&nbsp;<em>In these lay a crowd of those who were sick, blind, lame, paralysed, waiting for the moving of the water</em>- The "sick" or "impotent" are those without power. The same word is used of how whilst we were all "without strength, Christ died for the ungodly" (<em><a href='B:520 5:6'>Rom 5:6</a></em>). They were waiting, just as Israel ought to have been waiting for Messiah. But the law was itself "impotent" (s:w. "sick"), unable to cure or change the human moral condition (<em><a href='B:650 7:18'>Heb 7:18</a></em> s:w:). The same word for "moving" is used of how the Jewish religion could not "move" the heavy burdens of legalism and human guilt before God (<em><a href='B:470 23:4'>Mat 23:4</a></em>).</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 5:4'>Joh 5:4</a></em>&nbsp;<em>For an angel of the Lord went down at certain seasons into the pool and disturbed the water. Whoever was first to step into the pool, after the waters were disturbed, was healed of whatever disease he had</em>- The Bible records things at times from how they appear to men at the time; hence the language of demon possession and exorcism, even though the real existence of demons is denied in the Bible. Here we have another example. The Lord’s miracle of healing the lame man at the pool was to show the folly of the Jewish myth that at Passover time an angel touched the water of the Bethesda pool, imparting healing properties to it. This myth is recorded without direct denial of its truth; the record of Christ’s miracle is the exposure of its falsehood. Another example would be the Jewish myth that the High Priest’s Passover address was a direct speaking forth of God’s words; this wrong idea isn’t specifically corrected, but it is worked through by God – in that Caiaphas’ Passover words just before the crucifixion came strangely true, thus condemning Caiaphas and justifying the Lord Jesus as Israel’s Saviour (<em><a href='B:500 11:51'>Joh 11:51</a></em>).</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 5:5'>Joh 5:5</a></em>&nbsp;<em>One man there had been ill for thirty-eight years</em>- The paralysed man had waited by the pool 38 years, waiting for someone to cure him. There was no cure in those 38 years- only in the word of Christ (<em><a href='B:500 5:5'>Joh 5:5</a></em>). Israel were actually in the wilderness for 38 years; the similarity implies Moses' leadership could not bring salvation, only the word of Christ.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 5:6'>Joh 5:6</a></em> - see on <em><a href='B:470 20:32'>Mat 20:32</a></em>.</p><p><em>When Jesus saw him lying there, knowing he had been there a long time, he said to him: Would you be made whole?</em>- The Lord asks these basic questions in order to elicit in a person what is their greatest, dominant desire. Thus He asked a blind man what he wanted; He made as if He would have gone further on the walk to Emmaus, and appeared as if He would walk past the drowning disciples on the lake. He knows of course the answers ahead of time but He wishes to elicit in us an articulation of what is our dominant desire. The Lord is the same yesterday as today; He likewise brings us to realize what are our dominant desires. All sick people would say they wish to be cured, but actually for some it is not their dominant desire- especially after 38 years. He asked the question exactly because He knew the man had "been there a long time". Human nature develops coping mechanisms to the extent that our natural conservatism can mean that we do not actually have change as a dominant desire. And the Lord sought to elicit such desire in the man; perhaps He cured that man rather than the other long term residents of Bethesda because He knew that he alone really wanted to change.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 5:7'>Joh 5:7</a></em>&nbsp;<em>The sick man answered him: Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is disturbed. As I approach someone else steps in front of me</em>- The man was totally focused on the myth. He felt his salvation could only be achieved by his own works and strength, of which he didn't have enough; and he didn't have the right friends, who could put him into the pool. He was looking for a helper, who would be with him all the time and would be ready to get him into the pool whenever the Angel supposedly came. He was looking for a saviour; not just for the coming of an Angel. Perhaps it was this dominant desire which the Lord was attracted to and felt he could work with.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 5:8'>Joh 5:8</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Jesus said to him: Arise, take up your bed and walk</em>- The nature of the healing in this case was a test of the man's respect of the Lord's spoken word. He could have argued back that no, he needed help to get into the pool when the Angel came. But he was looking for a personal Saviour and was willing to accept His word, and make the first movement to try to "arise". The command to take up his bed was also a psychologically intentional statement; the man would have walked off holding his mat in his hand, a powerful visual image that would have remained in the memories of many. And he would have had to dispose of it somewhere, another psychological underlining to him of the reality that he was really cured. We see here the same sensitivity in the Lord which He still shows in His dealings with people today.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 5:9'>Joh 5:9</a></em>&nbsp;<em>And straightway the man was made whole and took up his bed and walked. Now it was the Sabbath on that day</em>- The immediacy of the Lord's cures has been noted on <em><a href='B:500 4:52'>Joh 4:52</a></em>. Claims of healing typically required a period of time; but the Lord's miracles were total and instant rather than requiring periods of time to take effect:&nbsp; The man's obedience to the command to take up his mat and walk is noted; for as noted on :8, it was his obedience to the Lord's spoken word which was so significant.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 5:10'>Joh 5:10</a></em>&nbsp;<em>So the Jews said to him who had been cured: It is the Sabbath; it is not lawful for you to carry your bed</em>- The actual law of Moses did not condemn people for carrying their mat after being healed, but the Jews had come to assume that their fences around the Law were in fact the Law itself. And that is the problem with fences around laws; they come to be perceived as the law itself. Faced with the evident power of the Spirit, the legalist must either capitulate or madly insist upon the consequences which arise from infringement of the letter of their own laws. And we see such anger today elicited from legalistic minds when the Spirit is clearly operative. Baptize 50 people, and the legalistic mind will bet angry rather than rejoicing that Christ is preached, insisting upon the consequences of breaking their own by-laws which they have in their own minds turned into God's laws. Fences around laws invite men to play God, and indeed they do so. As noted on :1, such people have hijacked God's law and way and turned it into their own.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 5:11'>Joh 5:11</a></em>&nbsp;<em>But he answered them: He that made me whole, the same said to me: Take up your bed and walk</em>- The man correctly reasoned that One who operated by the power of the Spirit was clearly above all human by-laws and religious regulations of mere men. The Lord had designed the nature of the cure to depend upon obedience to His word, which of itself required the man to break the Jewish regulations about not carrying a mat on the Sabbath. The Lord had intentionally provoked this conflict, because He saw that it was necessary in the ultimate spiritual path of this man. And He does the same with us, carefully tailoring experiences and conflicts in order that our faith might grow.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 5:12'>Joh 5:12</a></em>&nbsp;<em>They asked him: Who is the man that said to you: Take up your bed and walk?</em>- Their focus was not on the miracle, which they also considered "work", but on the specific command to carry a mat on the Sabbath. They surely knew who it was- only Jesus of Nazareth did this kind of thing. They were looking for legal evidence from this man.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 5:13'>Joh 5:13</a></em>&nbsp;<em>But the man who was healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had slipped away while there was a crowd in that place</em>- The Lord could have course orchestrated this miracle in any way He chose. But He did it in this way, leaving Himself anonymous, so that the man would be earnestly asking himself every moment: "Who is this man?". And that of course is the question which John's Gospel puts to his audience. For the man to truthfully answer the Jews' questions with "I don't know, He slipped away in the crowd::." would have likewise made the Jews ask themselves the same question, and reflect that Jesus of Nazareth was no standard miracle worker, but of an altogether higher order.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 5:14'>Joh 5:14</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Afterwards, Jesus found him in the temple and said to him: Look, you are made whole. Sin no more, lest a worse thing befall you</em>- The man had sought to express his gratitude by going to the temple, perhaps wondering whether he ought to offer a sacrifice for his cleansing. But the Lord was sensitive to the fact that ritual obedience to law can lead us away from the imperative which must be keenly felt- to sin no more. We can infer that his condition was a result of sin and his tendency was now to return to the sinful life.</p><p>The Lord told him: "Sin no more, lest a worse thing (than those years of sitting by the pool) come upon you" (<em><a href='B:500 5:14'>Joh 5:14</a></em>). That "worse thing" was rejection at the judgment- which, it could be inferred, would be like earnestly desiring salvation but not finding it. For that will be the fate of the rejected at the last day. None will be shrugging their shoulders, indifferent to the eternity they have missed.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 5:15'>Joh 5:15</a></em>&nbsp;<em>The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him whole</em>- As noted on :12 and :13, the Lord structured the miracle so that the whole style of it made it clear that it had been Him. So he was telling the Jews what they knew already in their consciences.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 5:16'>Joh 5:16</a></em>&nbsp;<em>And for this cause the Jews persecuted Jesus, because he did these things on the Sabbath</em>- Some manuscripts add "and sought to kill him" (AV). They were seizing upon the Mosaic commands to kill the Sabbath breaker (<em><a href='B:20 31:15'>Exo 31:15</a></em>; <em><a href='B:20 35:2'>Exo 35:2</a></em>). This is the blind anger of those who think their religious organization is the only one God recognizes, and cannot cope with someone operating successfully outside of it. The same mindset is still seen today within Christian groups. "He did these things" translates an imperfect tense in the Greek which suggests the Lord habitually did miracles on the Sabbath. He was certainly seeking to provoke the Sabbath issue with the Jews, because here most clearly, they had hijacked God's laws and made their own fences around them equivalent to Divine law, thus playing God.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 5:17'>Joh 5:17</a></em> - see on <em><a href='B:540 4:6'>2Co 4:6</a></em>.</p><p><em>But Jesus answered them: My Father works even until now and therefore I also work</em>- The cosmos hasn't been created, wound up by God as it were on clockwork, and left ticking by an absent creator. There are many Bible verses which teach that God is actively, consciously outgiving of His Spirit in the myriad things going on in the natural creation, every nanosecond He is sensitive to the needed input from Him- and He gives it. Therefore we are never far from Him. The Lord Jesus defended working for His Father on the Sabbath because God was also at work on the Sabbath.</p><p>That God's Son could be a normal working class person actually says a lot about the humility of God Himself. <em><a href='B:500 5:17'>Joh 5:17</a></em> has been translated: "My Father is a working man to this day, and I am a working man myself". No less an authority than C:H. Dodd commented: "That the Greek words could bear that meaning is undeniable". I find especially awesome the way Mary mistakes the risen Lord for a lowly gardener- He evidently dressed Himself in the clothes of a working man straight after His resurrection, a far cry from the haloed Christ of high church art.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 5:18'>Joh 5:18</a></em>&nbsp;<em>For this cause the Jews sought the more to kill him, because he not only broke the Sabbath law, but he called God his own Father, making himself seem like God</em>- The Jews only had authority to ask the Romans to carry out a death sentence if it involved desecration of the temple; but their rage was such that they countenanced extra-judicial murder, as witnessed by Saul murdering Christians. It was a long stretch to say that claiming Divine Sonship was claiming to be God personally, and the Lord brings out their error in chapter 10. This is especially so as the Old Testament calls men "gods" and the term "God" was applied by the Jews to Moses. It is tragic indeed that standard Christianity through the false doctrine of the Trinity has made the same logical error. We must note that the Greek translated "seem like" means just that; it does not mean 'directly equal to' (it is translated "agreed together", <em><a href='B:480 14:56'>Mar 14:56</a></em>; <em><a href='B:480 14:59'>Mar 14:59</a></em>). The same phrase is found in <em><a href='B:570 2:6'>Phi 2:6</a></em> where perhaps in allusion to this incident, Paul states that the Lord did not consider such 'equality with God' a thing to be even grasped at.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 5:19'>Joh 5:19</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Jesus therefore answered and said to them: Truly, truly, I say to you: The Son can do nothing of himself but only what he sees the Father doing. For whatever works He does, these the Son does in like manner</em>- The statement that He can do nothing of Himself is an answer to their mistaken idea that He was making Himself in some way equal to God (:18). “The works… The Son can do nothing&nbsp;<em>of himself</em>” recalls Moses' words: “All these works… I have not done them of my own mind” (<em><a href='B:40 16:28'>Num 16:28</a></em>). The Lord was claiming to be as Moses, and a prophet greater than Moses; but not God.</p><h4>This passage gives a window into the Lord's self-perception here. He says that whatever He sees the Father / abba / daddy do, He does "in like manner". It is the language of a young child mimicking their father. And He speaks of Himself as an adult behaving just like this. There was a child-likeness about Him in this sense. And the disciples seem to have noticed this- for no less than four times in Acts (<em><a href='B:510 3:13'>Act 3:13</a></em>; <em><a href='B:510 3:26'>Act 3:26</a></em>; <em><a href='B:510 4:27'>Act 4:27</a></em>; <em><a href='B:510 4:30'>Act 4:30</a></em>) they refer to Jesus as the "holy child" of God. Their image of Jesus had something in it which reflected that child-likeness about Him which still stuck in their memories. And may we too "ceaseless::. Abba, father, cry". The haunting melody of that hymn well expresses the utter wonder of it all, as we too struggle to find our true Father. The spirit / attitude of the Son of God should be ours, in that we like Him cry "Abba, father" (<em><a href='B:550 4:6'>Gal 4:6</a></em>; <em><a href='B:520 8:15'>Rom 8:15</a></em>). His spirit / attitude to the Father should be ours; He stressed that His Father is our Father (<em><a href='B:500 20:17'>Joh 20:17</a></em>). Jesus acted and 'was' for all the world as if He had had His natural Father with Him from the start of His life. This was how close the Father became to Jesus; the extent to which He successfully 'found' Him; to the point that the 'mere' invisibility of that Father was not a major issue or barrier in their relationship. And so it should be for us, in the life of believing in that which is unseen, and in them who are invisible to us:&nbsp;</h4>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 5:20'>Joh 5:20</a></em>&nbsp;<em>For the Father loves the Son and shows him all things that Himself does; and greater works than these will He show him, that you may marvel</em>- As noted in commentary on chapter 4, the Lord did not consider that seeing miracles was a solid basis for faith. "Marvel" has connotations of disbelief; the more miracles which would be done, the "greater works" which the Lord would do through the apostles (<em><a href='B:500 14:12'>Joh 14:12</a></em>), would not so much create faith as lead them to marvel in incomprehension. The connection with the "greater works" to be done by the apostles is clear (<em><a href='B:500 14:12'>Joh 14:12</a></em>); they were empowered to do what the Lord had been shown needed to be done by the Father.</p><p>In <em><a href='B:500 5:19-20'>Joh 5:19-20</a></em> we read that the Son does (<em>poieo</em>) what He sees the Father doing, and the Father shows Him (<em>deiknumi</em>) all (<em>panta</em>) that He does. This is referring to <em><a href='B:20 25:9'>Exo 25:9</a></em> LXX, where Moses makes (<em>poieo</em>) the Tabernacle according all (<em>panta</em>) that God shows him (<em>deiknuo</em>). The reference of <em><a href='B:500 5:19-20'>Joh 5:19-20</a></em> is therefore to the Lord working with His Father in the building up of us the tabernacle… and&nbsp;<em>all</em>&nbsp;things God planned for us were revealed to the Son even in His mortality. What great wealth of understanding was there within His mind, within those brain cells… and how tragic that the head and body that bore them was betrayed and ignored and spat upon and tortured by men…</p><p>There is here what C:H. Dodd has called ‘the parable of the apprentice’: “A son…does only what he sees his father doing: what father does, son does; for a father loves his son and shows him all his trade”. Now just imagine what that meant for the Lord Jesus, growing up with Joseph, who appeared to be His father, learning Joseph’s trade. Yet He knew that His true Father was God, and He was eagerly learning&nbsp;<em>His</em>&nbsp;trade.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 5:21'>Joh 5:21</a></em>&nbsp;<em>For as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, even so the Son also gives life to whom he will</em>- The present tenses mean that the Son now gives life, and this is a development of the ideas of the prologue. The life given is the life of the Spirit, the power to live the kind of life the Lord Jesus lived. The same word is found in <em><a href='B:500 6:63'>Joh 6:63</a></em>: "It is the Spirit that quickens"; so the Son "gives life" s:w. "quickens" through giving of His Spirit, the ability to live and think as He did and does. This promise is at the core of Christianity, of being like Christ. It is for all time. The Lord gave His life for us on the cross, but He gives His life to us in an ongoing sense. It is the Spirit of Christ in us now which shall quicken or make alive our mortal bodies in the process of resurrection to life at the last day (s:w. <em><a href='B:520 8:11'>Rom 8:11</a></em>, see note there). He is a "quickening spirit" now as He shall be in granting the resurrection to life at the last day (<em><a href='B:530 15:45'>1Co 15:45</a></em>).</p><p>Abiding in the word of Christ, His words abiding in us, abiding in love, abiding in the Father and Son (<em><a href='B:690 4:16'>1Jn 4:16</a></em>) are all parallel ideas. Jesus Himself ‘quickens’ or breathes life into us (<em><a href='B:500 5:21'>Joh 5:21</a></em>)- but His Spirit does this, in that His words ‘are spirit’ (<em><a href='B:500 6:63'>Joh 6:63</a></em>). Again we see how His personal presence, His life and Spirit, are breathed into us through His words being in us. In the mundane monotony of daily life, doing essentially the same job, travelling to work the same route, the alarm clock going off the same time each morning… there can be breathed into us a unique new life through having His words ever abiding within us. And this ‘quickening’ in daily life now is the foretaste of the ‘quickening’ which we will literally experience at the resurrection (<em><a href='B:530 15:22'>1Co 15:22</a></em> - ‘made alive’ is the same Greek word translated ‘quicken’ in <em><a href='B:500 5:21'>Joh 5:21</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 6:63'>Joh 6:63</a></em>). If the Spirit of Jesus now dwells in us, then that same Spirit shall immortalize our mortal bodies into immortality at the Lord's return (see on <em><a href='B:520 8:11'>Rom 8:11</a></em>). In this sense, receiving and living the Lord's Spirit now is receiving life, the kind of life we shall eternally live- "eternal life". The Son giving life now is therefore related seamlessly to how the Father shall give life at the resurrection to life at the last day.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 5:22'>Joh 5:22</a></em>&nbsp;<em>For neither does the Father judge anyone, but He has given all judgment to the Son</em>- Even the most basic reading of the New Testament will reveal that the Greek&nbsp;<em>krino</em>&nbsp;(usually translated “judge") is used in more than one way. The same is true of the idea of 'judgment' in many languages. Thus in English, "judgment" refers both to the process of deciding / judging a case, and also to the final judgment of condemnation. We read that the Father judges no one (<em><a href='B:500 5:22'>Joh 5:22</a></em>); but (evidently in another sense), He does judge (<em><a href='B:500 8:50'>Joh 8:50</a></em>). Christ did not come to judge (<em><a href='B:500 8:15'>Joh 8:15</a></em>), but in another way He did (<em><a href='B:500 5:30'>Joh 5:30</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 8:16'>Joh 8:16</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 8:26'>Joh 8:26</a></em>). Paul tells the Corinthians to judge nothing, and then scolds them for not judging each other (<em><a href='B:530 4:5'>1Co 4:5</a></em> cp. <em><a href='B:500 6:1-3'>Joh 6:1-3</a></em>):&nbsp;<em>Krino</em>&nbsp;(to "judge") can simply mean to make a decision, or think something through (<em><a href='B:510 20:16'>Act 20:16</a></em>; <em><a href='B:510 26:8'>Act 26:8</a></em>; <em><a href='B:510 27:11'>Act 27:11</a></em>; <em><a href='B:530 2:2'>1Co 2:2</a></em>; <em><a href='B:530 7:37'>1Co 7:37</a></em>; <em><a href='B:540 2:1'>2Co 2:1</a></em>; <em><a href='B:630 3:12'>Tit 3:12</a></em>). And because of this, we are encouraged to "judge" situations according to God's word and principles; thus 'judging' can mean forming an opinion based on correct interpretation of the word (<em><a href='B:500 7:24'>Joh 7:24</a></em>; <em><a href='B:530 10:15'>1Co 10:15</a></em>; <em><a href='B:530 11:13'>1Co 11:13</a></em>; <em><a href='B:540 5:14'>2Co 5:14</a></em>). Therefore, judging or opinion forming on any other basis is 'judging after the flesh', and this is wrong (<em><a href='B:490 12:57'>Luk 12:57</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 8:15'>Joh 8:15</a></em>); judging rightly is part of our basis of acceptability with the Lord Jesus (<em><a href='B:490 7:43'>Luk 7:43</a></em>). It is a shameful thing if we can't judge our brethren (<em><a href='B:530 5:12'>1Co 5:12</a></em>). "Judge not" must be understood in this context.</p><p>In the context here, the Lord is warning the Jews who were seeking to kill Him that all judgment is actually His, and not theirs. He is their judge, and shall be their judge at the last day. His very presence amongst men was His judgment of them; the same word is used in <em><a href='B:500 3:19'>Joh 3:19</a></em> in stating that the judgment of the Jewish world was simply because the light of Christ had come into it.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 5:23'>Joh 5:23</a></em>&nbsp;<em>That all may honour the Son, even as they honour the Father. He that does not honour the Son does not honour the Father that sent him</em>- The honour of the Son is on the basis of the fact that He is our judge (:22). The true glory to God was to be through the lonely rejection of the cross. He who quietly honours / glorifies the Father (<em><a href='B:500 5:23'>Joh 5:23</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 8:49'>Joh 8:49</a></em>) in the life of self-crucifixion will be honoured / glorified by the Father quietly in this life, and openly in the age to come (<em><a href='B:500 12:26'>Joh 12:26</a></em>); such is the mutuality between a man and his God. See on <em><a href='B:730 7:9'>Rev 7:9</a></em>.</p><p>To love God and Christ is to love our neighbour as ourselves. This is because of the intense unity of God's Name. Because our brethren and sisters share God's Name, as we do, we must love them as ourselves, who also bear that same Name. And if we love the Father, we must love the Son, who bears His Name, with a similar love. The letters of John state this explicitly. If we love God, we&nbsp;<em>must</em>&nbsp;love our brother; and if we love the Father, we&nbsp;<em>must</em>&nbsp;love the Son. This is why we must honour the Son as we honour the Father (<em><a href='B:500 5:23'>Joh 5:23</a></em>); such is the unifying power of God's Name. So the Father, Son and church are inextricably connected. Baptism into the name of Christ is therefore baptism into the Name of the Father, and associates us with the "one Spirit" (<em><a href='B:470 28:19'>Mat 28:19</a></em>; <em><a href='B:560 4:4'>Eph 4:4</a></em>). In the same way as we cannot choose to live in isolation from the Father and Son, so we cannot separate ourselves from others who bear the same Name. The Scribe well understood all this: "There is one God::. and to love him::. and to love his neighbour as himself, is more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices" (<em><a href='B:480 12:32-33'>Mar 12:32-33</a></em>). Those whole offerings represented the whole body of Israel (<em><a href='B:30 4:7-15'>Lev 4:7-15</a></em>). The Scribe understood that those offerings taught that all Israel were unified together on account of their bearing the same Name of Yahweh.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 5:24'>Joh 5:24</a></em> - see on <em><a href='B:500 3:13'>Joh 3:13</a></em>; <em><a href='B:690 3:14'>1Jn 3:14</a></em>.</p><p><em>Truly, truly, I say to you: He that hears my word and believes Him that sent me has eternal life, and comes not into condemnation, but has passed out of death into life</em>- In the immediate context, the hearing of the word alludes to the way the healed impotent man had heard the Lord's word and believed; see on :8. The same word for passing over from death to life is used when John writes to those who had been converted as a result of hearing his Gospel. He says that they know they have passed over from death to life because they live in love (<em><a href='B:690 3:14'>1Jn 3:14</a></em>). Hearing the Lord's word, living in the Spirit, which means living in love, as He loved, living with the spirit of life which He had and has::. are all the same thing. "My word" is effectively "my life", His Spirit of life, as established in the prologue. Remember too that John is writing in Hebrew thought to Jewish people. Hebrews are those who have 'passed over', as Abraham their father did geographically so long ago. But the definition of the new Israel, the new Hebrews, are those who have passed over from the darkness of Judaism to live in the light of Christ. If we are walking in the light, with His Spirit, then we shall not be condemned. That judgment s:w. "condemnation" is for those who see but reject the light and prefer to remain in darkness.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 5:25'>Joh 5:25</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Truly, truly, I say to you: The hour comes and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God; and they that hear shall live</em>- As explained above, if we have the spirit of Christ, we are living the eternal life. In that sense the resurrection has happened to us; but the physical transformation of our body from mortal to immortal is yet to happen, at the resurrection to life at the last day. And so He says that that hour comes and yet now is. Just as they shall come forth to life at the sound of the Lord's literal voice at His coming, so we come to spiritual life now as a result of hearing His word / voice. "Hearing" here implies more than literal hearing, but hearing with belief, just as 'seeing' in John means seeing and believing.</p><p>But the Lord's "hour" in John also has reference to His death. The judgment quality of the crucifixion is reflected by the way in which the Lord speaks of both the cross and the day of future judgment as "the hour" (<em><a href='B:500 5:25-29'>Joh 5:25-29</a></em>). When the Lord taught that "the hour" is both to come and "now is", He surely meant us to understand that in His crucifixion, properly perceived, there is the judgment of this world, the end of this age for us who believe in Him, the cutting off of sin. The way that the Lord Jesus is 'sat down upon' the Judgment Bench by Pilate, as if He is the authentic judge, is further confirmation that in His Passion, the Lord was truly Judge of this world.<br/>The hour that was coming and yet was refers to the Lord’s death. There, the voice of the Son of God was made clear. We have shown elsewhere how the Lord’s blood is personified as a voice crying out. Those who truly hear that voice will be raised to life. The way the graves opened at His death was surely a foretaste of this. See on <em><a href='B:500 16:25'>Joh 16:25</a></em>.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 5:26'>Joh 5:26</a></em>&nbsp;<em>For as the Father has life in Himself, so He has given the Son life in himself</em>- This seems to mean that because spiritual life is so inherent in the Son, He therefore has the ability to give that life or spirit to others. We cannot really give our lives to others in any literal sense because we do not have life inherent within ourselves, it is a gift. But the Father and Son have the life which is themselves, and can gift that to others.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 5:27'>Joh 5:27</a></em> - see on <em><a href='B:480 2:10'>Mar 2:10</a></em>.</p><p><em>And He has given him authority to execute judgment, because he is a Son of Man</em>- His humanity is His ability to judge us. We will then realize the extent to which He succeeded in every point where we realize we failed, despite being strapped with our same nature. And thus we will respect Him yet the more for His perfection of character, and for the wonder of the salvation that is thereby in Him. We cannot judge because although we too are 'sons of men', we have sinned. Any such judgment would be hypocritical. But the Lord can judge, because He had human nature, being the archetypical "son of man", and yet never sinned.</p><p>Even in His life, the Father committed all judgment unto the Son (:22). The Lord can therefore talk in some arresting present tenses: "Verily, verily, I say unto you as judge, He that heareth my word, and believeth on Him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation". According to our response to His word, so we have now our judgment. He goes on to speak of how the believer will again hear His voice, at His return: "The hour is coming, and also now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God: and they that hear shall live". Our response to His word now is a mirror of our response to His word then. Hence the hour is yet future, and yet now is. 'The Son right now has the authority to execute judgment on the basis of response to His word. He will do this at the last day; and yet even as He spoke, He judged as He heard' paraphrase of <em><a href='B:500 5:27-30'>Joh 5:27-30</a></em>. Because He&nbsp;<em>is&nbsp;</em>the Son of man, He even then had the power of judgment given to Him (<em><a href='B:500 5:27'>Joh 5:27</a></em>). These present tenses would be meaningless unless the Lord was even then exercising His role as judge. When He says that He doesn't judge / condemn men (<em><a href='B:500 3:17-21'>Joh 3:17-21</a></em>), surely He is saying that&nbsp;<em>He</em>&nbsp;won't so much judge men as they will judge themselves by their attitude to Him. His concentration was and is on saving men. The condemnation is that men loved darkness, and prefer the darkness of rejection to the light of Christ. Likewise <em><a href='B:500 12:47-48'>Joh 12:47-48</a></em>: "If any man hear my words, and believe not, I judge him not: for I came not to so much as to judge the world, but to save the world. He that rejecteth me::. hath one that judgeth him: the word his response to the word, supplying the ellipsis that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day".</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 5:28'>Joh 5:28</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Marvel not at this For the hour comes, in which all that are in the tombs shall hear his voice</em>- The Lord repeatedly tells the cynical and unbelieving Jews of His day&nbsp;<em>not&nbsp;</em>to marvel / wonder, but to&nbsp;<em>believe</em>. Perhaps we're intended to read in an ellipsis to these passages: 'Don't only marvel / wonder but&nbsp;<em>believe</em>’. John later used the same phrase himself in <em><a href='B:690 3:13'>1Jn 3:13</a></em> - he was so influenced by reflecting upon the words of the Lord Jesus that His words became John’s words. Our language and thought processes should be likewise changed as we come to have Christ in us, and His spirit becomes ours.</p><p>"The tombs" translates a Greek term rooted in the idea of remembrance; 'memorial tombs' or 'cenotaph' would be no bad translation. The "all" in view are therefore those within the 'memory' of God, the believers. This is established by the context, which has spoken of how all who now receive the life of the Spirit shall also rise to life in the last day. We who have heard His voice now shall again hear it at the resurrection. It is that word of command which is therefore presented here as the basis for resurrection to life, just as Lazarus is later depicted as coming out of the tomb at the sound of the Lord's voice, as a worked example of what the Lord means here.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 5:29'>Joh 5:29</a></em>&nbsp;<em>And shall come forth; they that have done good, to the resurrection of life, and they that have done evil, to the resurrection of condemnation</em>- The 'coming forth' is another connection with the resurrection of Lazarus, who was bidden "Come forth" by the voice of the Lord Jesus. He was a worked example ahead of time of the Lord's teaching here. Although "life" and "condemnation" are ministered in this life according to a person's response to encounter with the Lord Jesus, their final outworking and moment will be at the resurrection of the last day. That is when immortality begins in a bodily, material sense.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 5:30'>Joh 5:30</a></em>&nbsp;<em>I can of myself do nothing. As I hear, I judge; and my judgment is righteous, because I seek not my own will, but the will of Him that sent me</em>- This is another reflection of the Lord's humanity. Our will is not yet coincidental with God’s; even the will of the Son was not perfectly attuned to that of the Father (<em><a href='B:490 22:42'>Luk 22:42</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 5:30'>Joh 5:30</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 6:38'>Joh 6:38</a></em>), hence the finally unanswered prayer for immediate deliverance from the cross. Yet as we grow spiritually, the will of God will be more evident to us, and we will only ask for those things which are according to His will. And thus our experience of answered prayer will be better and better, which in turn will provide us with even more motivation for faith in prayer.</p><p>The Lord was and is 'seeking' the Father's will not in the sense that He is unsure of it, but in the Hebrew sense of 'seeking', i:e. respect and worship. The Lord's thinking or spirit is that of the Father. Therefore God's will is His will, and this is reflected in the way the Lord judges. Yet we bear in mind that God's will is for human salvation, that none be lost but all the called should be saved (<em><a href='B:500 6:39'>Joh 6:39</a></em>; <em><a href='B:610 2:4'>1Ti 2:4</a></em>; <em><a href='B:680 3:9'>2Pe 3:9</a></em>). And that same will is in the Son, who will judge according to this "will":&nbsp;</p><p><em><a href='B:370 7:8'>Amo 7:8</a></em> describes Israel's condemnation as a plumb line, a measurement and assessor, being applied to them. Here the figure of weighing up evidence is made to mean condemnation; so immediate is God's judgment. He needs no time to draw a conclusion; being outside of time, He can see a situation and make the judgment immediately, and implicit within the information gathering process. The Lord Jesus likewise judged as soon as He heard (<em><a href='B:500 5:30'>Joh 5:30</a></em>). His very existence among men was their judgment- for judgment He came into this world, the light of His moral excellence blinded the immoral (<em><a href='B:500 9:39'>Joh 9:39</a></em>).</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 5:31'>Joh 5:31</a></em>&nbsp;<em>If I testify of myself, my witness is not true</em>- Having presented Himself as the ultimate judge, the Lord now changes the metaphor to say that He is a witness in His own trial. He requires witnesses to testify about Him. So He is now recognizing that He stands under the judgmental eyes of the Jews, and is presenting His witnesses in His defence.</p>


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<h4><em><a href='B:500 5:32'>Joh 5:32</a></em>&nbsp;<em>It is another that testifies of me; and I know that the witness which He testifies of me is true</em>- Codex Beza reads "You know::.". The Jews had set themselves up as the Lord's judges. He calls God as a witness in His case (<em><a href='B:500 7:28'>Joh 7:28</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 8:26'>Joh 8:26</a></em>). The whole picture of the Father as a witness, the Son in the dock, and the Jews as judges::. is all rather bizarre. Who were they to judge God and choose to reject His testimony to His own Son, when in fact they knew "You know::.", Codex Beza in their consciences that God's witness was true. But this was what the Jews were doing. But in fact anyone who rejects the Lord Jesus as their judge when they encounter Him::. is in fact judging Him, and thereby treating God as a witness whose testimony they can reject. The encounter with Jesus, the light of the world, can only really result in total surrender to Him and His cause. Any rejection of Him is to play God, to set oneself up as judge of God, and to remain in the darkness with only condemnation awaiting:&nbsp;</h4>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 5:33'>Joh 5:33</a></em>&nbsp;<em>You asked John the Baptist, and he has testified to the truth</em>- The 'asking' is presented by the Lord in the context of legal metaphor. They had as it were summoned John the Baptist to give testimony; not perhaps literally, but in that these Jews now judging the Lord were those who had gone out into the wilderness to hear John, and had asked who he was- and been directed by him to the Lord Jesus.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 5:34'>Joh 5:34</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Not that the testimony that I receive is from man; but I say these things so that you may be saved</em>- This is perhaps saying the same as Paul's references to 'speaking after the manner of men', putting things in human terms in order to persuade those who still thought as men (<em><a href='B:520 6:19'>Rom 6:19</a></em>; <em><a href='B:550 3:15'>Gal 3:15</a></em>). The testimony of John the Baptist wasn't relevant testimony when God Himself is called as a witness. But because the Lord wished even the salvation of these wicked, bitter, jealous men who even judged God Almighty::. He put things in human terms. He reminded them therefore of the testimony of John the Baptist. The Lord wanted men to accept His Father’s witness; but He was prepared to let them accept John’s human witness, and actually this lower level of perception by them, preferring to believe the words of a mere man, would still be allowed by the Lord to lead them to salvation.</p><p>And we might well note that a great number of priests and Pharisees did in fact later get baptized; so the Lord's desire for their salvation did in fact pay off. We should learn from that never, ever to write off anyone as a hopeless case for the Gospel.</p><p>The Lord said that He didn’t receive witness from men; but, because He so wanted men to be saved, He directed them to the witness of John the Baptist. This in essence is the same as the way in which some people believed the testimony of the Samaritan woman, but others said they only believed once they heard Jesus Himself, as they discounted the testimony of men / women (<em><a href='B:500 4:42'>Joh 4:42</a></em>). And so in our day, the ideal witness is that of the Father and Son themselves directly through their word. And yet there are others who are persuaded not by that so much as by the testimony of others who have believed. This may be a lower level compared to the Lord’s ideal position of not allowing the testimony of mere men; and yet He makes this concession, for the sake of His burning desire for human salvation.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 5:35'>Joh 5:35</a></em> - see on <em><a href='B:470 3:11'>Mat 3:11</a></em>.</p><p><em>He was the lamp that burns and shines, and you were willing to rejoice for a period in his light</em>- John's message was hard hitting, critical of his audience, and demanding radical repentance. And masses of people rejoiced in it. They liked the hard line, and were joyfully proud that they had apparently responded to it. But they had not come to total commitment to the Lord Jesus, so their apparent repentance was merely a psychological experience of no lasting value. There is true repentance, and surface level repentance. We must perceive the allusion here to the prologue. John “was not the light” in the sense that he was not Jesus personally (<em><a href='B:500 1:8'>Joh 1:8</a></em> RV); but he was in another sense “a burning and shining light” (<em><a href='B:500 5:35'>Joh 5:35</a></em>) in that he like us was “the light of the world” on account of his connection with Jesus. We too are to be the light of the world insofar as we are in Christ, who is the light of the world. Yet it could be said that the Jews rejoiced in the light of John the Baptist, but would not come to the true light, of the Lord Jesus:&nbsp;</p><p>"You were willing to rejoice for a period" sounds like John's version of the parable of the sower, where the seed is sown but some enthusiastically respond "with joy" only for a while and then fall away (<em><a href='B:470 13:20'>Mat 13:20</a></em>). The sower parable therefore had an immediate reference to the lack of lasting response to John's ministry.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 5:36'>Joh 5:36</a></em> - see on <em><a href='B:500 4:34'>Joh 4:34</a></em>.</p><p><em>But the witness which I have is greater than that of John. For the works which the Father has given me to accomplish, the very works that I do, testify that the Father has sent me</em>- As noted above, the Jews sat in judgment on the Lord, and He calls as witness for the defence the Father's empowerment of His miracles. To ignore that testimony or judge it as not significant to the case of Christ was to judge God. Those works came to the final 'accomplishment' of the cross, when "it is finished". And His death there was the final testament to God's love, the light shining in darkness.</p><p>“The work that the Father gave me to finish::. testifies” (<em><a href='B:500 5:36'>Joh 5:36</a></em> NIV); and thus when “it was finished” in the death of the cross, the full testimony / witness of God was spoken and made. When He was lifted up in crucifixion, the beholding Jews knew that His words were truly those of the Father; they saw in the cross God’s word spoken through Christ, they saw there the epitome of all the words the Lord spoke throughout His ministry (<em><a href='B:500 8:28'>Joh 8:28</a></em>). The Lord’s blood was thus a spoken testimony to all men (<em><a href='B:610 2:6'>1Ti 2:6</a></em> AVmg:).</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 5:37'>Joh 5:37</a></em>&nbsp;<em>And the Father that sent me, He has testified of me. You have neither heard His voice at any time, nor seen His shape</em>- They, sitting as judges of the Lord Jesus, had refused to hear His testimony about His Son. God's testimony to his Son was in the works or miracles (:36). But although like Nicodemus the Jews had no choice but to accept they had been done, they refused to accept the testimony made by them. Hearing God's voice and seeing His shape allude to Moses; and the Jews would of course agree that Moses was supreme in Judaism, and indeed they had not heard God's voice or seen the outline of His personal shape another argument for the existence of God in a corporeal form. But the Lord's idea was that those who had heard His voice and 'seen' / perceived Him, had witnessed a theophany far greater than what Moses saw- the allusions are to the prologue again, where the similarities with Moses are outlined.</p><p>It could be of course that the Lord is speaking here by way of glaring contrast: Moses earnestly desired to see God's shape, to view Him, to completely understand Him. This was denied him- but not Jesus. The similarity and yet difference between Moses and Jesus is really brought out here. And again, Moses is shown to be representative of sinful Israel; as he lifted up the serpent, so they would lift up Christ; as he failed to see the Father's "shape", so they did too.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 5:38'>Joh 5:38</a></em>&nbsp;<em>And you do not have His word dwelling in you, for you do not believe the one whom He has sent</em>- They searched the Scriptures (:39) but the word did not abide in them. The idea of 'abiding' is frequently associated with the abiding of the life, spirit and word of Jesus in the hearts of those who believe in Him. So I would read this as saying that because they did not believe in the sent One, therefore God's word, His seed, His Spirit, His life, did not abide in them; rather than reading it as meaning that if the Old Testament word of Moses abode in them, then they would believe in the sent One. I read it as suggested because the promise of the 'abiding' is clearly presented in John as a consequence which follows and not precedes believing in Christ.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 5:39'>Joh 5:39</a></em>&nbsp;<em>You search the scriptures, because you think that in them you have eternal life; and these are they which testify of me</em>- This is so tragically true of so many Protestant groups today. Bible study is not necessarily the way to coming to the Lord Jesus. In fact, it was their academic approach to the Bible which actually stopped them coming to Him (:40). Surely the Lord is using irony here: as if to say, ‘Go on searching through the scrolls, thinking as you do that finding true exposition will bring you eternal life. But you must come to&nbsp;<em>Me</em>, the word-made-flesh, the living and eternal life, if you wish to find it’.</p><p>We must see in that Man who had fingernails, hair, who needed to shave, who sneezed and blinked, the very Son of God; the Man who should dominate our thinking and being. And we must grasp the wonder of the fact that from the larynx of a Palestinian Jew came the words of Almighty God. All that was true of natural Israel becomes a warning for us, Israel after the spirit. The tension between the following of Jesus and merely studying the pages of the Bible for academic truth is brought out in the Lord’s encounter with the Jews in <em><a href='B:500 5:39'>Joh 5:39</a></em>: “Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: but ye will not come to&nbsp;<em>me</em>&nbsp;that ye might have life”. Surely the Lord is using irony here: as if to say, ‘Go on searching through the scrolls, thinking as you do that finding true exposition will bring you eternal life. But you must come to&nbsp;<em>me</em>, the word-made-flesh, the living and eternal life, if you wish to find it’.</p><p>C:H. Dodd throughout chapter 3 of his classic&nbsp;<em>The Interpretation Of The Fourth Gospel</em>&nbsp;gives ample reason to believe his thesis that John's Gospel was written partly in order to deconstruct the popular teachings of Philo in the first century- and there are therefore many allusions to his writings. Thus John records how in vain the Jews searched the Scriptures, because in them they thought they had eternal life (<em><a href='B:500 5:39'>Joh 5:39</a></em>)- when this is the very thing that Philo claimed to do. This approach helps us understand why, for example, the prologue to John is written in the way it is, full of allusion to Jewish ideas about the&nbsp;<em>logos</em>. How John writes is only confusing to us because we're not reading his inspired words against the immediate background in which they were written- which included the very popular false teachings of Philo about the&nbsp;<em>logos</em>. Thus Philo claimed that God had two sons, sent the younger into the world, and the elder, the&nbsp;<em>logos</em>, remained "by Him"- whereas John's prologue shows that the&nbsp;<em>logos</em>&nbsp;was an abstract idea, which&nbsp;<em>was</em>&nbsp;sent into the world in the form of God's one and only Son, the Lord Jesus. See on <em><a href='B:500 3:3'>Joh 3:3</a></em>.<br/>The Lord was unlike any other Rabbi- He wasn’t a verse-by-verse expositor of the Old Testament, neither did He like to argue case law. He told parables to exemplify and clarify His message- not in order to explain an Old Testament verse, as the Rabbis tended to. He drew lessons from nature in a way the Rabbis simply couldn’t do. Rabbi Jakob, a first century Rabbi, stated: “He who walks along the road repeating the Law and interrupts his repetition and says: How lovely this tree is How lovely this field is To him it will be reckoned as if he had misused his life” (The Mishnah,&nbsp;<em>Pirqe Abot</em>&nbsp;3:7b). By contrast, the Lord stopped and looked at the flowers of the field and drew His teaching from them. The Rabbinic way was to write and study endless&nbsp;<em>midrashim</em>&nbsp;on Bible verses, a kind of verse-by-verse exposition. The Lord’s approach was more holistic and natural. The word&nbsp;<em>Midrash&nbsp;</em>comes from&nbsp;<em>darash</em>, to search, and perhaps the Lord had this style of ‘Bible study’ in mind when He said: “Ye search i:e. midrash the scriptures because ye think that in them ye have eternal life… but ye will not come unto me, that ye may have life” (<em><a href='B:500 5:39'>Joh 5:39</a></em>). Neither the Lord nor myself are against careful Bible study. But the Lord was warning against the attitude that eternal life comes from midrashing the Scriptures, writing dry analytical commentary, labouring under the misapprehension that this somehow will give life. Eternal life comes from knowing the life of Jesus, for His nature and quality of life is the life that we will eternally live, by His grace.</p><p>They didn't&nbsp;<em>feel</em>&nbsp;the wonder of inspiration in their attitude to Bible study- even though they would have devoutly upheld the position that the Bible texts were inspired. And here we have a lesson for ourselves. The Lord brought this out in <em><a href='B:500 5:39'>Joh 5:39</a></em>, in saying that "Ye search the Scriptures, because ye think that in them ye have eternal life… and ye will not come to&nbsp;<em>me</em>, that ye may have life" (RV). Their Bible study did not lead them to Him. And is just as possible that we too can be Bible-centred and not Christ-centred. For to academically study a document and perceive its connections and intellectual purity does not require the living, transforming, demanding relationship which knowing Jesus does. See on <em><a href='B:510 13:27'>Act 13:27</a></em>.</p><p>The Lord told the Jews to “search the scriptures” so that they would have the word of God and the love of God abiding in them (<em><a href='B:500 5:38-42'>Joh 5:38-42</a></em>). They academically knew “the scriptures”, but the voice of God, the presence of God, and the love of God this reveals, was simply hidden from them. They weren’t&nbsp;<em>really</em>&nbsp;studying. But the Saviour also upbraided His very own men for their lack of true Biblical perception: “O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken” (<em><a href='B:490 24:25'>Luk 24:25</a></em>). Note that He did not upbraid them for not understanding His own clear prophecies concerning His passion; instead He rebukes them for not grasping the OT teaching about His death and resurrection. Yet if we try to prove from the OT alone that Messiah would die and resurrect, we are largely forced to reason from types. Even Isaiah 53 is only a prophecy of Christ insofar as Hezekiah (to whom it primarily refers) was a type of Christ. Stephen in Acts 7 resorts to typology to prove his points about the Messiahship of Jesus. The point is, the Lord expected those simple fishermen to have worked these things out, to have heard the voice of God in those OT types. And He upbraided them because they failed to do so. &nbsp;</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 5:40'>Joh 5:40</a></em>&nbsp;<em>But you will not come to me, so that you may have life-</em>&nbsp;The Jews searched the scriptures, thinking that by their Bible study alone they would receive eternal life. But they never came to Christ that they might know the eternal life that is in Him (<em><a href='B:500 5:39-40'>Joh 5:39-40</a></em>). They thought “eternal life” was in a book, a reward for correct intellectual discernment and exposition, rather than in the man Christ Jesus. And for all our Biblicism, we need to examine themselves in this regard. For like Peter, we must be Christ-centred more than purely Bible-centred; we must see Him “in all the Scriptures”, knowing that the whole word of God’s revelation was made flesh in Him.</p><p>The gift of life, the life and living of Jesus, His Spirit, was not predicated upon academic Bible study. We could not ask for a clearer argument against the argument that God's Spirit is only active today through the so-called "Spirit-word". The "life" or Spirit given to those who "come to me" is a gift; and the Jews were in fact hindered from receiving it by their excessive Biblicism.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 5:41'>Joh 5:41</a></em>&nbsp;<em>I receive not glory from men</em>- We are commanded to honour or give glory to the Son (:23). So the Lord is not against being honoured. So He may be lamenting here that He is not receiving honour from those men, they were not believing in Him but rather judging Him. Of course, He may have meant as GNB "I am not looking for human praise", i:e:, as much as looking for their belief in the Father's offer of salvation. Or maybe the Lord's point was that He received glory from the Father (<em><a href='B:680 1:17'>2Pe 1:17</a></em>), from God Himself, and so any human testimony to Him was of little value (<em><a href='B:500 5:34'>Joh 5:34</a></em>). In this case the Lord is alluding again to their standing in judgment upon Him and requiring witnesses to testify.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 5:42'>Joh 5:42</a></em>&nbsp;<em>But I know that you do not have the love of God in your hearts</em>- Understanding "the love of God" as the love we have for God opens up several passages. The Jews didn't have the love of God inside them, i:e. love for God, because they didn't have His spirit. Love is the ultimate fruit of the Spirit; there was no love in their hearts because they had no Spirit. All they had was an academic, slavish devotion to academic Bible study. But they had no heart, no Spirit and so no love for God. No wonder their Bible study didn't lead them to grasp the most fundamental theme of the Old Testament- that the Messiah was to be God's Son. But their lack of "love of God" doesn't mean God didn't love them. They&nbsp;<em>are</em>&nbsp;beloved for the father's sakes; as a Father always loves His wayward son. But they didn't have love of God in their souls. Paul's prayer that God would direct hearts "into the love of God" (<em><a href='B:600 3:5'>2Th 3:5</a></em>) surely means that He would influence their consciousness to be more filled with an upsurging love of God, rather than meaning that God would bring them into a position where He loved their hearts.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 5:43'>Joh 5:43</a></em>&nbsp;<em>I come in my Father's Name, and you do not accept me. If another shall come in his own name, you will accept him</em>- This again connects to the prologue. The Jews did not accept / receive Him; but those who did receive Him, received the Spirit. This is the mutuality between the believer and the Lord; if we receive Him, we receive the gift of His Spirit. The Jews were more likely to receive another Messiah, because he would not ask them to receive the kind of all demanding spirit which the Lord breathed in to those who accepted Him. The Father had testified to His Son's claims by the miracles done; the Lord came in His Father's Name / authority (GNB) in the sense that the miracles showed that He was clearly of God, as Nicodemus accepted. A claimant with lesser credentials, who came only in his own name, was more likely to be accepted because there was less personally at stake.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 5:44'>Joh 5:44</a></em>&nbsp;<em>How can you believe, you who accept praise from each other, but do not seek the praise that comes from the only God?</em>- The 'belief' in view is surely belief in Jesus as the Christ and Son of God. Being in a self-regarding, self-congratulatory religious environment, even if it is nominally Christian, is not the way toward faith in the Lord Jesus. The Greek seems to carry the idea: 'Glory can only be given to God, whereas you want glory from each other, effectively making yourselves equal to God as you falsely accused me of. You cannot believe in God whilst you are playing God, wanting glory to yourselves rather than to Him'. It is such arrogance, petty pride and positioning in the eyes of others which stops millions if not billions from believing.</p><p>Because there is only one God, there is only one glory, one Name of God, one standard of spirituality, one judge, one justifier. Whilst men seek glory and approbation and acceptance and justification from other men, they are denying the principle of one God. If there is only one God, we should seek His honour and justification, to the&nbsp;<em>total</em>&nbsp;exclusion of that of men. Hosea had revealed this truth earlier: “I am the Lord thy God::. and thou shalt know no god but me: for there is no saviour beside me::. neither will we say any more to the work of our hands, Ye are our gods: for in thee i:e. thee alone the fatherless findeth mercy" (<em><a href='B:350 13:4'>Hos 13:4</a></em>; <em><a href='B:350 14:3'>Hos 14:3</a></em>). Because God alone can give salvation and mercy, therefore there is no space for worshipping or seeking for the approbation of anything or anyone else; for the receipt of mercy and salvation are the only ultimate things worth seeking. There is only one God who can give them, and therefore we should seek for His acceptance alone.</p>


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<h4><em><a href='B:500 5:45'>Joh 5:45</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Do not think that I will accuse you to the Father. There is one that accuses you, Moses, on whom you have set your hope</em>- They who were judging the Lord Jesus were now put into the dock. An Moses was called as witness against them. They were condemned by Moses' law. And God was the judge to whom they were accused. Their judgment of the Lord, requiring Him to call God and John the Baptist as witnesses, was effectively their playing God. For any such judgment is playing God. And such will have to face God Himself as judge.</h4>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 5:46'>Joh 5:46</a></em>&nbsp;<em>For if you believed Moses, you would believe me. For he wrote of me</em>- The allusion is to the way Israel were intended to believe Moses because of the "great work" of the Red Sea and Passover lamb deliverance (<em><a href='B:20 14:31'>Exo 14:31</a></em>). God came to Israel personally in the thick cloud; the great theophany was so that Israel would believe Moses (<em><a href='B:20 19:9'>Exo 19:9</a></em>). But they did not believe Moses; and Israel too were blind to the great theophany of God in Christ see allusions to it in the prologue, and did not believe either Moses or Christ.</p><p>Disbelief of Moses and rejection of His writings as inspired (:47) was the cardinal sin according to Judaism. But the Lord accuses these men of it- men who spent their lives poring over the scrolls. Their rejection of the message of Moses meant they rejected Moses. They had wrongly assumed that devotion to the Bible assured them of acceptability with God. But to miss the message of Christ is to be left without God and effectively despising those writings. The essence of this conundrum is seen in many Christians to this day.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 5:47'>Joh 5:47</a></em>&nbsp;<em>But if you do not believe his writings, how shall you believe my words?</em>- This is John's equivalent to <em><a href='B:490 16:31'>Luk 16:31</a></em>: "If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, even if one rises from the dead". The Lord's resurrection is here paralleled with "my words". The risen Lord was and is His word to men. And in the Jewish context, it would only be accepted if they had firstly believed Moses. Of course, they would have been indignant at the idea that they did not believe the writings of Moses; they held a doctrine of hyper-inspiration of the text of the Torah, whereby every letter was inspired and seen as full of meaning. But such a reverent view of the Bible text can lead to Bibliolatry, rather than to faith in the Christ who is witnessed to throughout that text.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 6:1'>Joh 6:1</a></em>&nbsp;<em>After these things Jesus went away to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, which is the sea of Tiberias</em>- We get the sense of the Lord increasingly trying to retreat from attention. He had withdrawn from Judea to Galilee on the hunch that He would not be accepted in His home area; and was found wrong on that. Now, He goes to the other side of the sea, but the crowd follows Him. And then He goes up into a mountain (:3)- and sees a great crowd still coming to Him (:5). His patience and loving care for the masses is wonderful; when He really wanted a break from the attention.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 6:2'>Joh 6:2</a></em>&nbsp;<em>And a great crowd followed him, because they saw the signs which he performed on those that were sick</em>- As argued throughout chapter 5, the Lord's miracles were undeniably Divine and were as it were a legal testimony to His authenticity as God's Son in the court of public opinion. Even Nicodemus had recognized this. But from the way the Lord speaks later in the chapter, their motivation was for healing of sickness, for personal benefit rather than the bread of life.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 6:3'>Joh 6:3</a></em>&nbsp;<em>And Jesus went up into the mountain, and there he sat with his disciples</em>- This clearly echoes the description of the sermons on the mount and plain in Matthew and Luke. The message that He taught them all the hours it took for them to get hungry isn't recorded. But we can perhaps infer from the connections with Matthew and Luke that it was the same basic content- the manifesto of the Kingdom of God which was preached elsewhere.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 6:4'>Joh 6:4</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Now the Passover, the feast of the Jews, was at hand</em>- As noted on <em><a href='B:500 5:1'>Joh 5:1</a></em>, "the feast of the Lord" had been hijacked by the Jews, so that it had become instead&nbsp;<em>their</em>&nbsp;feast. This is the problem- when mere religion swamps and takes over real spirituality.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 6:5'>Joh 6:5</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Jesus therefore lifting up his eyes, and seeing that a great crowd came to him, said to Philip: Where are we to buy bread that these may eat?</em>- The "therefore" apparently connects with the coming of Passover (:4). He saw a parallel between the provision of food for that crowd, and the provision of the Paschal lamb, Himself, for Israel's salvation. We wonder why Philip particularly is given this test (:7). The Lord saw perhaps that there were specific issues with Philip that could be addressed and perfected by the whole experience. Or it could be that because Philip was from the immediate locality where they were, Bethsaida (<em><a href='B:500 1:44'>Joh 1:44</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 12:21'>Joh 12:21</a></em>). And so the Lord asked him where the local shops were.</p><p>It makes a good exercise to re-read the Gospels looking out for cases of where the Lord urged the disciples to not look at Him as somehow separate from themselves, an automatic Saviour from sin and problems. Thus when it was apparent that the huge, hungry crowd needed feeding, the Lord asked the disciples where “<em>we</em>” could get food from to feed them (<em><a href='B:500 6:5'>Joh 6:5</a></em>). In all the accounts of the miraculous feedings, we see the disciples assuming that Jesus would solve the situation- and they appear even irritated and offended when He implies that this is&nbsp;<em>our</em>&nbsp;joint problem, and&nbsp;<em>they</em>&nbsp;must tackle this seemingly impossible task with&nbsp;<em>their</em>&nbsp;faith. The mentality of the disciples at that time is that of so many Trinitarians- who assume that ‘Jesus is the answer’ in such a form that they are exempt from seeing His humanity as a challenge for them to live likewise. See on <em><a href='B:480 11:20'>Mar 11:20</a></em>.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 6:6'>Joh 6:6</a></em>&nbsp;<em>And this he said to test him. For he knew what he would do</em>- So often the Lord's style with us is just the same. We are given testing situations and questions, purely for the development of our own faith and understanding. The phrase "knew what He would do" is similar to the idea that the Lord knew that He would die on the cross. And so again, the whole incident can be understood on at least two levels. The Lord knew He would make bread to meet their hunger; and He knew that He would on the cross be the bread of life to meet human hunger for salvation.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 6:7'>Joh 6:7</a></em> - see on <em><a href='B:500 14:8'>Joh 14:8</a></em>.</p><p><em>Philip answered him: Two hundred denarii worth of bread is not sufficient for them, that every one may take a little</em>- We see here the dead literalism of Philip, and how faith sees in completely different terms to the detailed literalism of unbelief, which focuses on the dimensions of the problem rather than the possibility of solution. Energy so often goes into carefully calculating the difficulties, the height and nature of the mountain, rather than into faith that the whole situation can simply be moved.</p><p>Andrew’s comment that they had five loaves and two fishes surely carried the undertone that ‘…and that’s not even enough for us, let alone them- we’re starving too, you know’. The disciples wanted the crowd sent away, to those who sold food, so that they might buy for themselves (<em><a href='B:470 14:15'>Mat 14:15</a></em>). As the Lord’s extended commentary upon their reactions throughout John 6 indicates, these responses were human and selfish. And yet- and here is a fine insight into His grace and positive thinking about His men- He puts their very words and attitudes into the mouth of the wise virgins at the very moment of their acceptance at the day of judgment: “The wise answered the foolish virgins saying, Not so, lest there be not enough s:w. “not sufficient”, <em><a href='B:500 6:7'>Joh 6:7</a></em> for us and you; but got ye rather to them that sell, and buy for yourselves” (<em><a href='B:470 25:9'>Mat 25:9</a></em>). Clearly the Lord framed that parable in the very words, terms and attitudes of His selfish disciples. He counted even their weakness as positive, and thus showed His desire to accept them in the last day in spite of it. Another reading of the connection would be that the Lord foresaw how even in the final moment of acceptance into His Kingdom, right on the very eve of judgment day, His people would still be as hopelessly limited in outlook and spiritually self-centred as the disciples were that day with the multitude. Whatever way we want to read this undoubted connection of ideas, we have a window into a grace so amazing it almost literally takes our breath away.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 6:8'>Joh 6:8</a></em>&nbsp;<em>One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, said to him</em>- Andrew was also from Bethsaida (<em><a href='B:500 1:44'>Joh 1:44</a></em>), so he may have known the boy personally. The villages were very small and everyone would have known each other. The focus of this incident is upon relatively unknown disciples, Philip and Andrew, instead of the usual Peter, James and John.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 6:9'>Joh 6:9</a></em>&nbsp;<em>There is a lad here, who has five barley loaves and two fishes; but what are these among so many?</em>- Barley loaves were the food of the very poor (<em><a href='B:330 4:12'>Eze 4:12</a></em>; <em><a href='B:330 13:19'>Eze 13:19</a></em>), costing a third the cost of wheat (<em><a href='B:730 6:6'>Rev 6:6</a></em>); and the Greek means 'little fishes'. It was all the very lowest of human provision which was turned into so much. The food provided is later interpreted by the Lord as His own flesh and blood, sacrificed to meet human hunger. The poorest, roughest of food was used to represent the Lord's nature and origins. It was God's blessing upon this which led to the abundant spiritual filling of all those who hungered for Him and His word.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 6:10'>Joh 6:10</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Jesus said: Make the people sit down. Now there was much grass in the place. So the men sat down, in number about five thousand</em>- The command to recline at banquet "sit down" was to set up the similarity with the Messianic banquet, to which the Lord provided an open invitation to whoever wished to hear His word. Who could "sit down" at a feast was a major issue with the Jews; only those from whom there would be no guilt by association were invited to recline together. But the Lord operated no screening process, and goes on to compare this feast with the breaking of bread and the final Messianic banquet. From our side of things, we are not to screen, the invitation to the Lord's feast in this life and that to come is to be offered by us without screening. "Whoseoever will" is to be welcome. The only other time John uses the verb "sit down / recline" is in describing the scene at the last supper (<em><a href='B:500 13:12'>Joh 13:12</a></em>).</p><p>The mention of grass is to highlight the fact that Passover was about to begin, for grass is mowed in Palestine in April. Or it could be that the grass refers to hay from the recent mowing. The point is that this feast was the Lord's equivalent of the Passover feast, and later in this chapter He predicates salvation upon participating in it.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 6:11'>Joh 6:11</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Jesus therefore took the loaves and having given thanks, he distributed them to those that were sitting down. Likewise also the fishes, as much as they could eat</em>- Other manuscripts as AV add: "Distributed them to the disciples and the disciples to those that were sitting::.". Time and again, it becomes apparent that the Lord especially designed incidents in His men’s experience which they would learn from, and later be able to put to use when similar experiences occurred after He had ascended. This was essential to the training of the twelve disciples. Thus He made&nbsp;<em>them&nbsp;</em>distribute the food to the multitude (<em><a href='B:500 6:11'>Joh 6:11</a></em>); yet after His ascension, we meet the same Greek word in <em><a href='B:510 4:35'>Act 4:35</a></em>, describing how they were to distribute welfare to the multitude of the Lord’s followers. The visual image suggested of the Lord holding the bread in His hands, blessing and giving to the disciples is so clearly recollective of the scene at the last supper. "As much as they could eat" is unique to John, and emphasizes the super abundance of the Lord's spiritual provision.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 6:12'>Joh 6:12</a></em>&nbsp;<em>And when they were filled, he said to his disciples: Gather up the broken pieces which remain over, so nothing goes to waste</em>- The language of 'filling' must be in understood in John's Gospel as referring to filling with the Spirit. The Lord's body, His being, His Spirit, His life, His word, was to fill His people, mediated through the work of the disciples.</p><p>The gathering up is twice mentioned (:13). The same word is used of the gathering together of the Gentiles in one with the Jews (<em><a href='B:500 11:52'>Joh 11:52</a></em>). "Waste" is a word commonly used of the lost, of how the Lord wants none to perish. It is His will that none should perish, and that was the reason for His death (<em><a href='B:500 3:15-16'>Joh 3:15-16</a></em> s:w:). The intention of His cross is therefore lived out in all our efforts to bring others to salvation, to keep them in the path, and not to "perish". All such efforts will have His special blessing and Spirit behind them. The Lord uses the same word in describing the food He had created as 'perishing' (:27; s:w. "goes to waste"). He is making the point that if the food was gathered then it would&nbsp;<em>not&nbsp;</em>perish. The allusion is clearly to the gathering of the manna, but the idea is that the food created represented something that would not perish, eternal life. The gathering in of the Gentiles is in view, but so is the simple fact that the broken ones, the fragments, are also to be saved. And the Lord has delegated that work of gathering them to us His disciples.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 6:13'>Joh 6:13</a></em>&nbsp;<em>So they gathered them up, and filled twelve baskets with fragments from the five barley loaves which were left over by those who had eaten</em>- The twelve baskets clearly suggest the formation of a new Israel from the broken ones "fragments", through the work of the disciples. We recall how the Gentile woman wished to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the table of the Jewish Kingdom (<em><a href='B:480 7:28'>Mar 7:28</a></em>). This again encourages us to see this ingathering of broken ones, that left over by the Jewish crowd, as symbolic of the ingathering of the Gentiles by the disciples taking the Gospel to the Gentile world- a commission they were terribly slow to perceive.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 6:14'>Joh 6:14</a></em> - see on <em><a href='B:500 12:42'>Joh 12:42</a></em>.</p><p><em>When the people saw the sign which he did, they said: This is of a truth the prophet that comes into the world</em>- The miracle of the loaves and fishes made men see the similarity between the Lord and Moses, whom they perceived to have provided the manna&nbsp;(:32). Therefore they thought that Jesus must be the prophet like Moses, of whom Moses wrote. But the Lord goes on to explain that He was greater than Moses, because Moses' bread only gave them temporal life, whereas if a man ate of Him, he would live for ever; His words would give spiritual life which was part of that "eternal life" of the Father (<em><a href='B:500 6:49-50'>Joh 6:49-50</a></em>). The Jews thought that the prophet like Moses of <em><a href='B:50 18:18'>Deu 18:18</a></em> was a prophet equal or inferior to Moses. John's Gospel records how Christ was showing that the prophet would be greater than Moses. Martha understood that when she said that "the Christ::. which should come into the world" (i:e. the prophet of <em><a href='B:50 18:18'>Deu 18:18</a></em>) was "the Son of God", and therefore Jesus of Nazareth (<em><a href='B:500 11:27'>Joh 11:27</a></em>).</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 6:15'>Joh 6:15</a></em>&nbsp;<em>So Jesus, perceiving that they were intending to come and take him by force to make him king, withdrew again to the mountain by himself</em>- "Take him by force" could even imply kidnapping, taking Him away to be their puppet in a revolution against Rome. The Lord clearly felt the need for intense personal prayer at this time; the temptation to attempt to become an immediate Messianic King was great for Him, and this was a recurrence of the wilderness temptation to that same effect. John doesn't record the wilderness temptations, but he records how the same temptations returned to Him throughout His ministry, in fulfilment of the Synoptic observation that the devil of temptation departed from Him only for a while, implying it returned later.</p><p>Prayer in one sense has to be a lonely experience. This is all surely why the Lord Himself is frequently pictured by the Gospel writers as making an effort to be alone in prayer to the Father (<em><a href='B:480 1:35'>Mar 1:35</a></em>; <em><a href='B:480 3:13'>Mar 3:13</a></em>; <em><a href='B:480 9:2'>Mar 9:2</a></em>; <em><a href='B:470 14:13'>Mat 14:13</a></em>; <em><a href='B:470 14:23'>Mat 14:23</a></em>; <em><a href='B:470 17:1'>Mat 17:1</a></em>; <em><a href='B:490 6:12'>Luk 6:12</a></em>; <em><a href='B:490 9:28'>Luk 9:28</a></em>; <em><a href='B:490 22:39'>Luk 22:39</a></em>; <em><a href='B:490 22:41'>Luk 22:41</a></em>). This is all some emphasis. Be it rising in the early hours to go out and find a lonely place to pray, or withdrawing a stone’s throw from the disciples in Gethsemane to pray… He sought to be alone. <em><a href='B:500 6:15'>Joh 6:15</a></em> emphasizes this repeated feature of the Lord’s life: “He departed again into a mountain himself alone”. The fact He often “again” retreated alone like this is emphasized by three words which are effectively saying the same thing- departed, himself, alone. Much as we should participate in communal prayers or in the prayers of our partner or our children, there simply has to be the time for serious personal prayer in our lives. And I have to drive the point home:&nbsp;<em>Are you doing this?</em>&nbsp;Putting it in other terms- are you alone&nbsp;<em>enough?</em></p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 6:16'>Joh 6:16</a></em>&nbsp;<em>And when evening came, his disciples went down to the sea</em>- <em><a href='B:500 6:15-17'>Joh 6:15-17</a></em> implies they got tired of waiting for the Lord Jesus to return from prayer, and so they pushed off home to Capernaum, leaving Him alone. Yet by grace He came after them on the lake, to their salvation.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 6:17'>Joh 6:17</a></em>&nbsp;<em>And they entered into a boat and were going over by sea to Capernaum. And it was now dark, and Jesus had not yet come to them</em>- "Not yet" suggests, as hinted at in the synoptics, that He had promised to rejoin them. He wanted them to exercise their minds and assume that He would indeed keep His promise and come to them- but by walking on the water. His promise of returning to us likewise demands faith and a stretching of our paradigms. For the promise of the Comforter was that the Lord would indeed 'come to them', but through the indwelling of the Spirit. He was training them- trying to get them to consider the words 'I will come to you' as being capable of fulfilment in ways they could not previously imagine. He likewise works in educating us.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 6:18'>Joh 6:18</a></em>&nbsp;<em>And the sea was rising because of a great wind that blew</em>- The similarities with Jonah are apparent. The storm was to bring them to repentance, to make them appreciate their mission to the Gentiles which had been implicit in their gathering up the fragments dropped by Israel, and forming 12 baskets of a new Israel. But as with Jonah, they needed a near death experience in a storm to get them to perceive this.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 6:19'>Joh 6:19</a></em>&nbsp;<em>When therefore they had rowed about five or six kilometres, they saw Jesus walking on the sea and drawing near to the boat; and they were afraid</em>- They rowed rather than sailed because the wind was against them; and recall that in Hebrew thought, wind and the spirit are the same words. Their desire to run back home to Capernaum, away from this challenge to harvest the Gentiles, was resisted by the Spirit. Their fear of the approaching Lord Jesus was perhaps because they did subconsciously recognize Him, but feared a meeting with Him again, as they were fleeing from His work of grace towards the Gentiles.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 6:20'>Joh 6:20</a></em>&nbsp;<em>But he said to them: It is I Be not afraid</em>- It was not that they thought He was someone else, like a ghost. "They saw Jesus" (:19). So His assurance to them was that "It is I", the "I am" (Gk:), the One with the character and Name of God, who above all wanted their salvation. And there was no need to fear Him; He was their saviour. For salvation by grace is at the heart of the memorial Name "I am". "It is I" recalls many Old Testament passages where God declares Himself as Israel's saviour, the "I am", who also walks upon the waves of the sea and brings peace to the storm. The Lord was asking them to see in Him the human face of that saviour God, the manifestation of that Name in a human person; and to accept that for them it meant salvation, and they need not fear, even their own sins and rejection of the commission to the Gentiles.</p>


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<h4><em><a href='B:500 6:21'>Joh 6:21</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Then they were willing to take him into the boat, and immediately the boat was at the land to which they were going</em>- John speaks in his Gospel of those who received Christ (<em><a href='B:500 1:12'>Joh 1:12</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 1:16'>Joh 1:16</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 3:32'>Joh 3:32</a></em> etc:)- and it is in allusion to this that he speaks of how the disciples ‘received Christ’ into their ship whilst about to drown on Galilee. Their desperation as they faced death was understood by John as a symbol of the desperation of all those who truly receive Christ. But without perceiving our desperation, can we properly ‘receive’ Him? The Lord did not stop them from their plan to return home; He made the boat arrive immediately at the land where they intended going, "to which they were going away" (Gk:). This is typical of His ways with men; we are not stopped from our path, but His intervention on the way is such that with Him now with us, we see the end point so differently.</h4>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 6:22'>Joh 6:22</a></em>&nbsp;<em>On the next day the people who remained on the other side of the sea noticed that there had been only one boat there, and that Jesus had not entered the boat with his disciples, but that his disciples had gone away alone</em>- Incident after incident shows the Lord doing something alone, and then the disciples somehow being presented as doing the same. Take the way He departed “himself alone” when the crowd wanted to make Him king; and then soon afterwards we read that the crowd perceived that the disciples had likewise departed ‘themselves alone’ same Greek phrase and construction, <em><a href='B:500 6:15'>Joh 6:15</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 6:22'>Joh 6:22</a></em>. The point is that the world is presented as perceiving the disciples in the same terms and way as they did Jesus, even when, in this case, Jesus was not physically with them. And we too are to be “in Him” in our work of witness for Him.</p><p>The incident was intended to teach that the Lord's presence could be achieved without His literal presence at all times. This was to prepare the audience for the amazing promise of the Comforter, that through the Spirit, the Lord could be present as really as He had been during His ministry.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 6:23'>Joh 6:23</a></em>&nbsp;<em>(Some boats from Tiberias landed near the place where the people had eaten the bread after the Lord had given thanks)</em>- John was himself a fisherman and knew Tiberias boats from those of Capernaum. This is typical of the inspiration process; personal knowledge is worked with through the process of inspiration. They came searching for Him, noting He had not got into the single boat the disciples used. They then went to Capernaum and found Him there- the miracle of His walking on the water was left for them to figure out, for there is more subtly in the Divine than to trumpet His achievements in a primitive way. The wonderful things He does for us today likewise need to be meditated upon to be perceived.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 6:24'>Joh 6:24</a></em>&nbsp;<em>When the crowd saw that Jesus was not there, nor his disciples, they got into the boats and went to Capernaum, seeking Jesus</em>- They assumed He was still somewhere in the area, since He had not gone in the boat with the disciples. They thought that His physical presence was required for miracles and blessing; hence the Lord left them to meditate upon His crossing of the stormy sea and presence in Capernaum, where in physical terms He could not have become immediately present without the Spirit.</p><p>Their "seeking" of the Lord was on a purely surface level. Like Israel we can seek God daily, taking delight in approaching unto Him; and yet need the exhortation to urgently seek Him (<em><a href='B:290 55:6'>Isa 55:6</a></em> cp. <em><a href='B:290 58:2'>Isa 58:2</a></em>). We can appear to seek unto Him in prayer and attendance at our meetings, and yet not seek Him in the real sense at all. Likewise men came to Jesus physically, at quite some effort to themselves, and yet He tells them that they have not truly come to Him at all (<em><a href='B:500 6:24'>Joh 6:24</a></em> cp. 35-37). We can draw near with our mouth, honour Him with our lips, “but have removed our heart far from me” (<em><a href='B:290 29:13'>Isa 29:13</a></em>). Only those who call upon Him “in truth”, with “unfeigned lips” will he heard (<em><a href='B:230 145:18'>Psa 145:18</a></em>). Men repeatedly ‘sought for’ the Lord Jesus (<em><a href='B:480 1:37'>Mar 1:37</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 6:26'>Joh 6:26</a></em>), but He told them to&nbsp;<em>truly</em>&nbsp;seek Him (<em><a href='B:470 6:33'>Mat 6:33</a></em>; <em><a href='B:470 7:7'>Mat 7:7</a></em>; <em><a href='B:490 12:31'>Luk 12:31</a></em>). “Strive to enter in now at the strait gate: for many at judgment day will seek to enter in, and shall not be able” (<em><a href='B:490 13:24'>Luk 13:24</a></em>). Our attitude to seeking the Lord now will be the attitude we have then. The emotion and reality of the judgment experience will not essentially change our attitude to the Lord. If we have “boldness” in prayer now (<em><a href='B:650 4:16'>Heb 4:16</a></em>), then we will have “boldness in the day of judgment”. How we feel to Him now is how we will then.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 6:25'>Joh 6:25</a></em>&nbsp;<em>And when they found him on the other side of the sea, they said to him: Rabbi, when did you come here?</em>- Often we ask questions which disguise our essential question, which we are afraid to ask or verbalize. The real question was&nbsp;<em>how</em>&nbsp;He had come to Capernaum. But they covered this by enquiring&nbsp;<em>when</em>. In their hearts they must surely have sensed that He had also performed a miracle in terms of His presence. And He wished to stretch the thinking of His true followers on this point, leading them up to His paradigm breaking promise of the Comforter, His presence realized by the Spirit and without His physical presence. Their seeking and 'finding' Him was on a purely human level; see on :24.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 6:26'>Joh 6:26</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Jesus answered them and said: Truly, truly, I say to you: You seek me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate of the loaves and were filled</em>- They did not see the signs in the sense that they did not perceive the intended teaching of the miracle. They were focused purely on the immediate benefit of food. John records the Lord's discourse to the end we might see or perceive the sign of the miracle. The allusion is to <em><a href='B:230 74:9'>Psa 74:9</a></em> LXX, where Israel did not 'see their signs' because there was no prophet amongst them. They didn't see the sign because they failed to really perceive Him as the ultimate prophet. They claimed to see Him as the prophet (:14), but not in reality. The whole record brings out the tension between surface level spirituality and true faith.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 6:27'>Joh 6:27</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Do not labour for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you. For on him God the Father has set His seal of approval</em>- The people laboured in that they walked around the lake in the boiling midday sun in order to be with Christ and perhaps benefit from the physical food He might provide:&nbsp; He tells them not to labour for the food which would perish, but for that which would endure for ever. The labouring of those people, trekking around that lake in the heat of the day, or crossing it by boat, should be the effort we put in to eating the manna of God's word- according to how the Lord. There was a theme of urgency in Israel's gathering of the manna; it had to be gathered before the sun was up, or it would be lost. Would that we could have that same sense of urgency as we read, realizing that the rising of the sun at the second coming of will put an end to our opportunity to feed and grow. If Israel didn't gather the manna, or if they left it to another day, it bred worms and stank. The active anger of God was to be expressed against those who didn't take the wonder of the manna seriously. So our gathering of the manna / word must be taken seriously; it's not a question of skim reading familiar words, or doing mental gymnastics with it in an intellectual world of our own.</p><p>The food which the Lord provided was His body and life, given above all upon the cross. He urges His hearers to labour to possess this, because this is the food that will abide in / into Gk:&nbsp;<em>eis</em>&nbsp;the life eternal (<em><a href='B:500 6:27'>Joh 6:27</a></em> -AV ‘endures unto’ is a poor translation). The essence of having and ‘eating’ of the Lord’s sacrifice now, is what eternal life is to be all about. Through the gift of the Spirit, the Lord was giving them His life, the eternal life. Absorbing Him, His sacrifice, the food which is Him, begins now… and in so doing, we are eating of the food / bread that will abide into the life eternal. He surely had in mind too the manna stored in the ark, which was eaten in the wilderness and yet abode / endured into Israel’s life in the promised land. And that bread, of course, was symbolic of Him; it is the “hidden manna” which His followers will eat in the future Kingdom (<em><a href='B:730 2:17'>Rev 2:17</a></em>). <em><a href='B:560 1:17-18'>Eph 1:17-18</a></em> puts it another way, by paralleling "the knowledge of Christ" with "knowing what is the hope of his calling::. the riches of the glory of his inheritance". The blessed hope of our calling is not simply a life of bliss in ideal conditions, but more specifically it is the hope of 'knowing Christ' as person eternally, in all the glorious fullness of that experience.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 6:28'>Joh 6:28</a></em>&nbsp;<em>They replied to him: What must we do, that we may work the works of God?</em>- They ignored His challenge regarding accepting His life, by enquiring how they too could do miracles. This is the same wrong perspective which is characteristic of Pentecostalism: How can I do miracles?</p><p>The people had walked all around the lake to see Jesus and get some food from Him. They ask what they can&nbsp;<em>do</em>&nbsp;that they might work / labour same Greek word the works of God; and they are told that the real work / labour which God requires is to believe (<em><a href='B:500 6:28'>Joh 6:28</a></em>). To truly believe, to the extent of being sure that we will surely have the eternal life promised, is the equivalent of walking around the lake. We like those crowds want to concretely&nbsp;<em>do</em>&nbsp;something. The young man likewise had asked what good thing he must&nbsp;<em>do&nbsp;</em>in order to get eternal life (<em><a href='B:470 19:16'>Mat 19:16</a></em>). But the real work is to&nbsp;<em>believe</em>. To really make that enormous mental effort to accept that what God has promised in Christ will surely come true for us. The proof that this is so is because Jesus really said these words, and “him hath God the Father sealed”, i:e. shown His confirmation and acceptance of. So again we come down to the implications of real basics. Do we believe Jesus existed and said those words? Yes. Do we believe the Biblical record is true and inspired? Yes. Well, this Jesus who made these promises and statements about eternal life was “sealed” / validated by God. Do we believe this? Yes. So, what He said is utterly true. He will come and live within us, if we eat of Him, if we are open to Him.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 6:29'>Joh 6:29</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Jesus answered and said to them: This is the work of God- that you believe in him whom He has sent</em>- God's work is understood in the context here as miracles. The people wanted to know how they might perform God's works, miracles like making free bread. And as was ever His style, the Lord turns the words of the question another way. God's work is that we believe. Human belief is therefore His work- which we must allow to happen to us, rather than seeking to do works. It's rather like David asking to build God a house, and being told that instead, God would build him a house- if he and his children allowed the way of the Spirit to operate. But this response was totally missed by the crowd- they wanted another miracle (:30), clearly in the hope that again they might materially benefit from it.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 6:30'>Joh 6:30</a></em>&nbsp;<em>They replied to him: What then will you do for a sign, so that we may see and believe you? What work will you do?</em>- The Lord could have spoken words similar to <em><a href='B:650 11:1'>Heb 11:1</a></em> to them- He could have corrected them by saying that actually, faith is not related to what you can see. You cannot “see and believe” in the true sense of belief. But the Lord doesn’t do that. He says that He in front of them is the bread of God, miraculously given. And their critical tone changes: “Lord, evermore give us this bread” (:34). This surely is our pattern- not to necessarily correct every error when we see it, but to pick up something the other person has said and develop it, to bring them towards truth.</p><p>The sign or miracle they wanted was of yet more free bread, in order to compare with Moses who had given Israel manna. They had been given that sign- but they wanted it again, that they might benefit from it. They were missing the point that the Lord was greater than Moses.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 6:31'>Joh 6:31</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written: He gave them bread out of heaven to eat</em>- The Lord's reply shows that the "he" they had in view was Moses. They wanted Him to again demonstrate that He was the prophet like Moses (<em><a href='B:50 18:18'>Deu 18:18</a></em>). But He was greater than Moses, and the manna He would give was of salvation, and not temporary food for the day.</p><p>The living word of God which speaks to us each personally. In this sense, we are constantly being invited to place ourselves in the position of those who played a part in the historical incidents which that word records. The Jews quoted to the Lord Jesus: “He gave&nbsp;<em>them</em>&nbsp;bread from heaven to eat”, to which the Lord replied after the teaching style of the rabbis to which they were accustomed by changing and challenging a word in the quotation they made: “It is not Moses who gave&nbsp;<em>you</em>&nbsp;the bread”. He wanted them to see that the account of bread being given to Israel in the wilderness was not just dry history:&nbsp;<em>They</em>, right there and then, were as it were receiving that same bread from Heaven. See on <em><a href='B:470 22:31'>Mat 22:31</a></em>; <em><a href='B:650 11:4'>Heb 11:4</a></em>.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 6:32'>Joh 6:32</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Jesus replied to them: Truly, truly, I say to you: It was not Moses that gave you the bread out of heaven, but my Father; who now gives you the true bread out of heaven</em>- They were so focused upon Moses that they failed to appreciate the operation of God through Him by the Spirit. This is the typical failure of religious people- to focus upon the structure, the means to the end, rather than perceive the ultimate source and end, that which is before and behind and beyond the religious structure or individual they are so focused upon. And we can take that message to ourselves.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 6:33'>Joh 6:33</a></em>&nbsp;<em>For the bread of God is that which comes down out of heaven and gives life to the world</em>-</p><p>These words, and others like them, are misused to support the wrong idea that Jesus existed in Heaven before his birth. Trinitarians take these words as literal in order to prove their point. However, if we are to take them literally, then this means that somehow Jesus literally came down as a person. Not only is the Bible totally silent about this, but the language of Jesus being conceived as a baby in Mary’s womb is made meaningless. <em><a href='B:500 6:60'>Joh 6:60</a></em> describes the teaching about the manna as a saying “hard to take in” (Moffatt’s Translation); i:e. we need to understand that it is figurative language being used. The Lord Jesus is explaining how the manna was a type of himself. The manna was sent from God in the sense that it was God who was responsible for creating it on the earth; it did not physically float down from the throne of God in Heaven. Thus the Lord’s coming from Heaven is to be understood likewise; he was created on earth, by the Holy Spirit acting upon the womb of Mary (<em><a href='B:490 1:35'>Luk 1:35</a></em>).</p><p>The Lord Jesus says that “the bread that I will give is my flesh” (:51). Trinitarians claim that it was the ‘God’ part of Jesus which came down from Heaven. But the Lord says that it was his “flesh” which was the bread which came down from Heaven. Likewise He associates the bread from Heaven with himself as the “Son of man” (<em><a href='B:500 6:62'>Joh 6:62</a></em>), not ‘God the Son’. In this same passage in John 6 there is abundant evidence that He was not equal to God. “The living Father has sent me” (<em><a href='B:500 6:57'>Joh 6:57</a></em>) shows that He and God do not share co-equality; and the fact that “I live by the Father” (<em><a href='B:500 6:57'>Joh 6:57</a></em>) is hardly the ‘co-eternity’ of which Trinitarians speak.</p><p>It must be asked, When and how did Jesus ‘come down’ from Heaven? The Lord Jesus speaks of himself as “he which cometh down from heaven” (:33,50), as if it is an ongoing process. Speaking of God’s gift of His Son, the Lord said “My Father is giving you the bread” from Heaven (v:32 Weymouth). At the time the Lord was speaking these words, he had already ‘come down’ in a certain sense, in that He had been sent by God. Because of this, He could also speak in the past tense: “I am the living bread which came down from Heaven” (:51). But he also speaks about ‘coming down’ as the bread from Heaven in the form of His death on the cross: “The bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world” (v:51). So we have the Lord Jesus speaking here of having already come down from Heaven, being in the process of ‘coming down’, and still having to ‘come down’ in His death on the cross. This fact alone should prove that ‘coming down’ refers to God manifesting Himself, rather than only referring to the Lord’s birth. This is conclusively proved by all the Old Testament references to God ‘coming down’ having just this same meaning. Thus God saw the affliction of His people in Egypt, and ‘came down’ to save them through Moses. He has seen our bondage to sin, and has ‘come down’ or manifested Himself, by sending Jesus as the equivalent to Moses to lead us out of bondage.</p><p>A Devotional Appeal<br/>The Lord's language of coming down from Heaven can be understood from a very powerful devotional aspect. He reasons that because He had&nbsp;<em>come</em>&nbsp;down from Heaven, therefore, whoever&nbsp;<em>comes&nbsp;</em>to Him, He would never reject (<em><a href='B:500 6:37-38'>Joh 6:37-38</a></em>). The connection is in the word "come". We 'come' to Jesus not by physically travelling towards Him, but in our mental attitudes. He likewise 'comes' to us, not by moving trillions of kilometres from Heaven to earth, but in His 'coming' down into our lives and experiences. If He has come so very far to meet us, and we come to Him::. then surely we will meet and He will not turn away from us, exactly because He has 'come' so far to meet us. This theme continues throughout John's Gospel. "What and if you shall see the Son of man ascend up where he was before?" (<em><a href='B:500 6:62'>Joh 6:62</a></em>) is therefore not a reference to Him physically travelling off anywhere- He is saying that if people would not 'come' to Him in meeting, then He would withdraw the opportunity from them. He wouldn't stand waiting for them indefinitely. This explains the urgency behind His appeals to 'come' to Him. He had 'come down', and was waiting for people to 'come' to Him. He's come a huge distance, from the heavenly heights of His own spirituality, to meet with whores and gamblers, hobby level religionists, self-absorbed little people::. and if we truly come to Him, if we want to meet with Him, then of course He will never turn us away. For it was to meet with us that He 'came down'. This approach shows the fallacy of interpreting His 'coming down' to us and our 'coming' to Him in a literal sense.</p><p>And yet this Lord of all grace also sought to confirm men and women in the path they chose. He admitted that His comment about Himself being the manna which descended from Heaven was a "hard saying". And yet He goes straight on to say perhaps with a slight smile playing at the corner of His lips something even more enigmatic: "What and if you shall see the Son of man ascend up where he was before?" (<em><a href='B:500 6:62'>Joh 6:62</a></em>). Surely He is here choosing to give them yet another, even harder "saying"; and goes on to stress that His sayings, His words, are the way to life eternal (<em><a href='B:500 6:63'>Joh 6:63</a></em>). For those who didn't want His words, He was confirming them in their darkness. And He did this by the mechanism of using an evidently "hard saying". Therefore to simplistically interpret the saying as meaning that the Lord had literally descended from Heaven through the sky just as literally as He would ascend there through the clouds::. is in fact to quite miss the point- that this is a "hard saying". It's not intended to have a simplistic, literalistic interpretation.</p><h4>Life was given to the world not only in the sense of eternal life. A way of life was shown to us, the only way of life- the life of the cross. It is a frequently found paradox in Scripture that life comes through death. The Lord’s cross and resurrection are the prime example. However, it is not simply that His death opened the way to eternal life for us at His coming. It gives us spiritual life now, in that all that we do in our being and living should be motivated by the spirit of the cross. Each of the myriad daily decisions we take should be impacted by our knowledge of the cross. In this way, the cross gives life right now.</h4>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 6:34'>Joh 6:34</a></em>&nbsp;<em>They replied to him: Lord, always give us this bread</em>- "Always" or 'for ever' could mean that they simply wanted an eternal bread making machine to ease their material burden in their hand to mouth existence. But the sense of 'eternity' in their words leads us to wonder whether they were beginning to grasp His point. The Samaritan woman likewise starts off talking about literal water, and then comes to perceive that the Lord is offering an altogether different kind of water. It could be that the same shift in understanding, from the literal to the spiritual, is happening here too.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 6:35'>Joh 6:35</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Jesus said to them: I am the bread of life. He that comes to me shall not hunger, and he that believes on me shall never thirst</em>- "The bread of life" was a Messianic term, and the Lord here makes one of His most direct claims to actually be Messiah. Several times the Lord stresses His personal identification with the manna / bread. But this was His flesh, which He gave for the life of the world. The cross epitomised the man Jesus. Thus He could take the bread and deftly insist: “This is my body". There and then, He was to be identified with the slain body that hung upon the cross. In death, in life, this was and is and will be Him. But He was right then the bread of life. The essence of the cross was lived out in His daily life. And He was certain that He would be obedient to the final crisis of crucifixion, and would then and thereby become the ultimate "bread of life".</p><p>"He that comes to me shall never hunger" is a reference to men and women ‘coming to’ the cross to behold “that sight" of the cross, just as men came to the lifted up snake. But the Lord clearly has in mind how the believer in Him would be regularly fed, filled up with water so that "he that believes on me shall never thirst". The Spirit is given not just once, but in an ongoing sense we are filled up with it, if we are open to it. Only in a personal appropriation of the cross to ourselves can we find an inspiration that is utterly endless. No wonder the Lord insists we remember His cross at least weekly in the breaking of bread.</p><p>The Lord challenged us that if we truly eat His words, we'll never hunger or thirst; but 30 years or so later, He said that in the Kingdom, He will stop us hungering and thirsting (<em><a href='B:730 7:16-17'>Rev 7:16-17</a></em>). He realizes that although we have it within our potential to live this kind of fulfilled spiritual life, in practice we will only get there in the Kingdom:&nbsp;The idea may be that we shall hunger and thirst for righteousness and spirituality now, but we are filled in this life by being incrementally filled up by the Spirit, as it is poured out in an ongoing sense. But the final ending of all such hunger is in the Kingdom, when we shall have Spirit nature, and our spiritual deficiency and need shall be no more:&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 6:36'>Joh 6:36</a></em>&nbsp;<em>But I say to you: That you have seen me, and still you do not believe</em>- "Seeing" may be being used here as it is often in John- to refer to understanding. The Jews saw the Son coming to them and said "Come let us kill Him". They knew Him, and His relationship to the Father (<em><a href='B:500 7:28'>Joh 7:28</a></em>). But still they refused to believe. They wanted to be given the bread of life, Messiah, and He was standing before them. They had seen Him, and seen His creation of manna / bread, but still did not believe. Miracles do not produce lasting faith- that is one of the subtexts of John, especially relevant as he was preaching and ministering to converts in days when the miraculous gifts were disappearing.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 6:37'>Joh 6:37</a></em> - see on <em><a href='B:480 6:36'>Mar 6:36</a></em>.</p><p><em>All that the Father gives me shall come to me, and him that comes to me I will in no way reject</em>- The language of 'coming to Jesus' is appropriate in the context to the Jews having made great efforts to come to Jesus, walking around the lake or getting shipping in order to hopefully see another food miracle. The Lord is saying that those who truly came to Him in faith, as the Messianic bread of life, would in no way be rejected, never ever the Greek is insistent upon this. He will reject some at the last day, indeed Judaism generally would be cast out s:w. "reject" at that day (<em><a href='B:490 13:28'>Luk 13:28</a></em>), and His death would cast out the prince of the Jewish world (<em><a href='B:500 12:31'>Joh 12:31</a></em>). But those who came to Him in faith He would not reject.</p><p>The Father has given all things of the new creation to the Son (<em><a href='B:500 3:35'>Joh 3:35</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 13:3'>Joh 13:3</a></em>), He gives the sheep to the Son (<em><a href='B:500 10:29'>Joh 10:29</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 17:11'>Joh 17:11</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 17:24'>Joh 17:24</a></em>); the Lord was very aware of how the believers had been given to Him. In practice, this works out through how the Father gives individuals the ability to come to the Son (:65). The Father's gift is supremely the Spirit, the Comforter given by the Father (<em><a href='B:500 14:16'>Joh 14:16</a></em>); through this we come to the Son, and are finally given the ultimate gift of eternity. If we ask why one person comes to the Son and another doesn't, the answer is of course multi factorial, and includes issues of human freewill. But one element in the final algorithm of salvation is the gift / grace of God's calling. Paul uses this in Romans as a parade example of how salvation is of grace and not works.</p><p>The parable of the fig tree appears to show the Lord Jesus as more gracious and patient than His Father- the owner of the vineyard (God) tells the dresser (Jesus) to cut it down, but the dresser asks for another year’s grace to be shown to the miserable fig tree, and then, he says, the owner God Himself would have to cut it down (<em><a href='B:490 13:7-9'>Luk 13:7-9</a></em>). But in <em><a href='B:500 6:37-39'>Joh 6:37-39</a></em> we seem to have the Lord’s recognition that the Father was more gracious to some than He would naturally be; for He says that He Himself will not cast any out, exactly because it was the Father’s will that He should lose nothing but achieve a resurrection to life eternal for all given to Him. And the Lord observed, both here and elsewhere, that He was not going to do His own will, but rather the will of the Father (:38). And that will was to totally save all who wish. But that, by implication, was not necessarily the natural will of the Son. For He says in this context that He does not His will, but the Father's. Now this is exactly the sort of thing we would expect in a truly dynamic relationship- on some points the Father is more generous than the Son, and in other cases- vice versa. And yet Father and Son were, are and will be joined together in the same judgment and will, despite Father and Son having differing wills from one viewpoint. But this is the result of process, of differing perspectives coming together, of a mutuality we can scarcely enter into comprehending, of some sort of learning together, of a Son struggling to do the will of a superior Father rather than His own will, of conclusions jointly reached through experience, time and process- rather than an automatic, robot-like imposition of the Father’s will and judgment upon the Son. And the awesome thing is, that the Lord invites us to know the Father, in the same way as He knows the Father. His relationship with the Father is a pattern for ours too.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 6:38'>Joh 6:38</a></em>&nbsp;<em>For I came down from Heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of Him that sent me</em>- As noted on :37, the implication appears to be that the Father's will is to save, and so the Son will therefore not do His will, but the Father's- and never therefore reject any who come to Him in faith. This is huge assurance. The Father's will for our salvation is even stronger than that of His dear Son.</p><p>The Lord accomplished the will of God on the cross (see on <em><a href='B:500 4:32-34'>Joh 4:32-34</a></em>). On the cross He came down from Heaven, there He manifested Yahweh in the greatest theophany of all time. The darkness over Him is to be read in the context of the OT theophanies which involved darkness at the time of the Lord's 'coming down'. But the Lord here speaks in the past tense. The essence of His cross was right then, before their eyes. In Him and His offer of free salvation, there was the assurance for all time to all men. He knew He would pass through the crucifixion experience, and that therefore the offer of life on account of His work was real right then and there.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 6:39'>Joh 6:39</a></em> - see on <em><a href='B:500 3:13'>Joh 3:13</a></em>.</p><p><em>And this is the will of Him that sent me, that of all which He has given me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up at the last day</em>- The Father's will for our salvation was perhaps stronger than the Lord's, for it is in this context that He says that He was doing not His will but the Father's (:38). But human dysfunction and love of materialism is such that even the strength of God's will can be resisted by us. For in <em><a href='B:500 17:12'>Joh 17:12</a></em> the Lord speaks as if He has succeeded in spiritually keeping all those given to him, except Judas: "I kept them in Your Name which You have given me, and I guarded them; and not one of them perished except the son of perdition". We have been given by the Father to the Son, with the express will that we should not be lost, and the end point of His care would be our resurrection to life at the last day.</p><p>"Lose nothing" is the phrase which has just been used about the gathering of the fragments, that none be lost (:12). The Lord's will that not one be lost is manifest through our gathering of them. And He died so that none might perish (<em><a href='B:500 3:15-16'>Joh 3:15-16</a></em>). He 'loses' none of His people in that He give us right now the life, the eternal life, which shall never 'perish' s:w. or 'be lost' (<em><a href='B:500 10:28'>Joh 10:28</a></em>). Those who live that life now are assured of being raised up at the last day. The outcome of the last day is therefore no unknown question; if we are living the eternal life now, then we shall be immortalized in order to continue doing so. But it is the nature of the life lived, rather than immortality of itself, which is of the essence.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 6:40'>Joh 6:40</a></em>&nbsp;<em>For this is the will of my Father-</em>&nbsp;The will of the Father is a major theme in John, perhaps to counter erroneous notions about this term in the communities to whom John was preaching and pastoring. The connection is again back to the prologue, where we learn that all in the new creation are spiritually born by the Father's will (<em><a href='B:500 1:13'>Joh 1:13</a></em>). This will was His desire for our salvation, and it meant the Lord's death in order to bring it to reality (<em><a href='B:500 4:34'>Joh 4:34</a></em>). The will of God is for our salvation; if we ask anything according to that will, with the end of salvation in view, then we shall be heard (<em><a href='B:690 5:14'>1Jn 5:14</a></em>). Doing that will, living according to the eternal life, is living according to the will of God (<em><a href='B:690 2:17'>1Jn 2:17</a></em>).</p><p><em>That every one that sees the Son and believes in him, should have eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day</em>- This is similar language to that concerning the lifted up snake. God’s will is that we should look upon the cross, with the faith that comes from a true understanding, and accept that great salvation. This is why the cross must be central to our whole living and thinking and conception of our faith and doctrine:The comment that “Every one that beholdeth the Son and believeth on him shall have eternal life" (<em><a href='B:500 6:40'>Joh 6:40</a></em>) is another allusion to the serpent lifted up on the pole, where everyone who “looked upon the serpent of brass… lived" (<em><a href='B:40 21:9'>Num 21:9</a></em>). The 'having eternal life' is different to being 'raised up at the last day'. We are given the gift of life now, through the gift of His Spirit in our hearts whereby we live and think as He did and does. That is the essence of the life we shall eternally live in the Kingdom; and so we shall be changed into immortality to enable that life to be eternally lived.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 6:41'>Joh 6:41</a></em>&nbsp;<em>The Jews therefore murmured concerning him, because he said: I am the bread which came down out of Heaven</em>- They understood the Heavenly bread as a reference to Messiah; and they doubted as to how a man they knew could in fact be Messiah. Israel continually "murmured" against Moses (<em><a href='B:20 15:24'>Exo 15:24</a></em>; <em><a href='B:20 16:2'>Exo 16:2</a></em>; <em><a href='B:20 16:7-8'>Exo 16:7-8</a></em>; <em><a href='B:20 17:3'>Exo 17:3</a></em>; <em><a href='B:40 14:2'>Num 14:2</a></em>; <em><a href='B:40 14:27'>Num 14:27</a></em>; <em><a href='B:40 14:29'>Num 14:29</a></em> cp. <em><a href='B:50 1:27'>Deu 1:27</a></em>; <em><a href='B:230 106:25'>Psa 106:25</a></em>; <em><a href='B:530 10:10'>1Co 10:10</a></em>). Nearly all these murmurings were related to Israel's disbelief that Moses really could bring them into the land. Likewise Israel disbelieved that eating Christ's words (<em><a href='B:500 6:63'>Joh 6:63</a></em>) really could lead them to salvation; and their temptation to murmur in this way is ours too, especially in the last days (<em><a href='B:530 10:10-12'>1Co 10:10-12</a></em>).</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 6:42'>Joh 6:42</a></em>&nbsp;<em>And they said: Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How does he now say, I came down out of Heaven?</em>- As noted on :41, they perceived clearly enough that the Lord was claiming to be Messiah. The crowd knew Him, and Joseph and Mary. Galilee was small, both in population and geography. The folks who lived around the lake would have all known each other, and would have also known the carpenter from Nazareth. That He should now miraculously feed them, and claim to be Messiah and Son of God::. was all so hard for them to grasp. It is a window onto the Lord's artless perfection that He could live amongst them for so long, never sinning neither by omission nor commission, and yet not be perceived as anything more than the son of a carpenter.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 6:43'>Joh 6:43</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Jesus answered and said to them: Murmur not among yourselves</em>- The record of the disciples' murmuring in John 6 reflects how influenced they were by the Jews around them. "The Jews then murmured at him", and the Lord rebukes them: "Murmur not among yourselves". But then we read of how "Jesus knew in himself that his disciples were murmuring" (<em><a href='B:500 6:40'>Joh 6:40</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 6:43'>Joh 6:43</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 6:61'>Joh 6:61</a></em>). And again, remember that these gospel records were written by the repentant disciples, and they were using the example of their own weakness in order to appeal to others. The disciples appeared to share Judaism's idea that Moses never sinned. When the Lord challenges them to find food for the crowd in the desert, they quote Moses' hasty words: "Whence shall I have flesh to give unto all this people?"; and note Moses almost mocks God by saying that all the fish of the sea wouldn't be enough to feed the people (<em><a href='B:40 11:13'>Num 11:13</a></em>; <em><a href='B:40 11:22'>Num 11:22</a></em>). Faced with the same need for bread and fish, the disciples justified their lack of faith by quoting Moses, apparently unwilling to accept that Moses' words at that time were not of faith. The way everything worked out, they doubtless learnt that Moses, like them, was of imperfect faith and spirituality.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 6:44'>Joh 6:44</a></em>&nbsp;<em>No one can come to me, except the Father that sent me draws him; and I will raise him up in the last day</em>- See on :40- the drawing power is surely in the cross itself, for this is what draws all men unto the lifted up Christ (<em><a href='B:500 12:32'>Joh 12:32</a></em> s:w:). There was and is a magnetism about Him there. And yet the Lord said this before His death, to people who had walked and sailed in order to 'come to Him'. Now He says that the real coming to Him requires the Father's drawing, or dragging, as the Greek means. Paul in Romans cites this idea of calling, of one called and another not, as a parade example of how salvation is by grace and not works. Yet the Father's work of drawing or dragging people to Himself is still effected through human agency. John uses the same word in describing how the disciples "drew" the net containing 153 fishes to shore (<em><a href='B:500 21:6'>Joh 21:6</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 21:11'>Joh 21:11</a></em>), clearly symbolic of the great catch of the Gospel.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 6:45'>Joh 6:45</a></em> - see on <em><a href='B:470 12:18'>Mat 12:18</a></em>.</p><p><em>It is written in the prophets: And they shall all be taught by God. Everyone therefore who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me</em>- The drawing of the Father is through hearing and learning from Him, about His Son. "The prophets" who spoke of how all shall be "taught by God" do so in the context of prophesying about the Messianic Kingdom on earth (<em><a href='B:290 54:13'>Isa 54:13</a></em>; <em><a href='B:300 31:34'>Jer 31:34</a></em>; <em><a href='B:400 4:2'>Mic 4:2</a></em>). But the Lord applies these clearly future Messianic prophecies to the essential spiritual experience of the believer today; for we are now living the eternal life, the Kingdom life, the kind of life we shall then live.</p><p>The Lord Jesus often stressed that He was the only way to the Father; that only through knowing and seeing / perceiving Him can men come to know God. And yet in <em><a href='B:500 6:45'>Joh 6:45</a></em> He puts it the other way around: “Every man therefore that hath heard, and hath learned of the Father, cometh unto me”. And He says that only the Father can bring men to the Son (<em><a href='B:500 6:44'>Joh 6:44</a></em>). Yet it is equally true that only the Son of God can lead men to God the Father. In this we see something exquisitely beautiful about these two persons, if I as a non-Trinitarian may use that word about the Father and Son. The more we know the Son, the more we come to know the Father; and the more we know the Father, the more we know the Son. This is how close they are to each other. And yet they are quite evidently distinctly different persons. But like any father and son, getting to know one leads us to know more of the other, which in turn reveals yet more to us about the other, which leads to more insight again into the other… and so the wondrous spiral of knowing the Father and Son continues. If Father and Son were one and the same person, the surpassing beauty of this is lost and spoilt and becomes impossible. The experience of any true Christian, one who has come to ‘see’ and know the Father and Son, will bear out this truth. Which is why correct understanding about their nature and relationship is vital to knowing them. The wonder of it all is that the Son didn’t automatically reflect the Father to us, as if He were just a piece of theological machinery; He made a supreme effort to do so, culminating in the cross. He explains that He didn’t do&nbsp;<em>His</em>&nbsp;will, but that of the Father; He didn’t do the works&nbsp;<em>He&nbsp;</em>wanted to do, but those which the Father wanted. He had many things to say and judge of the Jewish world, He could have given them ‘a piece of His mind’, but instead He commented: “<em>But…</em>&nbsp;I speak to the world those things which I have heard of the Father” (<em><a href='B:500 8:26'>Joh 8:26</a></em>). I submit that this sort of language is impossible to adequately understand within the Trinitarian paradigm. Yet the wonder of it all goes yet further. The Father is spoken of as ‘getting to know’ note aorist tense the Son, as the Son gets to know the Father; and the same verb form is used about the Good Shepherd ‘getting to know’ us His sheep. This wonderful, dynamic family relationship is what “the fellowship of the Holy Spirit”, true walking and living with the Father and Son, is all about. It is into this family and wonderful nexus of relationships that Trinitarians apparently choose not to enter.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 6:46'>Joh 6:46</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Not that anyone has seen the Father, save he that is from God, he has seen the Father</em>- The Lord adds this as a foil or caveat to His teaching in :45 that the one who has learned of God comes to His Son. He means to say that total knowledge of Him is not possible, just as Moses could not 'see' the Father, neither can anyone claim to have fully 'seen' or perceived Him, except the Son. The point is to guard against the Jewish idea of justification by knowledge, as if 'learning' of the Father meant totally 'seeing' him. Such total, perfect knowledge is not necessary nor even attainable; what is of the essence is to allow ourselves to be drawn by the Father towards His Son.</p><p>The fact the Lord&nbsp;<em>had&nbsp;</em>seen God, as the One "from God", contrasts powerfully with how Moses could&nbsp;<em>not</em>&nbsp;see Him.</p>


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<h4><em><a href='B:500 6:47'>Joh 6:47</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Truly, truly, I say to you: He that believes has eternal life</em>- The utter truthfulness of the Lord's promise to give us right now the life eternal is on the basis of the fact that He alone has "seen", completely perceived and understood, the Father (:46). The Father's will was totally about our salvation (:39,40). It was because the Son knew His Father's will that He could so solemnly protest that He was able and willingly eager to give eternal life to believers.</h4>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 6:48'>Joh 6:48</a></em>&nbsp;<em>I am the bread of life</em>- The emphasis is now placed upon "bread of life" rather than the Messianic term "bread of Heaven" because He wanted to explain how the believer has eternal life (:47). Bread must be eaten regularly; the idea is that we are regularly filled up with His life, His Spirit. But our spiritual life comes from eating Him. He is the source of life, rather than the entire text of Scripture from Genesis to Revelation including the Chronicles genealogies.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 6:49'>Joh 6:49</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died</em>- Judaism had the idea that Moses created manna and this was the ultimate miracle. But the Lord's bread gave life, eternal life, rather than just temporarily making life more bearable on a daily basis. We must ask ourselves whether we are using Christianity in the same way- a temporary boost in the daily grind, rather than perceiving the wonder of the life offered both now and eternally.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 6:50'>Joh 6:50</a></em>&nbsp;<em>This is the bread which comes down out of heaven, that a man may eat thereof and not die</em>- The idea is not that a man eats once and never hungers again. The gift of the Spirit, of the Lord's life, is ongoing, but is predicated upon eating of Him.</p><p>The Lord spoke of the manna as being a symbol of His body, which He would give on the cross. He described the gift of that bread, that figure of His sacrifice, as not only bread that would come from Heaven but more accurately as bread that&nbsp;<em>is coming down</em>, and had been throughout His life (<em><a href='B:500 6:50-51'>Joh 6:50-51</a></em> Gk:). The spirit of life-giving which there was in His death was shown all through His life. He could take the bread and say that “this&nbsp;<em>is</em>&nbsp;my body which&nbsp;<em>is being given</em>&nbsp;Gk. for you"; He saw His sacrifice as already ongoing even before He left the upper room. The cross therefore manifested the real Christ, the One who had been giving of Himself throughout His life.</p><p>As the manna was regularly eaten of, so the Lord’s cross should be our daily inspiration and food. We must ask whether we personally and collectively have appreciated this. We obtain eternal life from the cross in the sense that we see there the definition of the true life; the life of crucifying self, slowly and painfully, for others; of enduring injustice and lack of appreciation to the very end, of holding on in the life of forgiveness and care for others in the face of their bitterest rejection::. we see there the life we must lead, indeed the only true life. For all else is ultimately only death. And it is “eternal" in its quality more than in its length, in that this is the type of life which will be lived eternally in the Kingdom. It is in this sense that John later comments that eternal life is “in" Christ (<em><a href='B:690 5:11'>1Jn 5:11</a></em>; <em><a href='B:690 5:20'>1Jn 5:20</a></em> cp. <em><a href='B:500 3:14-15'>Joh 3:14-15</a></em>).</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 6:51'>Joh 6:51</a></em>&nbsp;<em>I am the living bread which came down out of Heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he shall live forever. Yes The bread which I will give is my flesh – given for the life of the world</em>- John’s Gospel points out how the Lord often changed tenses so strangely- to the extent that many have concluded that some of the strange combinations of tenses are a result of John’s later editing. But it could be that the Lord used past, present and future tenses in close proximity in order to show His manifestation of the Name. He is the bread which was, is and will be on the cross. He came, is coming down, and will come (<em><a href='B:500 6:50-51'>Joh 6:50-51</a></em>). The hour was coming and yet “now is” (<em><a href='B:500 4:23'>Joh 4:23</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 5:25'>Joh 5:25</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 16:31-32'>Joh 16:31-32</a></em>). These mixing of tenses must have seemed strange to the hearers, and they read strangely in the tense-conscious Greek language. About 50 times in John’s Gospel&nbsp;we read the phrase “I am” as having been on the lips of Jesus. And it gets more and more frequent as He nears the cross, as if He was aware of an ongoing manifestation of the Name which reached its climax there.</p><p>Not for nothing do some Rabbis speak of 'eating Messiah' as an expression of the fellowship they hope to have with Him at His coming. The sacrificial animals are spoken of as "the bread of your God" (<em><a href='B:30 21:6'>Lev 21:6</a></em>; <em><a href='B:30 21:8'>Lev 21:8</a></em>; <em><a href='B:30 21:21'>Lev 21:21</a></em>; <em><a href='B:30 22:25'>Lev 22:25</a></em>; <em><a href='B:330 44:7'>Eze 44:7</a></em> etc:), pointing forward to the Lord Jesus Christ. In addition to alluding to the manna, the Lord must have been consciously making this connection when He spoke about himself as the bread of God. The only time "the bread of God" could be eaten by the Israelite was at the peace offering. When in this context the Lord invites us to eat the bread of God, to eat His flesh and drink His blood (<em><a href='B:500 6:51-52'>Joh 6:51-52</a></em>), He is looking back to the peace offering. But this is also an evident prophecy of the breaking of bread service. Many of the Jews just could not cope with what Christ was offering them when He said this. They turned back, physically and intellectually. They just could not grapple with the idea that Christ was that peace offering sacrifice, and He was inviting them to sit down with God, as it were, and in fellowship with the Almighty, partake of the sacrificed body of His Son. But this is just what Christ is inviting each of us to do in the memorial meeting and in life generally lived in Him, to sit down in fellowship with Him, and eat of His bread. God really is here with us now. He is intensely watching us. He is intensely with us, He really is going to save us, if only we can have the faith to believe how much He loves us, how much He wants us to share His fellowship and know His presence.</p><p>The Lord taught the crowds to focus more on the gift of Him as a person and His sacrifice, than on the literal achievement of the Kingdom there and then. The Jews understood the coming of manna to be a sign that the Messianic Kingdom had come. Their writings are full of this idea:</p><p>- “You shall not find manna in this age, but you shall find it in the age that is coming” (Midrash Mekilta on <em><a href='B:20 16:25'>Exo 16:25</a></em>)<br/>- “As the first redeemer caused manna to descend…so will the latter redeemer cause manna to descend” (Midrash Rabbah on <em><a href='B:250 1:9'>Ecc 1:9</a></em>)<br/>- “The manna has been prepared for…the age to come” (Midrash Tanhuma,&nbsp;<em>Beshallah</em>&nbsp;21:66).<br/>Yet the Lord told them in John 6 that the true manna was His flesh, which He was to give for the life of the world. Some have supposed from <em><a href='B:60 5:10-12'>Jos 5:10-12</a></em> cp. <em><a href='B:20 16:35'>Exo 16:35</a></em> that the manna fell for the first time on the eve of the Passover, thus adding even more poignancy to the Lord’s equation of the manna with His death. Yet all this painstaking attempt to re-focus the crowds on the spiritual rather than the literal, salvation through His death rather than an immediate benefit for them, patient eating / sharing in His sufferings rather than eternity here and now…all this went so tragically unheeded. And it does to this day:&nbsp;</p><p>There are evident parallels between Paul’s account of the breaking of bread, and the Lord’s words about the giving of His body. There is no record of the great preaching commission in John, but he does in fact record it in more spiritual and indirect ways. And likewise there is no account of the breaking of bread, but in fact he has already recorded the essence of it in the discourse about the bread and wine of life in John 6 :</p><table><tr><td></p><h4><em><a href='B:500 6:51'>Joh 6:51</a></em></td><td><em><a href='B:530 11:24'>1Co 11:24</a></em></td><td></td></tr><tr><td>The bread which I will give</td><td>This</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Is my flesh</td><td>Is my body</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>For the life of the world</td><td>Which is for you</td><td></td></tr></table><p>Note in passing how ‘we’ are ‘the world’ to Jesus. And He likewise should be our world, as we are to Him. The word of interpretation which the Lord Jesus spoke over the emblems was a reflection of the way the head of the family explained the meaning of the Passover lamb and unleavened bread to the participants during the Passover meal. But before His death, during His life, the Lord Jesus as it were proclaimed this word of interpretation over His own body. The conclusion is clearly that He saw Himself even during His life as the slain Passover lamb. This explains why so much stress is made upon His “blood" saving us, when crucifixion was in fact a relatively bloodless death. It wasn’t as if the Lord was killed by His blood being poured out. But it was the life which the blood represented which was the essential basis of our redemption. And that life was lived out over 33 years, not just in the 6 hours of crucifixion. All this means that the spirit of the cross must be lived out in daily life; not merely in occasional acts of heroism, nor only in occasional acts of commitment or religious duty, such as attending ecclesial meetings. The cross was and is a life lived.</h4><p>The link between the Lord’s death and the true word / voice of God is made in <em><a href='B:500 6:51'>Joh 6:51</a></em> cp. 63: the words of the Lord give life, whereas also His flesh “which I will give for the life of the world" on the cross would also be the source of life. The giving of His flesh was in essence His word to man; the word made flesh. This phrase, we have suggested elsewhere, also refers to the Lord’s death rather than His birth. See on <em><a href='B:650 12:25'>Heb 12:25</a></em>.</p><p>The Lord died so that the world may have life (<em><a href='B:500 6:51'>Joh 6:51</a></em>); but only those who eat His words and assimilate the true meaning of His cross will share this life; therefore "the world" refers to all who would believe. It is for them (us, by His grace), not even for those who respond but ultimately fall away, that the Lord gave His all. We are "the world" to Him. Let's not dilute the specialness of His love and the wonder of our calling to these things. We ought to be deeply, deeply moved by the fact that we have been called into God's world, into His sphere of vision. He even created the different types of meats "to be received with thanksgiving of them which believe and know the truth" (<em><a href='B:610 4:3'>1Ti 4:3</a></em>); they were made for us, not the world, and therefore we ought to give thanks for our food with this realization.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 6:52'>Joh 6:52</a></em>&nbsp;<em>The Jews therefore argued with each other, saying: How can this man give us his flesh to eat?</em>- The argument being "with each other" suggests that some of the crowd correctly understood the Lord's sense, whereas others still read Him on a literal level, recoiling at the idea of cannibalism, eating raw flesh, which was so disgusting to the Jewish mindset. I suggest the Lord intentionally framed His words in this way in order to provoke, in order to deepen the rift between those who insisted on reading Him literally, and those who grasped the spiritual sense of His words. And that is perhaps an explanation of why there are so many 'difficult passages' in the Bible; those who want to read them literally, without spiritual discernment, end up thinking that His flesh literally came down from Heaven. Those who read with a spiritual sense have no problem grasping His intended meaning.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 6:53'>Joh 6:53</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Jesus replied to them: Truly, truly, I say to you: Except you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life in yourselves</em>- There is nothing else of meaning in human experience. His life, as shown in His death, is the only true and lasting sustenance for the believer. As noted on :52, the Lord chose images which He knew would provoke the divide between the literalists, the unspiritual, and those with spiritual discernment. To drink blood was deeply obnoxious to Jews. But unless they would see He referred to His life, and allow that life or spirit to displace their own, then they would have no life in themselves. The life He offers, like the gift of the Spirit, is "in" or 'within' the heart and mind.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 6:54'>Joh 6:54</a></em>&nbsp;<em>He that eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day</em>- The assimilation of His life and person is to take over our lives, so that our life is his. And His life is eternal, and therefore we shall be raised at the last day to continue living it.</p><p>There is also evident reference here to the breaking of bread. In our absorption of the bread and wine into our bodies, we symbolise our desire to appropriate His life and death into the very fabric of our lives. It is a symbol of our total commitment to living life as He did, and as it was epitomised in His time of dying. The breaking of bread is therefore not something which can be separated from the rest of our lives; it is a physical statement of how our whole lives are devoted to assimilating the spirit of this Man.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 6:55'>Joh 6:55</a></em>&nbsp;<em>For my flesh is the true food, and my blood is the true drink</em>- "The true" contrasts with that which is not the real thing but only masquerades as such; the contrast is with the Mosaic symbols which could not give life. And that Mosaic system was perhaps spoken of by the temporal gift of bread the Lord had given the crowds the day before.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 6:56'>Joh 6:56</a></em>&nbsp;<em>He that eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me and I in him</em>- This mutual 'abiding' is at the utter heart of what it means to be in Christ, a Christian. We assimilate His life into ours, especially appreciating that the cross was the epitome and intensest summation of that life. It may be expressed in physical symbol by the breaking of bread, but the essence is of mental life lived in a way that has absorbed Him into us. This requires conscious effort on our part. Habits like prayer, reflection, meditation, Bible reading become a vital part of our daily experience. But allowing His life to be in us is responded to by Him abiding in us. He abides in us through the gift of His Spirit in our hearts, the Comforter, the anointing abiding within us (<em><a href='B:500 14:17'>Joh 14:17</a></em>; <em><a href='B:690 2:27'>1Jn 2:27</a></em>; <em><a href='B:690 3:24'>1Jn 3:24</a></em> "He abides in us by the Spirit which he has given us"; <em><a href='B:500 4:13'>Joh 4:13</a></em>).</p><p>One of the common Aramaic Passover sayings at the time of Jesus was: “Behold this is the bread of affliction which our fathers did eat as they came out of Egypt. Whoever hungers, let him come and eat, and whoever is in need, let him come and keep the Passover". The Passover Haggadah of today includes virtually the same words. It is evident that the Lord Jesus several times in the course of His life alluded to these words. He spoke of how all who were hungry, who were heavy burdened, should “come" unto Him. And the bread which He gave would constantly satisfy. The conclusion surely is that He saw Himself even during His life as the slain Passover lamb. He lived out the essence of the cross in His life. Our carrying of His cross likewise speaks of life daily lived, rather than occasional heights of devotion or self-sacrifice.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 6:57'>Joh 6:57</a></em>&nbsp;<em>As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so he that eats me, he also shall live because of me</em>- The Lord likens His relationship with the Father to our relationship with Him. The metaphor of eating suggests something regular and not simply a one time act. The Lord was regularly receiving the life or spirit of the Father as He progressed in daily relationship with Him, praying alone, meditating on His word. And we can have the same relationship with the Lord Jesus, receiving the same Spirit. The Father is "living" and not passive; His ongoing, outgiving relationship with His Son is to be reflected in our relationship with the Son.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 6:58'>Joh 6:58</a></em>&nbsp;<em>This is the bread which came down out of Heaven. Not as the fathers ate and died; he that eats this bread shall live forever</em>- "This is the bread" may have been spoken with the Lord pointing to Himself, or with some sign that He referred to Himself. Or He may have had in view the "life" of which He has just spoken in :57. The coming down out of Heaven is not to be taken literally, just as the manna didn't float down through the sky, but was of Divine origin. The life we can now live is that of God, that lived by the Lord Jesus in His mortal life; it is out of Heaven in that there is direct connection between that life we can live, and the life or Spirit of God in Heaven itself.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 6:59'>Joh 6:59</a></em>&nbsp;<em>These things said he in the synagogue, while teaching in Capernaum</em>- A synagogue has been unearthed in Capernaum which was called "the house of bread". He purposefully used such challenging language right there in the seat of Orthodox Jewish learning, in order to accelerate the process of choice in His hearers- to accept what He was offering, or remain 'safe' within a literal hearing of His words which would result in their utter rejection of Him. And the subsequent revolt against Him, and the protestation of the disciples' loyalty to His words, shows that He succeeded.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 6:60'>Joh 6:60</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Many therefore of his disciples, when they heard this, said: This is a hard saying; who can hear it?</em>- As noted on :59 and earlier, the Lord phrased Himself in such a way as to provoke a choice in the hearts of those who heard Him. They had just witnessed the miracle of the bread; but the claim He really was Messiah, and they could live for ever, with the life and spirit of God, was too much for them. For all time, the idea that miracles lead to faith is demonstrated as false. John 6 shows how John seeks to present Jesus Himself as the words which give eternal life if eaten / digested (<em><a href='B:500 6:63'>Joh 6:63</a></em>). And some commented: “This is a hard saying, who can hear him?” (<em><a href='B:500 6:60'>Joh 6:60</a></em> RVmg:), as if to present Jesus the person as the embodiment of His sayings / words.</p><p>There's something in our nature which shies away from the true Gospel because it's too good to believe. Paul had this struggle with the Jews, both in and outside of the church. They heard the offer of life from the Lord Himself, and rejected it: "This is an hard saying: who can hear it?" (<em><a href='B:500 6:60'>Joh 6:60</a></em>). It was just too good to believe. There is something in our natures which is diametrically opposed to the concept of&nbsp;<em>pure</em>&nbsp;grace. We feel we must&nbsp;<em>do</em>&nbsp;something before we can expect anything from God. And yet in condescension to this, the Father sometimes almost goes along with us in this. See on <em><a href='B:470 8:34'>Mat 8:34</a></em>.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 6:61'>Joh 6:61</a></em>&nbsp;<em>But Jesus, knowing in himself that his disciples murmured at this, said to them: Does this cause you to stumble?</em>- The talk of :60 was therefore carefully out of the Lord's earshot. But He perceived that many were now stumbling; and I have suggested that He intentionally phrased Himself in such ways as to provoke such a decision. The murmuring of the disciples was influenced by the murmuring of the Pharisees; see on :41. It was the equivalent of Israel's murmuring against Moses (<em><a href='B:530 10:10'>1Co 10:10</a></em> s:w:).</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 6:62'>Joh 6:62</a></em>&nbsp;<em>What then if you should see the Son of Man ascending where he was before?</em>- I have suggested that the Lord spoke of eating His blood and body in order to deliberately provoke the audience to accept Him and His Spirit; or to remain on the level of the literal, meaning they would reject Him as heretical and weird. And so He now utters another such saying, which the unspiritual to this day also stumble over, thinking that He speaks of a literal ascent to literal Heaven where He had literally been before. But as noted earlier, literal pre-existence in a personal form in Heaven is not at all what He meant, nor what the Bible teaches. He was "with the Father" just as John the Baptist had been with the Father. He is rhetorically asking whether they would wish for this whole wondrous offer of salvation, this theophany of God coming down before them, to just abruptly end. For 'coming down' is the language of theophany. "Where he was before" may refer to how He had been before age 30, when He gave no hint of His Divine origins. This point becomes more probable when we recall as noted on :42 that this crowd of people personally knew Him and His family, and felt He could not be God's Son nor Messiah exactly because they had known Him "before", in His life before His ministry. He would then be asking them: 'So do you want the wonderful offer and theophany to end, and me to just go back to being the Nazareth carpenter? Would you then feel better and less challenged?'.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 6:63'>Joh 6:63</a></em>&nbsp;<em>It is the spirit that gives life. The flesh profits nothing-&nbsp;</em>I suggested on :62 that their problem was with the fact that they had known Him after the flesh, as He was "before"; for they had earlier known Him and His apparent family of origin (see on :42). They were not a crowd of anonymous people; they knew Him personally from His life before His ministry had&nbsp;begun. He may be saying to the effect: 'I as you knew me after the flesh will not save you. Nor will the bread I gave you physically. It is my words, my spirit, which is now available, which will give you eternal life'.</p><p><em>The words that I have spoken to you are spirit, and are life</em>- The Lord in John 6 taught parallels between belief in Him leading to eternal life, and His words, blood and body having the same effect. The word of Christ is in that sense His body and blood; it speaks to us in “the preaching (word) of the cross". There are parallels between the manna and the word of Christ; yet also between the manna and His death. His words give life as the manna did (:63), and yet the manna is specifically defined as His flesh, which He gave to bring life (:51). In this context He speaks of gaining life by eating His bread and drinking His blood, in evident anticipation of the memorial meal He was to institute (compare ‘the bread which I&nbsp;<em>give</em>&nbsp;is my flesh’ with ‘this is my body,&nbsp;<em>given</em>&nbsp;for you’). Eating / absorbing His manna, the sacrifice of the cross, is vital to the experience of eternal life now and the future physical receipt of it.</p><p>Assimilating the spirit and life of His cross into our lives is the vital essence of eternal life; and He foresaw that one of the ways of doing this would be through remembering that cross in the breaking of bread service. And yet notice how the Lord took that bread of life and gave it to the disciples as His guests at the last supper. To take the bread is to show our acceptance of the gift of life which is in Jesus. The Lord stated that when He had been lifted up on the cross,&nbsp;<em>then</em>&nbsp;the Jews would realize the truth and integrity of the words that He had spoken (<em><a href='B:500 8:28'>Joh 8:28</a></em>). Again, the cross is presented as a confirmation of all the words / verbal teaching of the Lord.<br/>“Bread” or manna was a phrase the Rabbis commonly applied to the Torah- e:g. they interpreted <em><a href='B:240 9:5'>Pro 9:5</a></em> (“Come, eat ye of my bread”) as referring to the Law. And the Lord was clearly playing on and extending this idea in John 6. The Lord taught that in the same way as Moses gave Israel manna, so He was giving them Himself, and His word. He defines the meaning of the manna in <em><a href='B:500 6:63'>Joh 6:63</a></em> as His words. He is inviting us to eat Him in the sense of His words; He is the word of God. Remember how Jeremiah says that he found God's word and ate it, God's word was unto him the joy and rejoicing of his heart. Think too of the words of Job in <em><a href='B:220 23:12'>Job 23:12</a></em>, speaking as a type of Christ on this occasion: “I have esteemed the words of his mouth more&nbsp;than my necessary food". We tend to think that as we eat physically, so we should eat spiritually. The point is often made amongst us that as we always find time to eat physically, so we should to eat God's word. But this is not quite what Job is saying. He says that we should relate to our spiritual food even&nbsp;<em>more</em>&nbsp;importantly than to our natural need for food. It's second nature for us to eat regularly, every day; we don't have to schedule time to eat, it flows naturally into our daily organization of life.</p><p>There are a number of similarities between the record of the gathering of the manna and that of the Passover. They could seethe the manna, as the Paschal lamb could be seethed. They were to gather the manna according to the size of their families, and the collection was to be organized by the head of the house. This is all the language of the Passover. The lamb represented Jesus, and so did the manna. The saving work of the lamb of God is further mediated to us through the medium of His word:&nbsp; In John 6 the Lord says that we must eat His flesh and drink His blood to have eternal life; and He says the same about eating His words (v:63). So often the Lord says that we have got eternal life, here and now. He keeps on saying it in John 6.</p><p>The parallel between the Lord's word and His Spirit should not be taken as justification for believing in a so-called 'spirit word', and assuming that He is here exhorting us to read the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, including the Chronicles genealogies, in order to get His Spirit; as if Bible reading somehow equals getting the Spirit. The words spoken by the Lord refer specifically to His words, and not the whole Bible. This is not to in any sense decry study of the Bible. But here, the Lord is saying that the abiding of&nbsp;<em>His&nbsp;</em>words within us is associated with His Spirit abiding with us. Those words are the message of Him. We can understand why early Christian converts were required to memorize the Gospels, Mark especially. The word of Him, which John is teaching in this Gospel of John, was to abide in them. There may even be a suggestion that they were to repeat His words as recorded in the Gospels, for most converts would have been illiterate and without access to written versions of the Gospels. Having Him, His manner of life and being, ever before us::. this is having His Spirit, eating Him, abiding in Him.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 6:64'>Joh 6:64</a></em> - see on <em><a href='B:70 16:13'>Jdg 16:13</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 13:11'>Joh 13:11</a></em>.</p><p><em>But there are some of you that do not believe. For Jesus knew from the beginning who they were that did not believe, and who it was that would betray him</em>- Many of the crowd had now walked away in disgust. But lest those who remained now thought that they were the chosen ones, the Lord warns that there were even some of them who did not.</p><p>The impression of a close spiritual relationship and subsequent shock on appreciating that Judas was a traitor that we see expressed in the Psalms is hard to reconcile with our Lord knowing Judas' motives from the beginning. Jesus knew from the beginning that some would betray him: "There are some of you that believe not. For Jesus knew from the beginning who they were that believed not, and who should betray him::. Therefore said I unto you, that no man can come unto me, except it were given unto me of my Father" (<em><a href='B:500 6:64-65'>Joh 6:64-65</a></em>). Our Lord knew that not all were called by God to be able to come to Him- He knew who would not believe. And yet He suppressed this knowledge in his love and hope for Judas- just as it could be that God limits His omnipotence and omniscience in His dealings with us hence His sense of hurt, shock and genuine disappointment with human behaviour. If this passage does imply Christ's knowledge of Judas' intentions (as <em><a href='B:500 6:70'>Joh 6:70</a></em> seems to), these words were spoken in the final year of the Lord's ministry, when Christ's sensitive spirit would have noticed the tell-tale signs in Judas. Or is "He spake of Judas::. that should betray him" (<em><a href='B:500 6:70'>Joh 6:70</a></em>) a comment added by John, which would mean that Jesus was not necessarily thinking of Judas when he said "One of you is a devil"?:&nbsp;</p><h4>The Lord was human, and there is a capacity within human nature to know something on one level and yet deny it in practice. Samson surely knew what Delilah was going to do to him, yet his love for her made him blind. And so it could be that on one level the Lord knew Judas' apostasy; and One of His sensitivity would likely have perceived anyway the man's dishonesty and wrong motivations. But His love and hope for him was such that He acted and felt with genuine surprise and shock when Judas actually did what the Lord foreknew he was going to do. We have here a profound window onto the Lord's humanity.</h4>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 6:65'>Joh 6:65</a></em>&nbsp;<em>And he said: For this cause have I said to you, that no one can came to me, except it be given to him of the Father</em>- As noted on :44, we must be "drawn" to the Father. But as Paul develops at length in Romans, the very existence of such things as calling and predestination indicate that the final algorithm of human salvation includes God's grace at a personal level. For not all are called. The calling is itself a gift, a term often used about the gift of the Spirit.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 6:66'>Joh 6:66</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Upon this many of his disciples withdrew, and no longer walked with him</em>- Just as today, the teaching that some are called and some are not (:65) makes some turn back. Already, many had turned away, and the Lord was left with a smaller crowd; and now many of them "withdrew". But "withdrew" is literally 'to go back from', 'to go behind', and is also used of men following the Lord, behind Him. The same word is used of turning back, going behind; and also of going behind in the sense of following. This is intentional. The idea may be that it is not a question of literally following after Him, behind Him; but of following Him in the heart. Peter was taught this when he walked behind the Lord physically, but was told that if he were to really follow Him, he must take up the cross daily and follow. And John's Gospel ends with a play on the same theme, of following behind. The same word is used of how the Jews perceived that the whole Jewish world had gone behind Jesus (<em><a href='B:500 12:19'>Joh 12:19</a></em>); but in fact very few were really following Him. To not walk with Him, the light of the world, was to walk in darkness (<em><a href='B:500 12:35'>Joh 12:35</a></em>; <em><a href='B:690 1:6-7'>1Jn 1:6-7</a></em>). And they did so because they thought it unreasonable that some are called and others are not (:65). They played God, and thus turned away from the greatest grace- of having been called to see and know Him.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 6:67'>Joh 6:67</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Jesus asked the twelve: Would you also go away?</em>- The large crowd had diminished twice, as the Lord purposefully provoked them with His language and ideas. Perhaps now only the twelve and a few others were left. And He asks them if they will also "go away", using the term used for their 'going away' from Him and seeking to return to their home area in Capernaum (see on :21).</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 6:68'>Joh 6:68</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Simon Peter answered him: Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life</em>- It was the Lord's "words", His use of language about drinking blood, ascending where He had been before, and about not all being called::. which had caused the majority to go away into the darkness. Hence the significance of Peter's comment that His words were those of life eternal. His life was His words, and Peter was abiding with those words and that life. Peter was one of the few who really grasped the meaning of the Lord's miraculous provision of bread, and the discourse which followed. The Lord had said that He was the living bread, of which a man could eat and live forever. Peter's comment that only the Lord had the words of eternal life showed that he quite appreciated that it was the&nbsp;<em>words</em>&nbsp;of the Lord Jesus which were the essential thing, not the physicality of the miracle (fascinating as it must have been to a fisherman; <em><a href='B:500 6:51'>Joh 6:51</a></em> cp. 68). &nbsp;</p><p>The Spirit of Jesus, His disposition, His mindset, His way of thinking and being, is paralleled with His words and His person. They both ‘quicken’ or give eternal life, right now. “It is the Spirit that quickeneth present tense… the words that I speak unto you, they are right now spirit, and they are life… thou hast right now the words of eternal life” (<em><a href='B:500 6:63'>Joh 6:63</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 6:68'>Joh 6:68</a></em>). Yet at the last day, God will quicken the dead and physically give them eternal life (<em><a href='B:520 4:17'>Rom 4:17</a></em>; <em><a href='B:530 15:22'>1Co 15:22</a></em>; <em><a href='B:530 15:36'>1Co 15:36</a></em>). But this will be because in this life we had the ‘Spirit’ of the eternal life in us: “He that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by on account of his spirit that dwelleth in you” (<em><a href='B:520 8:11'>Rom 8:11</a></em>). Again we have the same words, ‘quicken’ and ‘his spirit’. And Paul says that our resurrection will have some similarities with that of our Lord- who was “put to death in the flesh but quickened by on account of the spirit” (<em><a href='B:670 3:18'>1Pe 3:18</a></em>). It was according to the spirit of holiness, of a holy life, that Jesus was raised and given eternal life (<em><a href='B:520 1:4'>Rom 1:4</a></em>). What all this means in practice is that if we live a ‘quickened’ spiritual life now, a life modelled around what Jesus would have done or said in any given situation, then we have the guarantee that we will be ‘quickened’ in the Kingdom. Thus <em><a href='B:520 8:2'>Rom 8:2</a></em> speaks of “the law of the spirit of life in Christ”. Having “the spirit” in our hearts is therefore the seal, the guarantee, of our future salvation (<em><a href='B:540 1:22'>2Co 1:22</a></em>; <em><a href='B:540 5:5'>2Co 5:5</a></em>; <em><a href='B:560 1:14'>Eph 1:14</a></em>).</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 6:69'>Joh 6:69</a></em> - see on <em><a href='B:590 1:3'>1Th 1:3</a></em>.</p><p><em>And we have believed and know that you are the Holy One of God</em>- The people's real problem was that they could not accept a man well known to them as Messiah. Out of all the range of Messianic titles which Peter could have chosen, he chooses one which implies the Lord was God's "One", His begotten Son. The Lord must have been greatly encouraged, but He instead takes issue with Peter's statement that "<em>we&nbsp;</em>have believed and know::.". For one of them did not. The implication could be that Judas did what he did not simply for money, but from a disbelief that Jesus was in fact Messiah and Son of God.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 6:70'>Joh 6:70</a></em> - see on <em><a href='B:500 6:64'>Joh 6:64</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 8:44'>Joh 8:44</a></em>.</p><p><em>Jesus answered them: Did not I choose you the twelve, and one of you is a devil?</em>- As noted on :64, the crowd had progressively diminished as they all became offended at the Lord's words. Perhaps only the twelve remained, and the Lord didn't want them to think that even they were all going to abide. Even one of them was an opponent, a false accuser. Judas was 'chosen'; but being chosen is not of itself enough. We must make our choosing or election "sure" (<em><a href='B:680 1:10'>2Pe 1:10</a></em> - perhaps written by Peter with his mind on Judas).</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 6:71'>Joh 6:71</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Now he spoke of Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot; for he was the one of those twelve who would betray him</em>- Clearly the term "devil" doesn't refer to an Angelic being who fell off the 99th floor in Eden. The term is here applied to Judas, just as "satan" is to Peter. Perhaps this is another of the points of similarity between Peter and Judas, who in essence did the same thing in denying the Lord; and yet Peter's core faith triumphed and he repented, whereas Judas could not believe in the Lord's grace as Peter did.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 7:1'>Joh 7:1</a></em>&nbsp;<em>And after these things Jesus walked in Galilee; for he would not walk in Judea, because the Jews sought to kill him</em>- This is an exemplification in practice of how the Lord's life was not taken from Him, but He gave it at the time and in the manner which He Himself wished. He knew that if He went to Judea and walked openly, He would be killed. And He wished to die at Passover, not tabernacles (:2). This conscious self-giving of the Lord is hard to plumb, but it remains our constant pattern. Yet we note that the Lord did in fact teach openly at the feast of tabernacles. He did go into Judea. His reasoning may have been that He could be killed on the way, but He judged rightly that public opinion was sufficiently for Him that He would not be killed by the Jews within Jerusalem at the time of the tabernacles feast. This could have all been beamed into Him by the Father, but I prefer to imagine His own sensitivity and spiritual reasoning leading Him to these conclusions.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 7:2'>Joh 7:2</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Now the feast of the Jews, the feast of tabernacles, was at hand</em>- Again, what the Old Testament describes as "the feasts of Yahweh" are spoken of as the feasts of the Jews; the law of God through Moses became "their law", and the temple of Yahweh became the temple of the Jews. They had hijacked God's ways and turned them into their own mere religion.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 7:3'>Joh 7:3</a></em>&nbsp;<em>His brothers said to him: Depart from here and go into Judea, so your disciples may also see the works you do</em>- The disciples in view were presumably the Lord's sympathizers in Judea. "The works" refer to miracles. The Lord had been rejected by many exactly because the Galilean audience knew Him before His ministry began, and now He was claiming to be Son of God and Messiah, unwelcome public attention would be focused upon His family of origin. They therefore wanted Him to go to Judea, and taunted Him as to why He didn't do His miracles there too. Both his family and the men of Israel generally rejected David's claims to be able to save Israel (<em><a href='B:90 17:28-30'>1Sa 17:28-30</a></em>), and this pointed forward to the Lord's rejection by His brothers. Eliab's "Why camest thou down hither?" matches the Lord's brothers telling Him "depart from here":&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 7:4'>Joh 7:4</a></em>&nbsp;<em>For no one does anything in secret while he seeks to be known openly. If you do these things, manifest yourself to the world</em>- This was another form of the temptation to "come down from the cross" and the wilderness temptations, to persuade the Jewish world by visible miracle. But the Lord's experience in chapter 6 had prepared Him for this; the miracle of the feeding had only led to men turning away from Him once it was explained to them. As explained on :3, the Lord's family didn't want all the public attention now given to them because of His claims to be God's Son and Messiah. They taunted Him that doing miracles in backwater Galilee was effectively being secretive; if He were indeed Messiah then He surely would want to be "known openly", and so they urged Him to leave them and go to Jerusalem and manifest Himself openly to the Jewish world there. Just as the Lord's synagogue-influenced brothers wanted Him to show Himself openly to the world (<em><a href='B:500 7:4'>Joh 7:4</a></em>), so did the disciples (<em><a href='B:500 14:22'>Joh 14:22</a></em>). There was that hankering for Him to openly display Himself as the Messiah which Judaism had created within its own mind. This was all a repeat of the wilderness temptation.</p><p>Perhaps they were alluding to the Rabbinic idea that as Moses hid himself and then re-emerged from obscurity, so Messiah would. Rabbi Berekiah said: “As the first deliverer Moses was revealed, then hidden and afterwards appeared again, so will it also be with the last deliverer Messiah”. John’s record is clearly presenting the Lord as Moses in this sense.</p><p>In collective societies, where life was totally lived in the public realm and anything done 'in private' is seen as deviant (cp. <em><a href='B:500 7:4'>Joh 7:4</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 18:20'>Joh 18:20</a></em>), shame was related to how&nbsp;<em>others</em>&nbsp;saw you, not your internal reflections and assessment of your guilt or innocence for things like private thoughts and unknown deeds. And there's every reason to think that the global village of the 21st century is an equally conscience-less place, where so long as you talk in nice speak and don't get caught actually&nbsp;<em>doing</em>&nbsp;anything society thinks is wrong, you can exist with no internal, personal conscience at all. Indeed, the word "conscience" originated from words which literally mean 'common / with others / knowledge'- conscience was collective, whereas the Biblical understanding of it is more on a personal level.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 7:5'>Joh 7:5</a></em>&nbsp;<em>For even his brothers did not believe in him</em>- The later New Testament records that they did later believe in Him. This would have required fair humility on their part. His behaviour in family life would have been perfect before God; no sins of omission nor commission. But the beauty of it all was that nobody perceived that. And it was His very humanity which stopped them believing in Him, just as it is His humanity which has been such a barrier to faith for so many, leading them to create false doctrines such as the Trinity in order to try to get over the problem, and thereby make Him the less challenging to we who share His same nature.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 7:6'>Joh 7:6</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Jesus replied to them: My time is not yet come; but your time is always read</em>y- "My time" surely refers to the time for Him to die on the cross. The phrase is only used elsewhere by Paul about "my time of departure" (<em><a href='B:620 4:6'>2Ti 4:6</a></em>), reflecting how he saw the Lord's death in his death, and thereby was confident in sharing in His resurrection. We need to have the same attitude. The word&nbsp;<em>kairos</em>, "time", can also refer to a specific time, i:e. a Jewish feast. It is used like this in <em><a href='B:490 13:1'>Luk 13:1</a></em> AV: "There were present at that season some::.", the idea being that there is reference to some who were present in Jerusalem at that feast. So the Lord may mean that<em>&nbsp;His</em>&nbsp;feast, the one at which He was to die, Passover, had not yet come. For the debate was about going up to the feast of Tabernacles, not Passover. But their feast was always prepared NEV "ready", for they were participating in the feast in a literal manner. The idea seems to be that the Lord's feast, the Passover when He was to die, was not yet prepared. He, and other factors, were not yet prepared. But for their feast of tabernacles, everything was ready for them and they might as well go to it at any time.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 7:7'>Joh 7:7</a></em>&nbsp;<em>The world cannot hate you, but it hates me, because I testify of it, that its works are evil</em>- The Lord's brothers were on the side of the Jewish world. They feared they would be hated by Jewish society because of their connection with the Lord, but He assures them that they have nothing to fear. Because it was His testimony against their evil works which was the basis for hate. The Lord did not specifically state that the works of the Jewish world were evil; but the phrase issued in <em><a href='B:500 3:19'>Joh 3:19</a></em> of how the Lord's life was such a light that the Jews shrunk back from it, preferring the darkness, lest His light reveal their works as evil. His life lived was therefore a testimony. Just as our most powerful witness is our life lived rather than words spoken or theology preached. The Jewish world hated the Lord's true disciples because they were not "of" that world (<em><a href='B:500 15:18-19'>Joh 15:18-19</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 17:14'>Joh 17:14</a></em>). Separation from the world elicits hatred from the world simply because we are different. This is basic human group psychology, to hate any outside the group or who leave the group. It has to be, therefore, that the true believer is hated by the world; we should not marvel at it (<em><a href='B:690 3:13'>1Jn 3:13</a></em>). Our positions are an implicit criticism and rebuke of them, which they 'hear' and respond to with hatred rather than indifference or the 'religious tolerance' which is the talk of the West at this time.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 7:8'>Joh 7:8</a></em>&nbsp;<em>You go up to the feast. I will not be going up to this feast, because my time is not yet fulfilled</em>- The AV adds "I go not up&nbsp;<em>yet</em>". Perhaps He is using spiritual language in order to confuse those who did not wish to spiritually perceive Him. He was going to the feast of tabernacles; but He means that He is not 'going up' to it in the sense of making His self-offering there at that feast, because His hour has not yet come for that. He knew He must wait until Passover for that. He may simply have meant that He perceived that He could be killed on the way to the feast, and so He was not going to go up at that time, because that was not the intended time for His death.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 7:9'>Joh 7:9</a></em>&nbsp;<em>And having said these things to them, he stayed in Galilee</em>- Perhaps He did not want to join the caravan of travellers going to the feast from Galilee, for this would have involved Him camping out with His family. They did not want association with Him, and He did not wish to force the issue. It was perhaps this gentle, sensitive policy which led to many of them coming to believe in Him after His death.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 7:10'>Joh 7:10</a></em>&nbsp;<em>But when his brothers had gone to the feast, then he also went to it, not publicly but as it were in secret</em>- The caravans descending upon Jerusalem for the feast were strictly organized according to families and towns of origin. The Lord did not wish to have to raise His earthly background because this would distract from His self-presentation as the One "from Heaven", of Divine origin, as emphasized in chapter 6. He therefore "in secret" joined the caravans, disguising His identity. There were many who would have been eager to use His presence amongst the pilgrims as an opportunity for staging a revolution and enthroning Him as king. Remember that this was one of His wilderness temptations, which returned to Him at times like this. His wisdom in avoiding such a situation is a mark of His recognition of His own frailty. He avoided temptation.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 7:11'>Joh 7:11</a></em>&nbsp;<em>The Jews searched for him at the feast, and asked: Where is he?</em>- This question "Where is he?" is recorded three times in John, and nowhere else in the New Testament (<em><a href='B:500 9:12'>Joh 9:12</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 20:15'>Joh 20:15</a></em>). The Lord's apparent absence was in order to elicit that question and a seeking for Him. His apparent absence and silence in the traumas of life is to likewise provoke in us the same question. I suggest in John's context this is all to add background to the momentous statements we have in the promise of the Comforter- that the Lord who was physically absent is present through His Spirit. His physical absence is not critical. And those who seek for Him shall find Him.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 7:12'>Joh 7:12</a></em>&nbsp;<em>And there was much murmuring among the crowds concerning him. Some said: He is a good man. Others said: Not so. He deceives the people</em>- The miracles done were clear enough, but still some thought He was a deceiver. Again John is making the point that miracles do not play a great role in eliciting faith. And this was a necessary point to be made, seeing John was writing at the time when the miraculous gifts were being withdrawn and phased out.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 7:13'>Joh 7:13</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Yet no one spoke openly about him for fear of the Jews</em>- Another theme of John is that belief in Jesus as Messiah and Lord must be openly stated. He records the examples of the healed blind man, Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea, who 'came out' for the Lord. The Greek word for "openly" is used around 30 times in the New Testament for the 'openness' of the Lord's witness and that of the disciples. It is a characteristic of those who believe they are living the eternal life and have been filled with the love and Spirit of the Father and Son. But it is fear of our image before others which stymies that boldness. The same word is used of how the Lord spoke openly or boldly (:26); seeking those who heard Him to likewise be open and bold in coming out for Him. Joseph of Arimathea is presented as a secret disciple who "for fear of the Jews" did not come out openly for the Lord (<em><a href='B:500 19:38'>Joh 19:38</a></em> s:w:), and John uses the same term to describe how they the disciples were likewise living "in fear of the Jews" (<em><a href='B:500 20:19'>Joh 20:19</a></em>). It was the experience of the Lord's death and resurrection which results in the Acts record so often describing how they "spoke openly" of the Lord, now fearless of the Jews. The Lord's crucifixion and rising again should have a similar impact upon us.</p>


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<h4><em><a href='B:500 7:14'>Joh 7:14</a></em>&nbsp;<em>When the feast was half way through, Jesus went into the temple and taught</em>- "Half way through" is "in the midst", and the term is usually used not of time but of being in the midst of persons. His entry into the temple in the midst of Israel could have been seen as a triumphal entry, in preparation for what He planned to do at the next Passover feast. If the reference is to waiting half way through the eight days of the feast, then we see how the Lord was carefully calculating His impact. He knew that if He were to openly preach for eight days, He could be arrested or provoke a revolution. So He timed His appearance at the optimal time- to get His message over to as many as possible without provoking the events which would lead to His death. He of course planned His Passover appearances to lead to His death. We see here something of the degree to which the Lord gave His life, it was not taken from Him; He Himself carefully planned things rather than being a mute puppet in the Divine hand.</h4>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 7:15'>Joh 7:15</a></em>&nbsp;<em>The Jews marvelled, saying: How is it that this man has learning, when he has never had an education?</em>- As the Son of God, the Lord would or could have been an intellectual without compare. The fact He had not been educated would have been revealed in all the background checks they had run on Him. And His lack of education speaks of the abject poverty in which He had grown up- out working from a child rather than studying. But in the Lord we see a challenge for all time to the effect that lack of time, long hours, little cash, demanding domestic situations::. are no ultimate barrier to developing God's mind and growing spiritually.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 7:16'>Joh 7:16</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Jesus answered them and said: My teaching is not mine, but His that sent me</em>- The Lord says nothing of how He had figured out Hebrew and Aramaic letters because of His own intelligence. Rather He says that His ability to teach when He was uneducated was yet another sign that He was sent from God with God's message. The differentiation made by the Lord here between Himself and the Father is yet another problem for the Trinitarian paradigm.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 7:17'>Joh 7:17</a></em> - see on <em><a href='B:500 8:43'>Joh 8:43</a></em>.</p><p><em>If anyone wills to do His will, he shall know of this teaching, whether it is of God, or I speak from myself</em>- Most of the audience were illiterate and had no access to the Hebrew scrolls of the Old Testament in order to check out whether the Lord's doctrine was of God or simply from Himself, His own philosophy. The will of God is of our salvation and sanctification; this has been developed so far throughout John's Gospel. He who wishes above all things to live God's life, to have His Spirit, to live the life eternal with Him::. they will intuitively know whether the Lord's doctrine is right or not. This intuitive element is in fact what leads to faith in the first place. There is a strong tendency to talk this down, and assume that it is by intellectual process that a person decides what is true or otherwise. But all appeal to intellectual process alone to decide 'truth' is flawed. For we are talking of spiritual things and not material. And legitimate intellectual process varies between persons. They may come to different conclusions about the same teaching which they analyse. And some are far more capable of intellectual analysis than others. There has to be something beyond intellectual process to decide truth. Here the Lord expresses this as a willing to do God's will, a heart for God, a desire for eternity. In a word, we must be open to the things of the Spirit. And then, the teachings make sense and there is an intuitive congruence between them and our own spirit.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 7:18'>Joh 7:18</a></em>&nbsp;<em>He that speaks from himself seeks his own glory; but he that seeks the glory of Him that sent him, the same is true, and no unrighteousness is in him</em>- The Lord here discerns that all public teaching tends towards self-glorification. If a teacher is totally concerned with God's glory and not at all for his own glory, then he is of God. Indeed, the Lord here defines having "no unrighteousness" with not seeking one’s own glory. He sees this principle as so fundamental that He considers that a person who seeks totally God's glory is therefore from God. This is a sober warning to all who teach publicly. Only the perfect, in whom is no unrighteousness, can say that they totally seek God's glory and not at all their own. There is in all of us for none are without unrighteousness a tendency towards our own self glory. This must be accepted, and struggled against. Nor should we seek to give glory to teachers. We must remember the principle here- that the Lord Jesus alone had no unrighteousness in Him, and therefore He sought only and totally God's glory in His teaching; and thereby He was validated as a teacher from God:&nbsp;</p><p>Seeking His glory is to be the essential issue in our lives. If we seek God's glory- i:e. the development of the attributes and characteristics of His Name- He will seek ours (<em><a href='B:500 8:50'>Joh 8:50</a></em>), and our glory is His glory. The Lord sought the Father's glory as the Father sought His glory (<em><a href='B:500 8:50'>Joh 8:50</a></em>). The word for 'seek' used here can imply 'worship'- we must worship this concept of giving glory to God in our lives. God's glory is His essential self (<em><a href='B:500 17:5'>Joh 17:5</a></em>), yet He is willing to give us His glory. He will not give His glory to anyone apart from His people (<em><a href='B:290 48:11'>Isa 48:11</a></em>). What higher honours can be revealed to us?</p><p>Fear of false teachers, even paranoia about them, is what has led to so much division in practice. The Lord Jesus tackled the issue of whether a person is a true or a false teacher. He didn't make the division so much on the&nbsp;<em>content</em>&nbsp;of their teaching, as we usually do, but rather says that the true teacher is motivated by seeking the Father's glory, whereas the false teacher seeks only his own glory (<em><a href='B:500 7:18'>Joh 7:18</a></em>). Yet it is the endless fear of 'false teachers' in terms of the&nbsp;<em>content</em>&nbsp;of their teaching which has led to so much division- and often the process of it seems to have led to self-glorifying individuals establishing their own followings. It is by their&nbsp;<em>fruits</em>&nbsp;that they are known / discerned, rather than the analysis of their&nbsp;<em>content</em>&nbsp;by intellectual process alone.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 7:19'>Joh 7:19</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Did not Moses give you the law and yet none of you does the law? Why do you seek to kill me?</em>- Jews sought the death penalty for a person who broke the Mosaic law; yet the Lord points out that they were not obedient to that law themselves. He had taught in <em><a href='B:500 5:45'>Joh 5:45</a></em> that Moses actually condemned them.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 7:20'>Joh 7:20</a></em>&nbsp;<em>The crowd answered: You are crazy Who seeks to kill you?</em>- The crowd surely knew the Jews were plotting to kill the Lord; hence their fear of speaking openly about Him (:13). But the Lord did not get engaged in trying to persuade them of a different version of events and history. Instead He focused on the essence, which was their marvel instead of true faith (:21). "You are crazy" is literally 'you have a demon'. Unexplained illnesses, especially mental conditions, were understood as demon possession. And the Lord went along with that misunderstanding. Here too He doesn't stop to argue with them about their false theology of demons; His concern is with their deeper unbelief (:21).</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 7:21'>Joh 7:21</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Jesus answered and said to them: I did one work and you all marvel because of it</em>- The Lord said this in response to their denial that anyone was out to murder Him. He could have responded by giving quotations of words and statements both heard and reported. But He rarely answers questions on their own terms. Such point for point debating, striving to enforce one version of events upon another, virtually never succeeds in bring about understanding. Instead He comments further on how just one miracle had led to "marvel", to disbelief rather than belief; and had led some to plan to kill Him. He doesn't say 'I did a miracle, and some got so jealous they tried to kill Me'. Instead He argued that 'I did a miracle and&nbsp;<em>you</em>&nbsp;didn't believe as you should, you just marvelled'.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 7:22'>Joh 7:22</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Moses has given you circumcision (not that it is of Moses but of the fathers) and on the Sabbath you circumcise a man</em>- The crowd had not responded to the Lord's accusation that they broke the Law. But He knew that they were angry about that, filling their minds with lists of their own righteousness and legalistic obedience to laws. But again He rises above the temptation to comment upon their major disobedience in other areas. Rather does He seek to demonstrate that within the very legal structure of the Mosaic law, there was the requirement to break one law in order to keep another. The reason for that was to drive the thoughtful Israelite to throw themselves upon grace, and to realize that justification could not be achieved by obedience to law.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 7:23'>Joh 7:23</a></em>&nbsp;<em>If a man receives circumcision on the Sabbath, so that the law of Moses may not be broken, are you angry with me, because I made a man completely whole on the Sabbath?</em>- As noted on :22, the structure of the Mosaic law was in order to make legalistic obedience impossible if one insisted upon a casuistic, literalistic reading of it. For one command resulted in another being broken. And the Lord is pointing the contrast between their cutting off a piece of flesh, and Him making a man completely whole- implying His cure of the lame man was a total cure of every part of the man's wasted body. The Lord rightly perceived their 'anger' with Him for doing a good work. The reference is back to how the healing of the impotent man led to the Jews seeking to kill the Lord (<em><a href='B:500 5:18'>Joh 5:18</a></em>). The implication is that on His current visit to Jerusalem, He had done no miracles. They were still remembering with indignation that previous incident. We see here how the Lord worked with an economy of miracle.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 7:24'>Joh 7:24</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Judge not according to appearance, but judge righteous judgment</em>- The Lord is still alluding to the incident in chapter 5, where He cured the impotent man on the Sabbath and the Jews plotted to kill Him. He had explained that He had done so because "My judgment is just" (<em><a href='B:500 5:30'>Joh 5:30</a></em>). These are the same words as used here in inviting the crowd to "judge righteous "just" judgment". John will later again emphasize how God's judgments are just (<em><a href='B:730 16:7'>Rev 16:7</a></em>; <em><a href='B:730 19:2'>Rev 19:2</a></em>). We are not to judge in the sense of condemning, pre-judging in an ultimate sense; but rather is the invitation to see things from God's perspective.</p><p>As recipients of God's grace through the experience of His way of working with us reflecting His character, we too must reflect those same characteristics to others. This is why we&nbsp;<em>must</em>&nbsp;judge- for in doing so, we have the opportunity to reflect God's character. We must judge righteous judgment (<em><a href='B:500 7:24'>Joh 7:24</a></em>) in reflection of that of "the Lord, the righteous judge" (<em><a href='B:620 4:8'>2Ti 4:8</a></em>). David was almost eager to replicate the principles of God's judgments in how he judged issues (<em><a href='B:230 75:10'>Psa 75:10</a></em> cp. 7; <em><a href='B:230 75:7'>Psa 75:7</a></em> cp. 2). And therefore Asaph poses the question to Israel's judges: 'Because God judges justly, why don't you?' (<em><a href='B:230 82:1-3'>Psa 82:1-3</a></em>). As we judge, we will be judged; even Babylon will be judged as she judged others (<em><a href='B:730 18:20'>Rev 18:20</a></em> RV), and Edom's judgments in <em><a href='B:300 49:9'>Jer 49:9</a></em> are an exact reflection of how she judged Israel (<em><a href='B:380 1:5'>Oba 1:5</a></em>). And therefore we should almost jump at the opportunity to judge:&nbsp; "Cursed be he that perverteth the judgment of the::. fatherless and widow" (<em><a href='B:50 27:19'>Deu 27:19</a></em>) because "A father of the fatherless and a judge of the widow is God in his holy habitation" (<em><a href='B:230 68:5'>Psa 68:5</a></em>). Israel were to reflect God's judgments in their judgments.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 7:25'>Joh 7:25</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Therefore, some of those from Jerusalem asked: Is this not he whom they seek to kill?</em>- "Those from Jerusalem" knew that indeed the Jewish leadership wanted to kill the Lord. It was the crowd of visiting pilgrims from the provinces who seemed quite unaware of this (:20). The Lord could so easily have responded to the mocking claim that nobody sought to kill Him by arguing that yes, indeed there are such people here in Jerusalem, and you provincial folk are ignorant of that fact. But that is not His style, and such point blank confrontation should likewise be avoided by us. Instead as ever He cut to the essential spiritual point and issue.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 7:26'>Joh 7:26</a></em>&nbsp;<em>And lo, he speaks openly and they say nothing to him. Can it be that the rulers indeed know that this is the Christ?</em>- They wondered whether the rulers had abandoned their well-known plans to kill the Lord because actually they now recognized Him as Messiah. The Lord's openness of 'boldness' of speaking was emulated by the disciples- the same word is used throughout Acts of their witness. He wished that His hearers would come out as openly as He had; for we learnt in :13 that His hearers feared to speak openly of Him as He did of Himself.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 7:27'>Joh 7:27</a></em>&nbsp;<em>However we know from where this man is; but when the Christ comes, no one knows from where he is</em>- The Lord's claims had been researched, and it had been discovered that He was the son of a questionable woman called Maryam who had gotten pregnant out of wedlock and the whole thing had been covered up. We note Mary and the Lord did not publicize His real history, His birth in Bethlehem, the visit of the wise men etc. Perhaps this was news indeed for those who first read or heard it in the accounts of Matthew and Luke. Thirty years earlier, the Jews had known full well the answer to the question 'Where does the Christ come from?'. They had given the correct answer- from Bethlehem, as stated in Micah. But now, their theology had changed and veered into mysticism, claiming that the origins of Messiah would be unknown. We see here a classic example of how theology changes in order to cope with inconvenient truths. The mysticism of the Trinity would be a parade example; it is an attempt to cope with the human Christ whose achievement of perfection within human nature requires much faith, and is a challenge to all of us who bear the same nature. And so the height of the challenge was blunted, the height of the demand minimized, by a slide into mysticism, abstracting the amazing concrete achievement into mere theological terms which are words with no weight in practice.</p><p>If He were really like us, then this demands an awful lot of us. It rids us of so many excuses for our unspirituality. And this, I’m bold enough to say, is likely the psychological reason for the growth of the Jesus = God ideology, and the ‘trinity’ concept. The idea of a personally pre-existent Jesus likewise arose out of the same psychological bind. The Jews wanted a Messiah whose origins they wouldn’t know (<em><a href='B:500 7:27'>Joh 7:27</a></em>), some inaccessible heavenly figure, of which their writings frequently speak- and when faced with the very human Jesus, whose mother and brothers they knew, they couldn’t cope with it. I suggest those Jews had the same basic mindset as those who believe in a personal pre-existence of the Lord. The trinity and pre-existence doctrines place a respectable gap between us and the Son of God. As John Knox concluded: “We can have the humanity of Jesus without the pre-existence and we can have the pre-existence without the humanity. There is absolutely no way of having both”. His person and example aren’t so much of an imperative to us, because He was God and not man. But if this perfect man was indeed one of us, a man amongst men, with our very same flesh, blood, sperm and plasm… we start to feel uncomfortable. It’s perhaps why so many of us find prolonged contemplation of His crucifixion- where He was at His most naked and most human- something we find distinctly uncomfortable, and impossible to deeply sustain for long. But only if we properly have in balance the awesome reality of Christ’s humanity, can we understand how one man’s death 2,000 years ago can radically alter our lives today. We make excuses for ourselves: our parents were imperfect, society around us is so sinful. But the Lord Jesus was perfect- and dear Mary did her best, but all the same failed to give Him a perfect upbringing; she wasn’t a perfect mother; and He didn’t live in a perfect environment. And yet, He was perfect. And bids us quit our excuses and follow Him. According to the Talmud, Mary was a hairdresser&nbsp;<em>Shabbath&nbsp;</em>104b, whose husband left her with the children because he thought she’d had an affair with a Roman soldier. True or not, she was all the same an ordinary woman, living a poor life in a tough time in a backward land. And the holy, harmless, undefiled Son of God and Son of Man… was, let’s say, the son of a divorcee hairdresser from a dirt poor, peripheral village, got a job working construction when He was still a teenager. There’s a wonder in all this. And an endless challenge. For none of us can now blame our lack of spiritual endeavour upon a tough background, family dysfunction, hard times, bad environment. We can rise above it, because in Him we are a new creation, the old has passed away, and in Him, all things have become new (<em><a href='B:540 5:17'>2Co 5:17</a></em>). Precisely because He blazed the trail, blazed it out of all the limitations which normal human life appears to impress upon us, undeflected and undefeated by whatever distractions both His and our humanity placed in His path. And He’s given us the power to follow Him. &nbsp;</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 7:28'>Joh 7:28</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Therefore Jesus cried out in the temple, teaching and saying: You both know me, and know from where I am, and that I have not come of myself. But He that sent me is true, whom you do not know</em>- The Lord's appeal was so emotional and direct because He knew that subconsciously, they recognized Him for who He was. They were in denial. They were so near to salvation, but so far. The leaders of first century Israel initially recognized Jesus of Nazareth as the Messiah (<em><a href='B:470 21:38'>Mat 21:38</a></em> cp. <em><a href='B:10 37:20'>Gen 37:20</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 7:28'>Joh 7:28</a></em>). They saw (i:e. understood, recognized) him, but then they were made blind by Christ (<em><a href='B:500 9:39'>Joh 9:39</a></em>). It was because they "saw" Jesus as the Messiah that the sin of rejecting him was counted to them (<em><a href='B:500 9:41'>Joh 9:41</a></em>). This explains why the Roman / Italian nation was not held guilty for crucifying Him, although they did it, whereas the Jewish nation was. And yet there is ample Biblical evidence to suggest that these same people who "saw" / recognized Jesus as the Christ were also ignorant of his Messiahship. "Ye both know me, and ye know whence I am::. Ye neither know me, nor my Father::. when ye have lifted up the Son of man, then shall ye know that I am he" (<em><a href='B:500 7:28'>Joh 7:28</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 8:19'>Joh 8:19</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 8:28'>Joh 8:28</a></em>) were all addressed to the same group of Jews. Did they know / recognize Jesus as Messiah, or not? As they jeered at him on the cross, and asked Pilate to change the nameplate from "Jesus, King of the Jews", did they see Him as their Messiah? It seems to me that they didn't. In ignorance the Jewish leaders and people crucified their Messiah (<em><a href='B:510 3:17'>Act 3:17</a></em> RV). And yet they knew Him for who He was, they saw Him coming as the heir. I would suggest the resolution to all this is that they did recognize Him first of all, but because they didn't want to accept Him, their eyes were blinded, so that they honestly thought that He was an impostor, and therefore in ignorance they crucified Him. And yet, it must be noted, what they did in this ignorance, they were seriously accountable for before God.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 7:29'>Joh 7:29</a></em>&nbsp;<em>I know Him, because I am from Him, and He sent me</em>- The Son's knowledge of / relationship with the Father was partly because of His being God's Son, "from Him". He had a natural aptitude for the things of the Father. For all their searching of the Scriptures, they did not know God (:28). The Hebrew sense of 'knowing' is of relationship, rather than academic knowledge.</p>


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<h4><em><a href='B:500 7:30'>Joh 7:30</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Therefore they sought to take him, but no one laid his hand on him- because his hour had not yet come</em>- The upsurge of hatred against Him was not just because He claimed to be Messiah; for there were many who claimed to be Messiah and who were greeted with jovial scepticism. The anger was because as explained on :28, they did actually realize in their subconscious that He was both Messiah and Son of God. Their desire to catch and kill Him at that feast was somehow frustrated; He had an intended time to die, and it was not yet. The details are not given, but the overall picture is that the Lord's death was not achieved by the Jews just wanting Him out of the way, murdering Him. It was orchestrated by the Father, in response to the Son's desire to give His life.</h4>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 7:31'>Joh 7:31</a></em>&nbsp;<em>But of the crowd many believed in him; and they said: When the Christ comes, will he do more signs than those which this man has done?</em>- John is generous in crediting them with belief, because he goes on to explain that they were not completely sure if He were Messiah or not. And they also predicated His Messiahship upon the number of miracles performed, whereas John's theme is that the Lord used an economy of miracle, and that the miracles in any case did not elicit lasting faith. Our view of others' immature faith ought to be similarly positive. For often our own faith is not actually much more mature.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 7:32'>Joh 7:32</a></em>&nbsp;<em>The Pharisees heard the crowd murmuring these things concerning him, and the chief priests and the Pharisees sent officers to take him</em>- There is fair emphasis upon the 'murmuring'. It was all very undercover. We may well ask, why the Jewish leadership minded so much that a claimant to Messiahship was so popular? Was it not that subconsciously, they felt it took away their power? They were playing Messiah, as men play God today. They didn't actually want Him to come because they had too much vested interest in Him actually not coming. Likewise there were those in <em><a href='B:370 5:18-19'>Amo 5:18-19</a></em> who desired the day of the Lord, in words at least, and yet not really. We have to ask whether our desire for the Lord's coming is more than a matter of words, a respectably expressed public dissatisfaction with things as they are::. when in real spiritual and psychological terms, we actually prefer all things to continue as they are.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 7:33'>Joh 7:33</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Jesus replied: Yet a little while am I with you, and then I go to Him that sent me</em>- The Lord's ministry was incredibly short. Three and a half years within the entire span of human history, and indeed, all existence and time as we know it.</p><p>The disciples were all too influenced by Judaism, the “generation” or world around them. The disciples and Judaism / the Jewish world are paralleled in <em><a href='B:500 7:3-4'>Joh 7:3-4</a></em>: “Let your disciples see your work… shew yourself to the world”:&nbsp;&nbsp;<br/>The Lord Jesus has to say the same words to the Jews as He does to the disciples:&nbsp;</p><table><tr><td></p><h4>Phrase</td><td>To the Jews</td><td>To the disciples</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>“I am to be with you only a little longer”</td><td><em><a href='B:500 7:33'>Joh 7:33</a></em></td><td><em><a href='B:500 13:33'>Joh 13:33</a></em></td><td></td></tr><tr><td>“You will look for me”</td><td><em><a href='B:500 7:34'>Joh 7:34</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 8:21'>Joh 8:21</a></em></td><td><em><a href='B:500 13:33'>Joh 13:33</a></em></td><td></td></tr><tr><td>“Where I am going, you cannot come”</td><td><em><a href='B:500 7:34'>Joh 7:34</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 8:21'>Joh 8:21</a></em></td><td><em><a href='B:500 13:33'>Joh 13:33</a></em></td><td></td></tr></table><p>Greek (unlike Hebrew) uses tenses in a very precise way. There are some real problems in understanding exactly why the Lord changes tenses so often, e:g. in <em><a href='B:500 7:33-34'>Joh 7:33-34</a></em>: "Yet a little while am I with you, and then I go unto him that sent me. Ye shall seek me, and shall not find me: and where I am we would expect: 'Where I will go / be', thither ye cannot not 'will not be able to' come". He saw Himself as both with the Father, already glorified, and yet also still in mortal life. Another example is in the way He speaks of how the faithful&nbsp;<em>are&nbsp;</em>equal to the Angels,&nbsp;<em>being&nbsp;</em>the children of the resurrection (<em><a href='B:490 20:35-36'>Luk 20:35-36</a></em> - in the context of explaining how 'all live' unto God)- we would rather expect Him to speak of how the faithful&nbsp;<em>will be&nbsp;</em>equal to Angels,&nbsp;<em>will be&nbsp;</em>resurrected etc. But He pointedly speaks in the present tense. He realized that He had not yet made the required sacrifice and broken the power of death in resurrection. But He also was confident in faith that He would achieve these things, and He looked at things from outside of time as we know it- from His Father's perspective.</h4>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 7:34'>Joh 7:34</a></em>&nbsp;<em>You shall seek me, and shall not find me; and where I am, you cannot come</em>- This sounds like Moses ascending the Mount, leaving Israel behind him. Yet "Where I am" refers to the Lord's unity with God; the heights of His relationship with God connect with the physical ascent of Moses into the mount to hear God's words. “I will that they also::. be with me where I am; that they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me" (<em><a href='B:500 17:24'>Joh 17:24</a></em>) alludes to the 70 elders sharing Moses' experience in the Mount (<em><a href='B:20 24:1'>Exo 24:1</a></em>); it is as if&nbsp;the Lord is saying that His disciples really can enter into His relationship with God, we can be where He was spiritually in His mortal life. The Jews would seek that, and not find it. Their window of opportunity was incredibly brief. There is no evidence that they sought the Lord and didn't find Him in their mortal lives; I suggest the reference is to the awful time of condemnation at the last day, when they shall seek Him too late but not find Him. The window of opportunity we have in this life is very small. Every moment is of intense, eternal significance. This motivated the Lord to shout out and appeal for them to respond (:28,37); and we must likewise see our witness as having the same urgency.</p><p><em><a href='B:500 7:33-34'>Joh 7:33-34</a></em>: “Then said Jesus unto them, Yet a little while am I with you, and then I go unto him that sent me. Ye shall seek me, and shall not find me: and where I am, thither ye cannot come". He then went on to foretell how that out of His pierced side there would come the water of the Spirit. “Where I am" is parallel with “I am going::.". He was going to the cross, but He speaks as if He was there right then at that moment. The cross was ongoing in His life. His going unto the Father was how He understood going to the cross (<em><a href='B:500 13:1'>Joh 13:1</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 13:3'>Joh 13:3</a></em> make the connection clear). Later, the Jews would recollect Golgotha’s scene and seek Him, but not find Him. There was a time for them to accept the cross, but there would come a time when they would not be able to accept it. This surely cannot refer to their mortal lives; for whoever comes to the Son, He will in no wise cast out. So it presumably means that at the judgment, as they wallow in the wretchedness of their condemnation, they will recall the cross and wish desperately to appropriate that salvation for themselves. They will seek Him, but be unable then to find Him:&nbsp;<br/>&nbsp;</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 7:35'>Joh 7:35</a></em>&nbsp;<em>The Jews queried among themselves: Where will this man go that we shall not find him? Will he go to the diaspora among the Gentiles, and teach the Gentiles?</em>- Where He was going, as noted above, was to the cross, to the Father, and to His "I am" relationship with Him. As noted earlier, they actually understood on one level what He meant. The possibilities they offered as to His intended meaning were really a smokescreen to cover over their own bad conscience. For they both knew Him and from where He had come (:28). So they knew where He was going to, for He had said He was going to where He came from. And again we see the Bible revealing core human psychology to us. Misunderstanding is so often psychologically motivated. It wasn't that they simply failed to make the right intellectual connections in order to accept Him. Accepting Him is not therefore something which some 'get' and some 'don't get' with no further culpability. The apparent misunderstandings and misconnections are all a reflection of a determined desire within, not to accept Jesus of Nazareth as Lord of our lives.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 7:36'>Joh 7:36</a></em>&nbsp;<em>What is his meaning when he said: You shall seek me and shall not find me; and, Where I am, you cannot come?</em>- As noted on :35, they knew His meaning. This is why there is no recorded response of the Lord to their questions. Instead we read of the Lord's impassioned plea to come to Him (:37). He had spoken of their condemnation at the last day, how there would come a time when they would seek and not find Him, and not be able to come "Where I am", with the Father- even though they would then dearly wish to. And people today likewise pretend they do not see the possibility of future condemnation, the reality of their answerability at the last day::. they may shrug it all off with nonchalance and raise various questions, as if to say that the interpretation of all these things is far from clear and who can be sure::. But this is all a smokescreen for their own bad conscience, their own realization well beneath the realms of conscious awareness that in fact these things are true.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 7:37'>Joh 7:37</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Now on the last day, the great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying: If anyone thirsts, let him came to me and drink</em>- "The last day" suggests the Lord saw this as a preview of judgment day; and they could even now come to Him and drink. The invitation to drink from Him is to be connected with the Lord's words to the Samaritan woman, where the water offered was of the Spirit. The gift was for all those who realized their Spiritual thirst. The self-satisfied religionists were not those who hungered and thirsted to be righteous. This is John's equivalent of the Lord's teaching in the Sermon on the Mount, that those who long to be righteous would be filled. Those who thirst for the Spirit will be given it. And the water given, the spirit of life given, was "eternal life" in that this is how we shall eternally live.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 7:38'>Joh 7:38</a></em> - see on <em><a href='B:500 1:14'>Joh 1:14</a></em>.</p><p><em>He that believes on me, as the scripture has said: From within him shall flow rivers of living water</em>- The connection is again with the teaching to the Samaritan woman at the well. The water given was of the Spirit, and would provide springs of living water of the Spirit in an ongoing sense to the believer.</p><p>But clearly the idea is also that those who receive the Spirit become a source of Spirit life to others: "He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly ("innermost being", NIV) shall flow rivers of living (Gk. spring) water". What "scripture" did the Lord have in mind? Surely <em><a href='B:330 47:1'>Eze 47:1</a></em>; <em><a href='B:330 47:9'>Eze 47:9</a></em>, the prophecy of how in the Messianic Kingdom, rivers of spring water will come out from Zion and bring life to the world; and perhaps too the references to spring water being used to cleanse men from leprosy and death (<em><a href='B:30 14:5'>Lev 14:5</a></em>; <em><a href='B:30 15:13'>Lev 15:13</a></em>; <em><a href='B:40 19:16'>Num 19:16</a></em>). Out of the innermost being of the true believer, the spring(ing) water of the Gospel will<em>&nbsp;naturally</em>spring up and go out to heal men, both now and more fully in the Kingdom. The believer,&nbsp;<em>every</em>&nbsp;believer,&nbsp;<em>whoever</em>&nbsp;believes, will preach the word to others&nbsp;<em>from his innermost being</em>, both now and in the Kingdom - without the need for preaching committees or special preaching campaigns (not that in themselves I'm decrying them). The tendency is to delegate our responsibilities for evangelism to others. But here the Lord speaks as if we have no option but to bubble out the water of the Spirit to others.</p><p>There is no essential difference between faith and works. If we believe, we will do the works of witness, quite spontaneously. And note how the water that sprung out of the Lord’s smitten side is to be compared with the bride that came out of the smitten side of Adam. We, the bride, are the water; thanks to the inspiration of the cross, we go forth in witness, the water of life to this hard land in which we walk.</p><p>Living water was to come out of the smitten rock. When He was glorified on the cross, then the water literally flowed from His side on His death. He paralleled His ‘smiting’ on the cross with His glorification (<em><a href='B:500 7:38'>Joh 7:38</a></em>). And He elsewhere seems to link ‘glory’ with His death rather than His ascension (<em><a href='B:500 12:28'>Joh 12:28</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 12:41'>Joh 12:41</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 13:32'>Joh 13:32</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 17:1'>Joh 17:1</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 17:5'>Joh 17:5</a></em> cp. <em><a href='B:500 21:19'>Joh 21:19</a></em>). The Hebrew idea of ‘glory’ means that which is lifted up; and thus His references to His death as a lifting up suggested that He saw His death as His glory. And we with Isaiah and with John and the Lord Himself should find in the glory and terror of the cross the vision which will endlessly inspire our ministry. <em><a href='B:230 96:10'>Psa 96:10</a></em> in some LXX versions reads: “Say among the nations, The Lord reigned from the tree". What would have looked like the utter, pathetic humiliation of the Man from Nazareth was in fact His glorification, His moment of triumph and victory; just as the pathetic death of a poor saint may be their glorious triumph over their mortality. And He there was and is our King. And this has implications for us; we were constituted a people over whom God reigns by the cross (<em><a href='B:730 1:5'>Rev 1:5</a></em> Gk:). Because of His utter victory there, He becomes our all controlling Lord, King and Master. We are no longer free to do what we want. This is why baptism into His death is an acceptance of His Lordship, of His will being the command of our lives.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 7:39'>Joh 7:39</a></em> - see on <em><a href='B:500 12:24'>Joh 12:24</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 12:28'>Joh 12:28</a></em>.</p><p><em>He spoke of the Spirit, which they that believed in him were to receive. For the Spirit had not yet been received, as Jesus had not yet been glorified</em>- Some manuscripts read "The Holy Spirit had not yet been received". This parallels the Spirit and the Holy Spirit- once the emphasis upon the word "yet" is appreciated. "Ye are the temple of God, and the Spirit of God dwelleth in you" (<em><a href='B:530 3:16'>1Co 3:16</a></em>) is matched later in the same epistle by "Your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit which is in you" (<em><a href='B:530 6:19'>1Co 6:19</a></em>). See on <em><a href='B:520 8:26'>Rom 8:26</a></em>. No great difference can be argued between "Spirit" and "Holy Spirit".</p><p>The Lord invites His audience right then to receive the water of the Spirit, and yet John notes that the Spirit was not then given. Clearly the Lord was speaking of future realities as if they already were. The gift of the Spirit in view was that within the human heart, within the "innermost being" (:38 NIV). This gift is not therefore referring to miraculous gifts. The power of internal transformation was therefore the gift of the Spirit given at the Lord's glorification. And the activity of the Spirit in transforming human minds into His mind is therefore His glorification.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 7:40'>Joh 7:40</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Therefore some of the crowd, when they heard these words, said: This is truly the prophet</em>- “The prophet” (also in :52) is clearly a reference to “the prophet” like Moses, i:e. Messiah:&nbsp; There are many other allusions by John’s record to the <em><a href='B:50 18:18'>Deu 18:18</a></em> passage: “I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak unto them all that I command him”. References to the Son only speaking what the Father commanded Him are to be found in <em><a href='B:500 4:25'>Joh 4:25</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 8:28'>Joh 8:28</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 12:49'>Joh 12:49</a></em>. John perhaps emphasizes that at this time, the Lord did no miracle. It was by hearing "these words" that they were persuaded He was a prophet. There was something about His claims which was intuitively attractive and credible; see on :17.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 7:41'>Joh 7:41</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Others said: This is the Christ. But some said: What Does the Christ come out of Galilee?</em>- As noted on :27, the Jews had changed their theology over the last 30 years regarding the origin of Messiah. In any case, some were sold on the idea that geographical origin must produce people of a certain character- a common source of prejudice in first century Mediterranean society. No matter what else was done by the Lord, if He were from Galilee- then they would not accept Him. Their prejudices were stronger than the argument of miracles. Their predispositions were so strong that they were not open to any spiritual argument.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 7:42'>Joh 7:42</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Has not the scripture said that the Christ comes of the seed of David and from Bethlehem, the village where David was born?</em>- It seems that the Lord, along with Mary and Joseph, had somehow kept His origins from Bethlehem a secret. One would expect to read Him making a big point about His origins from there, in order to back up His claims to Messiahship and in order to answer the objections to His Messiahship on the basis that He was from Galilee. But He doesn't. It was not His style to get involved in horns-locked debate in this manner, overpowering arguments by dismantling them. He hardly appeals to Old Testament prophecy being fulfilled. The Gospel writers do at times, but the Lord does not. He as He was, His personality, His lack of sin::. this was who&nbsp;He was and it was persuasive enough to those who were spiritually minded. He could so easily have made capital out of the fact He was born in Bethlehem, and Messiah was prophesied as coming from there. But He doesn't, and I find profound the way He doesn't even rise up to the opportunity now offered Him to do so. Fulfilment of Bible prophecy on some point or other was not His style. Instead He asks those who were thirsting for spirituality to come to Him, and have springs of the Spirit open up within their innermost being. And there was a powerful credibility about Him which did not depend upon argumentation about His Bethlehem origins.</p><p>There are very few direct statements from Jesus about Himself- e:g. He never actually says He had a virgin birth, nor does He explain that He was born in Bethlehem as required by <em><a href='B:400 5:2'>Mic 5:2</a></em>. He left people assuming He was born in Nazareth (<em><a href='B:500 7:42'>Joh 7:42</a></em>):&nbsp;</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 7:43'>Joh 7:43</a></em>&nbsp;<em>So there arose a division in the crowd because of him</em>- Division over the Lord's origin and credibility has always been. John emphasizes this (s:w. <em><a href='B:500 9:16'>Joh 9:16</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 10:19'>Joh 10:19</a></em>). He is not a source of unity amongst people generally; only those who are of His Spirit find themselves united with each other. All others find themselves bitterly divided over Him. This is why a divided church is not the Lord's church, at least on a collective level. The net which caught the 153 fishes was not 'divided' despite the large number (<em><a href='B:500 21:11'>Joh 21:11</a></em>).</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 7:44'>Joh 7:44</a></em>&nbsp;<em>And some of them would have taken him; but no one laid hands on him</em>- Again we sense that those who wanted to kill Him could not do so because His death was a function of His self-giving, and the Father's empowerment of the process. It was not yet time, and so somehow, all the plans didn't come to anything. And further, when His arresters came close to Him, there was clearly something unusual about Him to the extreme. The "some" refers to the officers sent by the priests and Pharisees to arrest Him (:45). The implication is that as they pushed through the crowds to arrest Him, the power of His words somehow repelled them and made them retreat.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 7:45'>Joh 7:45</a></em>&nbsp;<em>The officers went to the chief priests and Pharisees, who asked them: Why did you not bring him?</em>- This was surely the only time they had been sent to arrest someone but had felt stopped from doing so by the power of His words, so that they had to beat a shamefaced retreat back through the crowd and thence back to those who had sent them.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 7:46'>Joh 7:46</a></em>&nbsp;<em>The officers answered: Never has a man spoken like this man</em>- As noted on :44 and :45, it was the power of the Lord's words alone which stopped these officers from arresting Him. This is a theme we have noted in John- the power of the Lord's word and personality, even when no miracles were being done by Him. This was necessary for John to underline seeing he was writing at around the time when the miraculous gifts were fading. The repetition of "man" suggests that they perceived Him as unique amongst men, whilst being man, because of His words. He was a man, with a message which was clearly from God- somehow fused with the texture of His personality in a way and to an extent that no other messenger of God had ever been.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 7:47'>Joh 7:47</a></em>&nbsp;<em>The Pharisees therefore answered them: Are you also led astray?</em>- The officers could have given any number of reasons why they had not managed to arrest the Lord. But they spoke the truth. The Pharisees considered Him a deceiver (s:w. :12) and yet the Lord and John often warn that it was the Jews who were the great deceivers, leading astray the converts. John's language allows no middle ground between Judaism and Christianity. One is a deceiver, the other is the truth; and both consider the other to be deceitful.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 7:48'>Joh 7:48</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Have any of the rulers believed in him, or any of the Pharisees?</em>- Truth, and the true identity of Messiah, was posited by them on who else had believed in Jesus as Christ. If no rulers or Pharisees had done, then whatever miracles were done or words spoken, He could not be Messiah. And this is the problem with so many to this day- they will only believe, or claim to believe, if others do; and if those others are suitably respectable. They judge the person of Christ by those who follow Him. And whilst that is understandable on a secular level, the idea of John's Gospel is that we are to be impressed by personal encounter with the Lord, and respond to Him regardless of whether others have, or which others have. This is how the Gospel ends, with the idea that we are to personally follow the Lord whether or not others do.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 7:49'>Joh 7:49</a></em>&nbsp;<em>But this rabble, which does not know the law, are accursed</em>- "Rabble" was a technical term used by the Pharisees for the mass of Israel, whom they considered apostate. "Accursed" is their allusion to the cursing promised for all who were not completely obedient to the law. The same word is used by Paul when he quotes that cursing, probably alluding to this incident, which he may well have been present at: "For as many as are of the works of the law are under a curse. For it is written: Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do all things that are written in the book of the law". The Pharisees were implying that they were completely obedient to the law; but the Lord has just demonstrated that the law is structured in such a way that to obey one commandment, e:g. to circumcise a child on the eighth day, could break a legalistic interpretation of another, e:g. to not work on the Sabbath.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 7:50'>Joh 7:50</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Nicodemus (he that had earlier come to him by night, being one of them)</em>- This continues the theme noted on :13 of the secret believers slowly coming out in the open. He was "one of them" at this stage.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 7:51'>Joh 7:51</a></em><em>&nbsp;Said to them: Does our law judge a man without first giving him a hearing and knowing what he is doing?</em>- He is alluding to how the Jews proudly considered that the provision of Roman law to only judge / condemn after giving the accused a hearing was in fact based upon Jewish law. He appeals to their national pride in order to save the Lord's life. However, there is no specific statement in the Law of Moses requiring this principle to be followed. Nicodemus may well be alluding to rabbinic law which required that a death sentence using "judge" in the sense of condemning to death could only be asked for after a man had appeared before the Sanhedrin and been condemned by them.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 7:52'>Joh 7:52</a></em> - see on <em><a href='B:500 1:46'>Joh 1:46</a></em>.</p><h4><em>They answered and said to him: Are you also of Galilee? Search the scrolls and you will see, that no prophet is to rise from Galilee</em>- They were in fact wrong, for Jonah a great type of the Lord Jesus was from Galilee. But the record has more spiritual culture than to point out this obvious error. We are left to perceive it, and the silence regarding their ignorance becomes the more powerfully deafening exactly because the obvious point is not made. The Jewish leadership were trying to paint the Lord as supported only by some of the Galilean pilgrims who had come up to that feast of tabernacles. Their damaged consciences are revealed in their over sensitivity to merely being asked to apply their own law to the case of Jesus of Nazareth. They jump to the conclusion that Nicodemus is also on the Lord's side and must therefore also be Galilean. Recall how Peter is unmasked as one of the Lord's followers because of his Galilean accent.</h4>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 7:53'>Joh 7:53</a></em>&nbsp;<em>At that, each of them went home</em>- As noted on :52, the glaring error in claiming that no prophet is from Galilee, when Jonah was from there, is left without comment. The implication is that alone at home, away from the group mentality, they would have reflected upon that error. And thought about Jonah, who the Lord had said was a sign to them about His own death and resurrection (<em><a href='B:470 12:39'>Mat 12:39</a></em>). The Sanhedrin now broke up; the members returned to their own homes in the various towns of Palestine, without having made a formal conclusion about how to proceed with the case of Jesus of Nazareth.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 8:1'>Joh 8:1</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Jesus went to the Mount of Olives</em>- This may be in contrast to the Sanhedrin members going back to their own homes (<em><a href='B:500 7:53'>Joh 7:53</a></em>); the Lord by contrast slept rough on Olivet.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 8:2'>Joh 8:2</a></em>&nbsp;<em>And early in the morning he again went into the temple, and all the people came to him; and he sat down and taught them</em>- "Jesus went unto the mount of Olives::. he came again into the temple, and all the people (i:e. the leaders and the crowd, see context) came unto him; and he sat down, and taught them" (<em><a href='B:500 8:1-2'>Joh 8:1-2</a></em>). This is framed to recall Moses coming down from Sinai: "The Lord came (down) from Sinai (manifest in Moses)::. yea, he (God) loved the people (in the fact that) all his saints (Israel) are in thy (Moses') hand (as we are in the hand of Christ, <em><a href='B:500 10:28-30'>Joh 10:28-30</a></em>): and they sat down at thy feet; every one shall receive of thy words::. the heads of the people and the tribes of Israel (i:e. both leaders and ordinary people) were gathered together (to Moses)" (<em><a href='B:50 33:2-5'>Deu 33:2-5</a></em>).</p><p>Sitting down and teaching may simply be stating the obvious, for many rabbis taught sitting down. But given the large crowd and the need to project His voice, we wonder why it is so stressed. Surely given the situation and size of the crowd, most teachers would have stood. But the Lord was totally focused upon seeking the Father's glory (see on <em><a href='B:500 7:18'>Joh 7:18</a></em>) and totally not upon His own glory as a teacher; and this may have been reflected in His choice at this point to teach sitting, on the level of His immediate audience, rather than standing.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 8:3'>Joh 8:3</a></em>&nbsp;<em>And the scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman caught in the act of adultery; and having placed her before him</em>- This was surely a set up. The Lord was apparently obligated to agree that she should be stoned. But this was against Roman law, which only considered recommendations from the Sanhedrin for death sentences in the case of desecration of the temple. The woman was used as a pawn; her feelings were unimportant to these men, bent as they were upon finding a case against the Lord. And of course the guilty male was not brought to Him for judgment.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 8:4'>Joh 8:4</a></em>&nbsp;<em>They said to him: Teacher. This woman has been caught in the very act of adultery</em>- Seeing it was early morning at the end of the Tabernacles festival (:2), we assume she had been dragged fresh from her sin into the temple.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 8:5'>Joh 8:5</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Now, in the Law, Moses commanded us to stone such women. So what do you say?</em>- They were seeking to set the Lord either against Moses or against Rome (see on :2).</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 8:6'>Joh 8:6</a></em>&nbsp;<em>And this they said to test him, so they might have some reason to accuse him</em>- I have explained in&nbsp;<em>The Real Devil</em>&nbsp;that the Jewish opposition to the Lord and His church is often described as "the devil" or "Satan". They were quite literally false accusers and were ever looking for false accusations to make, seeking to spin situations so that they could accuse the Christians to the local authorities and get them shut down.</p><p><em>But Jesus stooped down, and with his finger wrote on the ground</em>- He could have been doodling, or have done so just from plain male awkwardness before a naked woman. In these suggestions we see so clearly His humanity. If this is so, then there would have been an artless mix of His Divinity, His utter personal moral perfection, and His utter humanity. Embarrassed in front of a naked woman, crouching down on His haunches, doodling in the dust::. that, it seems to me, would've been the ultimate conviction of sin for those who watched. It would've been surpassingly beautiful and yet so challenging at the same time. And it is that same mixture of utter humanity and profound, Divine perfection within the person of Jesus which, it seems to me, is what convicts us of sin and leads us devotedly to Him. Maybe I'm wrong in my imagination and reconstruction of this incident- but if we love the Lord, surely we'll be ever seeking to reconstruct and imagine how He would or might have been.</p><p>But the way He challenges them with their personal sins (:7) suggests He was writing their sins in the dust, or perhaps their names: "They that depart from me shall be written in the earth" (<em><a href='B:300 17:13'>Jer 17:13</a></em>). Or He could have been using a well known way of communicating deafness. Hence AV adds, with Codex Beza: "As though he heard them not". He would have been thereby saying that He was deaf to the accusations, possibly alluding to Messiah as the deaf servant who was morally perfect (<em><a href='B:290 42:19'>Isa 42:19</a></em>). Just as we are commanded not to be interested in hearing about others' sins, neither is the Lord Jesus. Or perhaps He meant that He was deaf to their accusations, because they too were sinners. If He wrote their sins, then they were written in the dust, only temporarily. They too could be brushed out by the Lord with ease; and they too were but dust.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 8:7'>Joh 8:7</a></em>&nbsp;<em>But when they continued asking him, he stood up and said to them: He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her</em>- The trick of the question had been to get the Lord to agree to what the Romans would have called extra-judicial murder. Here, the Lord asks them to be obedient to the Mosaic law and stone her- but adding the rider that only if they were "without sin". He is introducing a dimension not found in the Law of Moses- that we cannot actually judge with integrity because we too are sinners and deserve death. He was of course also addressing Himself, for He was the only one "among you" who was "without sin". He could have thrown the first stone, leading others into condemning the woman; but He would not, because He sought to save not to condemn. The Lord viewed obedience to such laws as voluntary. The fact there was a command to do something doesn't mean that we must do it; there are other factors. This is and was impossible for the legalistic mind to get around. The way to the Father is not by such casuistic obedience, but through the Spirit.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 8:8'>Joh 8:8</a></em>&nbsp;<em>And again he stooped down and with his finger wrote on the ground</em>- The second writing on the ground may have been of their sins, perhaps writing them next to the names of the men which He had written earlier (:6). The record seems to imply that it was the way Jesus stooped down and wrote in the dust which convicted the accusers of the adulteress in their consciences. As He kept on writing, they one by one walked away. It's been speculated that He was writing their deeds or names there, fulfilling Jeremiah's prophecy of how the names of the wicked would be written in the dust (<em><a href='B:300 17:13'>Jer 17:13</a></em>).</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 8:9'>Joh 8:9</a></em> - see on <em><a href='B:470 27:5'>Mat 27:5</a></em>.</p><p><em>And they, when they heard it, went out one by one, beginning from the eldest, to the last; and Jesus was left alone with the woman, with her still standing in the middle</em>- It can be no coincidence that the Lord Jesus is described as being “left alone” only twice in the New Testament, and they are both within a few verses of each other: “They which heard it, being convicted by their own conscience, went out one by one, beginning at the eldest, even unto the last: and Jesus was&nbsp;<em>left alone</em>, and the woman standing in the midst” (<em><a href='B:500 8:9'>Joh 8:9</a></em>)::. “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. And he that sent me is with me: the Father hath not&nbsp;<em>left me alone</em>; for I do always those things that please him” (<em><a href='B:500 8:28-29'>Joh 8:28-29</a></em>). He was not alone because the Father confirmed Him in the judgments He made (<em><a href='B:500 8:16'>Joh 8:16</a></em>). What is the meaning of this connection? As the peerless Son of God stood before the repentant sinner, with all others convicted by their consciences to one by one slink away from His presence, He was left alone with His perfect Father as well as the repentant woman. Jesus saw in that scene a prefiguring of His death on the cross. There, lifted up from the earth, He was left alone with the Father, a repentant sinner the thief, and again, one by one, the condemning onlookers smote their breasts in conviction of their sin and walked away. The cross was “the judgment of this world” (<em><a href='B:500 12:31'>Joh 12:31</a></em>). There men and women are convicted of their sin and either walk away, or take the place of the humbled woman or desperately repentant thief. This alone should impart an urgency and intensity to our memorial services, when through bread and wine we come as it were before Him there once again, facing up to the piercing reality of our situation as sinners kneeling before the crucified Son of God. One aspect of the loneliness of the cross was that simply the Lord’s righteousness set Himself apart from humanity- and He so intensely felt it: “Behold, the hour cometh, yea, is now come, that ye shall be scattered, every man to his own, and shall leave me alone: and yet I am not alone, because the Father is with me” (<em><a href='B:500 16:32'>Joh 16:32</a></em>). Yet it was the loneliness which drew Him to the Father. For the isolated believer, the loneliness of being in some sense more righteous living that e:g. your alcoholic husband, your atheist daughter, the materialistic women at work:::is a burden hard to live with. Yet in this, we are sharing something of the cross of our Lord. And if we suffer with Him, we shall also share in the life eternal which He was given. Being “left alone” with the Father and your humbled, repentant brethren is a sharing in the cross of the Son of God. This is the gripping logic, the promise of ultimate hope, which is bound up with the sense of spiritual loneliness which is in some ways inevitably part of the believing life.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 8:10'>Joh 8:10</a></em>&nbsp;<em>And Jesus stood up and said to her: Woman Where are your accusers? Did no one condemn you?</em>- There are many links between Romans and John's Gospel; when Paul asks where is anyone to condemn us (<em><a href='B:520 8:34'>Rom 8:34</a></em>), we are surely intended to make the connection&nbsp;here to <em><a href='B:500 8:10'>Joh 8:10</a></em>, where the Lord asks the condemned woman the very same question. It's as if she, there, alone with the Lord, face down, is every one of us. His question "Did no one condemn you?" was rhetorical, in order to help the point be underlined to her- that all are sinners, and she should not feel nor fear the condemnation of men, for they too are sinners, equally condemned. The healing she needed was partly to do with this; for the shame of condemnation at the hands of her religious elders was utterly traumatic. And the Lord removed that, as well as assuring her of her acceptability before God.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 8:11'>Joh 8:11</a></em>&nbsp;<em>And she said: No one, Lord. And Jesus said: Neither do I condemn you. Go your way. From this time forward, sin no more</em>- He was the only one without sin who could stone her; but He chose not to, He chose to not obey the Mosaic commandment to stone her. Thus by obeying the spirit of the law He broke the letter, at least in the legalistic, casuistic understanding of the Pharisees. To judge sin is not absolutely essential, as many legalistic Christians today seem to think. Not walking in darkness in the next verse 12 connects with the "sin no more" spoken to the woman. We are each in her position:&nbsp;</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 8:12'>Joh 8:12</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Again Jesus spoke to the crowd, saying: I am the light of the world. He that follows me shall not walk in the darkness but shall have the light of life</em>- The Lord's subsequent teaching in this chapter is allusive to the incident with the woman taken in adultery, so I would not be supportive of any attempt to exclude that section as uninspired. "I am the light of the world" alludes back to the prologue; the life the Lord lived is to be our light, which we live by and understand life according to. Hence here we read of the "light of life". Life lived any other way is lived in darkness. John's letters develop the thought in practice by saying that if we live in hatred towards our brother, we walk in darkness. Such a hateful life is lived because the heart is focused upon the life of Jesus, His Spirit, His life, doesn't live within us. Having the light of life may be another way of saying what we read in <em><a href='B:470 5:14'>Mat 5:14</a></em>: "You are the light of the world". In His light we become light to others.</p><p>The teaching of Jesus was very much centred around Himself. Other religious teachers tend to say ‘This is the truth, these are the ideas I have put together: follow them’. But Jesus says: “I am the truth; follow&nbsp;<em>me</em>”. His formula was not “Thus saith the Lord”, but rather “Truly, truly&nbsp;<em>I&nbsp;</em>say unto you…”. The personal pronoun forces itself upon our attention as we read His words:<br/>“I am the bread of life; he who comes to&nbsp;<em>me</em>&nbsp;shall not hunger”<br/>“I am the light of the world; he who follows&nbsp;<em>me…</em>”<br/>“I am the resurrection and the life… whoever lives and believes in me shall never die”<br/>“I am the way and the truth”<br/>“Come to&nbsp;<em>me</em>&nbsp;… learn of&nbsp;<em>me</em>”.<br/>He called people to Himself- to come to Him, learn of Him, follow Him. He knew, too, that the example and achievement of His death would exert a certain magnetism upon men and women: “I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto myself”. He is drawing them not primarily to a church, to a statement of faith, to a ‘truth’…but to Himself.</p><p>The “light" was a lifted up torch of fire, exactly as He was to be lifted up on the cross (see on <em><a href='B:500 3:19-21'>Joh 3:19-21</a></em>). But He saw Himself as there and then lifted up as the light of the world. The principles of the cross must be the light, the only light, of our lives. When the Lord speaks of Himself as the light / burning torch of the Jewish world, He continues: “He that follows me shall not walk in darkness" (<em><a href='B:500 8:12'>Joh 8:12</a></em>). Nobody follows the sun when they walk- so the “light" referred to is hardly the sun. Surely the reference is back to the fiery pillar in the wilderness, which gave light by night so that the Jews could walk in the light even when darkness surrounded them. And there's an upward spiral in all this. If "the light" is specifically a reference to God's glory manifested through the crucifixion, then this must provide the background for our understanding of <em><a href='B:500 12:35-50'>Joh 12:35-50</a></em>. Here the Lord teaches that only those who walk in the light can perceive who He really is, and "the work" which was to be "finished" on the cross. It is the light of the cross which reveals to us the essence of who the Lord really is::. and this in turn leads us to a keener perception of the light of the cross. Which in turn enables us to see clearer the path in which we are to daily walk.</p><p><em><a href='B:290 42:16'>Isa 42:16</a></em>, amidst many exodus / Red Sea allusions, speaks of how God makes the darkness light before His exiting people. The many Johannine references to the Lord Jesus being a light in the darkness for His followers would then be yet more elaborations of the idea that the Lord Jesus is the antitype of the Angel that led Israel out of Egypt (<em><a href='B:500 8:12'>Joh 8:12</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 12:35'>Joh 12:35</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 12:46'>Joh 12:46</a></em>)<br/>The light of the Gospel is not just light which we behold and admire for its beauty; it is a light which by its very nature opens the eyes of blind people (<em><a href='B:500 8:12'>Joh 8:12</a></em>)</p><p>Many passages in John speak of the believer as being in a state of constant spiritual strength; e:g. "he that followeth me shall never (Gk:) walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life" (<em><a href='B:500 8:12'>Joh 8:12</a></em>). These kind of passages surely teach that God does not see us on the basis of our individual sins or acts of righteousness; He sees our overall path in life, and thereby sees us as totally righteous or totally evil. Thus Proverbs contains many verses which give two alternative ways of behaviour, good and evil; there is no third way. Thus, e:g:, we&nbsp;<em>either</em>&nbsp;guard our tongue,&nbsp;<em>or&nbsp;</em>we speak rashly (<em><a href='B:240 13:3'>Pro 13:3</a></em>). At baptism, we changed masters, from 'sin' to 'obedience'. It may seem that we flick back and forth between them. In a sense, we do, but from God's perspective (and <em><a href='B:520 6:16-20'>Rom 6:16-20</a></em> describes how&nbsp;<em>God</em>&nbsp;sees our baptism), we don't. The recurring weakness of natural Israel was to serve Yahweh&nbsp;<em>and</em>&nbsp;the idols (<em><a href='B:90 7:3'>1Sa 7:3</a></em>; <em><a href='B:120 17:41'>2Ki 17:41</a></em>; <em><a href='B:430 1:5'>Zep 1:5</a></em>).</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 8:13'>Joh 8:13</a></em>&nbsp;<em>The Pharisees replied to him: You testify of yourself. Your witness is not true</em>- As noted on :12, the Lord did indeed focus heavily upon presenting Himself as the life to be lived, the light to be followed. The Pharisees were judging the Lord, and they claimed that He had no witnesses to testify for Him apart from Himself. See on :17</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 8:14'>Joh 8:14</a></em> - see on <em><a href='B:690 5:9'>1Jn 5:9</a></em>.</p><p><em>Jesus answered and said to them: Even if I testify of myself, my witness is true. For I know from where I came and where I go; but you do not know where I come from, nor where I go to</em>- This appears to contradict His statement in <em><a href='B:500 5:31'>Joh 5:31</a></em> "If I testify of myself, my witness is not true" (the same words are used in the Greek). Likewise "You do not know where I come from" contradicts <em><a href='B:500 7:28'>Joh 7:28</a></em> "You both know me, and know from where I am, and that I have not come of myself". Few commentators have engaged with these intentional paradoxes. I suggest the Lord is probing the fact that in their consciences, they knew He came from God. Their confidently proclaimed, quasi logical legalistic arguments were but a smokescreen to disguise their inner voice of conscience. So I suggest His sense is: 'Even if I am My own witness, My witness is true because both I and you know from where I came- from God'. "You do not know where I come from" is allusive to their own position expressed in <em><a href='B:500 7:27'>Joh 7:27</a></em>: "When Messiah comes, nobody knows from where He comes". Their claim to not know where He came from was in fact an admission that they accepted He was Messiah.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 8:15'>Joh 8:15</a></em>&nbsp;<em>You judge after the flesh. I judge no one</em>- Their legal language of 'witnesses' reflects how they were judging Him in the sense of condemning Him. He condemned nobody- and the context is His refusal to condemn the woman taken in adultery. This connection further strengthens the case that the incident with the woman is the basis of His later teaching here, and should not be removed from the text.</p>


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<h4><em><a href='B:500 8:16'>Joh 8:16</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Yet even if I do judge, my judgment is true, for it is not I alone that judge, but I and He who sent me</em>- "I judge no one, yet even if I do judge::." recalls His argument that He did not testify of Himself (<em><a href='B:500 5:31'>Joh 5:31</a></em>), and yet even if He did::. (:14). 'Not A, but sometimes A' is a common construction in Semitic languages as it is in several Eastern European languages to this day. "Not A" doesn't mean 'Never ever A'. Their judgment "after the flesh" (:15) is contrasted with how He judges with God's judgment, i:e. 'after the Spirit'. His judgment "is true" because He seeks the Father's will, which is of human salvation (<em><a href='B:500 5:30'>Joh 5:30</a></em> and context). Any condemnation uttered by the Son is made having done God's will to the full, i:e. to save men rather than condemn them. Condemnation is therefore only for those who have refused the will of God for them, His will for their salvation.</h4>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 8:17'>Joh 8:17</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Even in your law it is written, that the witness of two men is true</em>- "Your law" could mean that He considered that God's law had now been hijacked by them, just as the house of Yahweh had become the temple of the Jews, the feasts of Yahweh had become the feasts of the Jews. The requirement of two witnesses is to be found in <em><a href='B:50 17:6'>Deu 17:6</a></em>; <em><a href='B:50 19:15'>Deu 19:15</a></em>; but the Lord carefully changes "two witnesses" to "two men". His point is that the witnesses to Himself are more than men; He has God Himself, and Himself as Son of God.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 8:18'>Joh 8:18</a></em>&nbsp;<em>I am he that testifies of myself; and the Father that sent me testifies of me</em>- If the witness of two&nbsp;<em>men</em>&nbsp;was acceptable, then the Lord argues that the testimony of God Himself and of Himself as God's Son was far more conclusive.</p><p>The Lord's sense of authority helps explain His mysterious logic in <em><a href='B:500 8:17-18'>Joh 8:17-18</a></em>. The Jews accuse Him of bearing witness of Himself, and that therefore His witness is untrue. The Lord replies that under the Law, two witnesses were required in addition to the accused person. And He argues that He is a witness to Himself, and His Father is too: "I am one that bear witness of myself, and the Father that sent me beareth witness". But this was exactly their point- He was bearing witness of Himself, and therefore "thy witness is not true" (<em><a href='B:500 8:13'>Joh 8:13</a></em> RV). Yet His reply seems to have silenced them. Clearly the authority attached to Him was so great that effectively His bearing witness of Himself&nbsp;<em>was&nbsp;</em>adequate witness.</p><p>The Lord often began His statements with the word "Amen" - 'truly', 'certainly', 'surely::. I say unto you:::'. Yet it was usual to&nbsp;<em>conclude</em>&nbsp;a sentence, prayer or statement with that word. But the Lord&nbsp;<em>began</em>&nbsp;His statements with it. And this feature of His style evidently caught the attention of all the Gospel writers. Mark mentions it 13 times, Matthew 9 times, Luke 3 times and John 25 times. And it should stand out to us, too. Joachim Jeremias mentions that "according to idiomatic Jewish usage the word&nbsp;<em>amen&nbsp;</em>is used to affirm, endorse or appropriate the words of another person whereas in the words of Jesus it is used to introduce and endorse Jesus' own words::. to end one's own prayer with&nbsp;<em>amen&nbsp;</em>was considered a sign of ignorance". Thus Jesus was introducing a radically new type of speaking. The Lord's extraordinary sense of authority was not laughed off as the ravings of a self-deluded 'holy man'. For the crowds flocked to Him, and even hardened guards sent to arrest Him had to give up on the job for the humanly-flimsy excuse that "never man spake like this man". And it is that very sense of ultimate authority which amazingly comes through to us today, who have never met Him nor heard His words with our own ears. This is the power of the inspired Gospel records, yet it is also testimony to the extraordinary, compelling power of the Personality which is transmitted through them.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 8:19'>Joh 8:19</a></em>&nbsp;<em>They replied to him: Where is your Father? Jesus answered: You know neither me, nor my Father. If you knew me, you would know my Father also</em>- There seems to be a verbal connection at least between the Jews' mocking question of Christ "Where is your father?" (<em><a href='B:500 8:19'>Joh 8:19</a></em>) and Saul's "whose son is this youth?" (<em><a href='B:90 17:55'>1Sa 17:55</a></em>); David was indeed a type of the Lord:&nbsp;On one hand they did know Him and His Father: "You both know me, and know from where I am, and that I have not come of myself" (<em><a href='B:500 7:28'>Joh 7:28</a></em>). But it is a theme of John's Gospel that one can see and not see, hear and not hear, know and not know. The appeal is to actualize that knowledge, to follow the likes of Nicodemus in allowing our encounter with the Lord to take over our lives, so that we know Him not theoretically, as propositions, but in the Hebrew sense of 'knowing', i:e. being in an ongoing relationship with. We can note here that knowing the Father is predicated upon knowing the Son. It is encounter, experience and relationship with Him which leads us to know the Father; He is the way to the Father. Archaeology, creationism, science, arguments from nature and logic::. will not provide lasting relationship with the Father. All is predicated upon the Son.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 8:20'>Joh 8:20</a></em>&nbsp;<em>These words spoke he in the treasury, as he taught in the temple; and no one took him- because his hour had not yet come</em>- Again we see that the Lord only died because the Father and Himself allowed it to happen; His life was not taken from Him against His will, He gave it freely. "The treasury" was in the Court of the Women, the busiest and most public place in the temple (hence the public show of giving money at that place), with the Hall Gazith where the Sanhedrin met right next to it. Yet even there, in the busiest thoroughfare, "no one took him". It was here where it seems the Lord often sat and taught (<em><a href='B:480 12:41'>Mar 12:41</a></em>, note the Greek tense there). We might perceive from this choice too that He was eager to get His message to the women; for the treasury was within the Court of the Women.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 8:21'>Joh 8:21</a></em> - see on <em><a href='B:500 7:33'>Joh 7:33</a></em>.</p><p><em>He replied again to them: I go away, and you shall seek me, and shall die in your sins. Where I go, you cannot come</em>- There is never a time in mortal life when a man cannot seek the Lord and find Him; indeed, many of the Pharisees were later baptized, according to Acts. So this time of seeking and not finding must refer to the last day. They could not come to the relationship He had with the Father because He was going away, they were going to kill Him on the cross, and would never after that find the humility to repent. For they need not die in their sins, if they accepted that "I am He" (:24).</p><p>“I go my way" was to the cross. He was and is the way, the cross is the only way to the true life, both now and eternally. “Whither I go ye know, and the way ye know" (<em><a href='B:500 14:4'>Joh 14:4</a></em>) further cements the connection between His “way" and the cross. From here up to :25, the Lord twice seeks to confront them with their sin, and yet they ignore this matter and get lost in speculation about His more cryptic statements. And this is why a man can spend hours or even a lifetime in 'Bible study' and come out with a conscience untouched as to his personal sin. Because humanity has a terrible way of footnoting the Lord's conviction of our sins and getting endlessly lost in striving about words and their interpretations:&nbsp;</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 8:22'>Joh 8:22</a></em>&nbsp;<em>The Jews replied: Will he kill himself? Because he said: Where I go, you cannot come</em>- The Lord's death was not suicide, but it was also not a cessation of life as a result of murder. For He gave His life, and it was not taken from Him. I have argued throughout that subconsciously, they knew the truth about Him; of His origin and upcoming death and ascension to the Father. Here they come very close to stating that truth, even cloaked in apparent jest and scepticism.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 8:23'>Joh 8:23</a></em>&nbsp;<em>And he said to them: You are from beneath. I am from above. You are of this world. I am not of this world</em>- "Not of this world" cannot mean that He personally pre-existed in Heaven before His birth, for He uses the same phrase as to how His followers were not of this world as He was not (<em><a href='B:500 17:14'>Joh 17:14</a></em>). His Kingdom was "not of this world" (<em><a href='B:500 18:36'>Joh 18:36</a></em>). He was very much "in" this world, as He states often in <em><a href='B:500 17:11-13'>Joh 17:11-13</a></em> etc. His being "from above" referred to how He was in relation to the world, rather than His literal origins. It was this which meant that they did not perceive His language correctly.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 8:24'>Joh 8:24</a></em>&nbsp;<em>I replied to you, that you shall die in your sins. For unless you believe that I am he, you shall die in your sins</em>- As explained on :21, this dying in sins refers to their final destruction in "the second death" at the last judgment. But they could avoid it, by accepting Him as the "I am". Just as He so often uses the term,&nbsp;<em>ego eimi</em>, "I am::." (e:g. :23). In :21 He seems to say that because they would crucify Him, they would die in their sins. But they could still have repented of that. His sense was therefore that by doing such a huge sin, they were going to find repentance hard, and He knew many of them would not come to it, for it would require too much sacrifice of vested personal interest and standing. And thus at the last day, they would die in their sins, seeking Him all too late at that day (:21).</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 8:25'>Joh 8:25</a></em>&nbsp;<em>They replied to him: Who are you? Jesus said to them: Even that which I have spoken to you from the beginning</em>- Most of His messages are hidden in His lifestyle and in the way He treated people. He left it to those who watched Him to see how the word was being made flesh in Him. In this sense Jesus' words really were eminently deeds. He was the word made flesh. When the Jews asked Him “Who art you?”, He replied: “How is it that I even speak to you at all? I have many things to say…When ye have lifted up the Son of man, then shall ye know that I am he” (<em><a href='B:500 8:25'>Joh 8:25</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 8:28'>Joh 8:28</a></em> RVmg:). Jesus didn’t have to speak anything about Himself; He was the word made flesh, His deeds and above all His death would declare who He was. This self-proclamation that didn’t require any self-advertisement or even self-explanation was so wonderfully unique to Jesus. Thus Peter says that a wife should convert her husband without needing to speak a word- and there we have something of the same idea:&nbsp;</p><p>We have here yet another allusion to the prologue. The word spoken from "the beginning" was the person of the Lord Jesus as exhibited and spoken from the beginning of His ministry- not of the present creation.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 8:26'>Joh 8:26</a></em> - see on <em><a href='B:500 6:44'>Joh 6:44</a></em>.</p><p><em>I have many things to speak and to judge concerning you. However, He that sent me is true, and the things which I heard from Him, these I speak to the world</em>- Even when making the profoundest claims to be God's Son, sent from God and destined to ascend to Heaven, the Lord in the same context emphasizes His humanity- e:g. in <em><a href='B:500 8:26'>Joh 8:26</a></em>, having spoken of His origins, Father, and destiny, He stresses that&nbsp;<em>He</em>&nbsp;has much He'd like to say and judge of His generation, but He could only share what His Father had taught Him to speak. This was a very pointed presentation of His humanity, and He made it lest His hearers think that He was altogether other-worldly.</p><p>How the Lord heard things from the Father is not defined. It could have been from His own study of the Father's word mixed with direct revelation. <em><a href='B:290 50:4'>Isa 50:4</a></em> may suggest early morning teaching sessions in communion with the Father: "The Lord Yahweh has given me the tongue of those who are taught, that I may know how to sustain with words him who is weary: He wakens me morning by morning, He wakens my ear to hear as those who are taught". <em><a href='B:500 15:15'>Joh 15:15</a></em> states that all He heard from the Father, He declared to the disciples. The things He heard were therefore nothing more than what He told them during His ministry, and which we can read in the Gospels. It was not that He had huge revelations of material which remained private between Him and the Father. What He was told, He told them. It was enough to motivate them, as it was to motivate Him. And it should be enough for us too. This of course heightens our need to apply ourselves to His words as found in the Gospels.</p><p>Consider how here and in <em><a href='B:500 12:49-50'>Joh 12:49-50</a></em> He says that He&nbsp;<em>says</em>&nbsp;only what the Father taught Him to say; whereas here He says He&nbsp;<em>does</em>&nbsp;nothing of Himself but only what the Father taught Him. His words and His doings are thereby paralleled. See on <em><a href='B:490 9:44'>Luk 9:44</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 14:10'>Joh 14:10</a></em>. Again in allusion to the prologue, the word was made flesh, completely actualized in a person and a life lived (<em><a href='B:500 1:14'>Joh 1:14</a></em>).</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 8:27'>Joh 8:27</a></em>&nbsp;<em>They did not understand that he spoke to them of the Father</em>- On one hand they did know Him and His Father: "You both know me, and know from where I am, and that I have not come of myself" (<em><a href='B:500 7:28'>Joh 7:28</a></em>). But again we see the difference between knowledge on a theoretical level, and on the level of true understanding and relationship.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 8:28'>Joh 8:28</a></em> - see on <em><a href='B:500 5:36'>Joh 5:36</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 6:63'>Joh 6:63</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 20:28'>Joh 20:28</a></em>.</p><p><em>Jesus continued: When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am he, and that I do nothing on my own authority, but speak just as the Father taught me</em>- The Jewish conscience about the cross is predicted by the Lord here. But the Jews generally were not subsequently persuaded that Jesus was indeed Messiah, bearer of the “I am” Name of God. Potentially, in their consciences, they&nbsp;<em>did know</em>&nbsp;that He was, once they crucified Him. The words of Jesus were of course true. But they didn’t confess that faith, because they suppressed it in their conscience. This is why to this day there is this Jewish conscience about the cross. And it’s why conversion to the Lord Jesus cannot be far from the heart of every Jew. They perceived the manifestation of the great “I am" there, Yahweh Himself, but unless they gave themselves to it in total commitment, they would die eternally. Eternal life therefore depends upon an appreciation of the cross. For this reason, the atonement must be the central doctrine of the Gospel, and those who believe it must feel it and know it personally if they are to be saved in the end. This is why <em><a href='B:500 20:27-29'>Joh 20:27-29</a></em> seems to show that the Lord understood the essence of faith in all His people as meaning that they would discern and believe the marks in His hands where the nails were:The cross would confirm all He had spoken. There the words of Jesus were made flesh (<em><a href='B:500 1:14'>Joh 1:14</a></em>). In the lifted up Jesus, we see all His words, God’s words, brought together in that body.</p><p>He predicted that when He was crucified, then His people would believe on Him; yet “As he spake these things, many believed on him", there and then (:30). There was such congruence between His message of crucifixion and His actual life, that people believed there and then, even before seeing the actual crucifixion. His life was a crucified life, and it elicited faith in those who perceived this.</p><p>In many discussions with Trinitarians, I came to observe how very often, a verse I would quote supporting the humanity of Jesus would be found very near passages which speak of His Divine side. For example, most 'proof texts' for both the 'Jesus=God' position and the 'Jesus was human' position- are all from the same Gospel of John. Instead of just trading proof texts, e:g. 'I and my father are one' verses 'the Father is greater than I', we need to understand them as speaking of one and the same Jesus. So many 'debates' about the nature of Jesus miss this point; the sheer wonder of this man, this more than man, was that He was so genuinely human, and yet perfectly manifested God. This was and is the compelling wonder of this Man. These two aspects of the Lord, the exaltation and the humanity, are spoken of together in the Old Testament too. A classic example would be <em><a href='B:230 45:6-7'>Psa 45:6-7</a></em>: “Thy throne, O God, is for ever this is quoted in the New Testament about Jesus… God, thy God, hath anointed thee made you Christ”. It was exactly because of and through His humanity that His glory, His ‘Divine side’, was and is manifested. His glory was ‘achieved’, if you like, not because He had it by nature in Heaven before His birth; but exactly because He as a human of our nature reflected the righteousness of God to perfection in human flesh. Thus “When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am He” (<em><a href='B:500 8:28'>Joh 8:28</a></em>)- the ‘I am’ aspect of Jesus was manifested at the point of His maximum humanity. Thus He was ‘made sin for us’ so that we might have the righteousness of God (<em><a href='B:540 5:21'>2Co 5:21</a></em>; <em><a href='B:540 8:9'>2Co 8:9</a></em>). It was only because the Word was made&nbsp;<em>flesh</em>&nbsp;that the glory of God was revealed (<em><a href='B:500 1:14'>Joh 1:14</a></em>).<br/>“I do nothing of myself, but as the Father taught me” (<em><a href='B:500 8:28'>Joh 8:28</a></em>). “The Lord hath sent me to do all these works, for I have not done them of myself” (<em><a href='B:40 16:28'>Num 16:28</a></em> LXX).</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 8:29'>Joh 8:29</a></em>&nbsp;<em>And He that sent me is with me. He has not left me alone. For I always do the things that are pleasing to Him</em>- This idea of not leaving but present with is repeated by the Lord in His promise of the Comforter, the Holy Spirit. The Father's presence was by the Spirit, and the Lord wishes to share His relationship with the Father with us. His presence however was due to always pleasing the Father. The Lord's sense of being forsaken on the cross (<em><a href='B:470 27:46'>Mat 27:46</a></em>) was therefore because He so identified with our sins that He was identified with those who were not pleasing to the Father, and so felt the lack of His presence. "Pleasing" is a reference to doing the Father's pleasure or will. That will is explained in chapter 5 as being for our salvation. All the Lord did was for the end of our salvation. And to that end He had the Father's presence through the Spirit always with Him; just as we will, if human salvation is our constant focus.</p><p>We are the witnesses in the same way as the Lord Jesus was the word made flesh- in His very person, He was the essential witness and message. When He said “I do always those things that please God”, it is recorded that “As he spake these words, many believed on him” (<em><a href='B:500 8:29-30'>Joh 8:29-30</a></em>). There was something real and credible. He was His words made flesh.<br/>When the Jews lifted up Christ in crucifixion, then they would know that the words He spoke were the words of God, that the Father had not left Him at all, and that Jesus had done “always those things that please Him" (<em><a href='B:500 8:28-29'>Joh 8:28-29</a></em>). Surely this implies that His death, His dead body motionless there, was in fact some sort of word of testimony, a voice from God. Note too that when He looked as if He was forsaken by God, it was apparent that He was not. The Jews had jeered at Him as He still clung on to life, implying that God and the prophet Elijah had now abandoned Him- clearly, they mocked, He was not the Son of God. But when He was lifted up by them- i:e. in death- the lifeless body must have spoken to them of something. Somehow and the earthquake and darkness doubtless confirmed this, there was the very real presence of God evident in the scene once He had died. The Centurion realized that “truly, this was the Son of God"- and from these prophetic words of the Lord, it appears that the Jews generally had to face the same conviction. This is the sort of paradox God delights to use- the humanly hopeless and God forsaken, the lost cause, becomes the very convicting proof of just the opposite- that we are&nbsp;<em>not</em>&nbsp;forsaken. In all this there was the word of the cross.</p>


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<h4><em><a href='B:500 8:30'>Joh 8:30</a></em>&nbsp;<em>As he spoke these things, many believed in him</em>- Many of the Jews believed on Jesus as Christ- but He rebukes them for not being His " disciples indeed", not really having the freedom which a true acceptance of this Truth will bring, not really being children of Abraham, still living in sin, not really hearing His word, and passively wanting to kill Him (<em><a href='B:500 8:33-44'>Joh 8:33-44</a></em>). Yet He spoke all these criticisms to those whom the record itself describes as believing in Him (<em><a href='B:500 8:31'>Joh 8:31</a></em>). It's as if the Spirit wants to show us that belief in Christ can exist on a completely surface level. Earlier on this chapter I have noted that one can know Him but not really know Him; and here, one can believe but not really believe. He says they were Abraham’s seed (<em><a href='B:500 8:37'>Joh 8:37</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 8:56'>Joh 8:56</a></em>); but almost in the same breath, He says they weren’t anything of the sort in spiritual reality (<em><a href='B:500 8:39'>Joh 8:39</a></em>).</h4>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 8:31'>Joh 8:31</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Jesus replied to those Jews that had believed him: If you abide in my word, then are you truly my disciples</em>- This credits some of the Jews with believing on Jesus- and yet the Lord goes on to show how they didn’t ‘continue in His word’, weren’t truly confirmed as His disciples, and were still not true children of Abraham. Yet it would appear God is so eager to recognize any level of faith in His Son that they are credited with being ‘believers’ when they still had a very long way to go.</p><p>The idea that the Gospels are transcripts of the early preaching of the Gospel becomes more obvious when we start to probe how the Gospels would have originated. As accounts and rumours about Jesus and His teaching began to spread around, some would have been sceptical. Those who had met Jesus would have wished to persuade their neighbours and friends that really, what they had seen and heard was really so. People who had met Jesus would share their impressions together and reflect upon the striking things He had said and done. The beginnings of the Gospels were therefore rooted in preaching the good news about Jesus. The Lord speaks of us abiding in His word (<em><a href='B:500 8:31'>Joh 8:31</a></em>) and yet also of His word abiding in us, and us abiding in Him (<em><a href='B:500 15:7'>Joh 15:7</a></em>). I suggest this refers in the first instance to the new Christian converts reciting over and over in their minds the Gospel accounts. In all situations they were to have the ‘word of Jesus’ hovering in their minds. To abide in Christ was and is to have His words abiding in us. Paul’s evident familiarity with the Lord’s words is an example of how one of our brethren lived this out in practice. We have to ask how frequently in the daily grind the words of the Master come to mind, how close they are to the surface in our subconscious… for this is the essence of Christianity. It’s not so much a question of consciously memorizing His words, but so loving Him that quite naturally His words are never far from our consciousness, and frequently come out in our thinking and words. No wonder it seems the early church made new converts memorize the Gospels. See on <em><a href='B:690 2:24'>1Jn 2:24</a></em>.</p><p><em><a href='B:500 8:30-31'>Joh 8:30-31</a></em> records how He spoke about how the Father was with Him, “that I am he”, with full reference to the Yahweh Name. As He spoke the words, it was evident that they were more than words, they were an expression of the truth that was in this Man. He was the word made into flesh. People are tired of words, of language… which in any case doesn’t convey as well as we may think any lasting impression. People need to see what we believe lived out. They need to see, e:g:, that our understanding of the representative nature of Jesus issues forth in our praying and in our feeling for this man “whom having not seen ye love”. And perhaps this is why it can be observed that Jesus almost never “went out of his way” to help people but rather walked along and helped the people He met in His path.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 8:32'>Joh 8:32</a></em> - see on <em><a href='B:590 1:3'>1Th 1:3</a></em>.</p><p><em>And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free</em>- The Lord and the Gospel writers seem to have recognized that a person may believe in Christ, and be labelled a 'believer' in Him, whilst still not knowing the fullness of "the truth": "Then said Jesus to those Jews which had believed on him, If you continue in my word, then are you truly my disciples; and you shall know the truth" (<em><a href='B:500 8:31-32'>Joh 8:31-32</a></em>). Clearly the Lord saw stages and levels to discipleship and 'knowing the truth'. The truth makes free; and yet it is Jesus who makes free (<em><a href='B:500 8:32'>Joh 8:32</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 8:36'>Joh 8:36</a></em>). The Truth in the person of Jesus, not just in our perception of doctrines in intellectual purity, is what liberates our personhood. "The truth" is defined in :34 as meaning being made free from sin. Following Him, as His followers / disciples (:31), means that we are made free from sin as we walk in the light of His life. Freedom from sin is no longer attempted by steel-willed struggle against hot temptation; but as part of a way of life in the Spirit of the life the Lord Jesus lived. We will 'do the truth' in that we begin to live the only ultimately true and free life- the life He lived. Truth and freedom are popular ideas in religion, everyone aspires to them; but the ultimate truth is the life of the Lord Jesus, and freedom from sin.</p><p>Therefore the Lord Jesus told the truth to this world in the sense that He was sinless (<em><a href='B:500 8:47'>Joh 8:47</a></em>). Likewise in <em><a href='B:500 17:19'>Joh 17:19</a></em> He says that He sanctifies Himself, so that “the truth”, i:e. His perfect life and death, might sanctify us; so that His freedom from sin might become ours. This was His telling of truth to men. By continuing in the word of Jesus we will know the truth (<em><a href='B:500 8:31-32'>Joh 8:31-32</a></em>)- not so much that we will attain greater doctrinal knowledge, but that our lives will reflect our knowledge of Jesus who is “the truth”. The truth sets us free; the Son sets us free (<em><a href='B:500 8:32'>Joh 8:32</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 8:36'>Joh 8:36</a></em>). “The truth” is therefore a title for Jesus. Mere academic knowledge alone cannot set anyone free from sin; but the living presence and example and spirit of life of another Man can, and does. And so in <em><a href='B:500 14:6'>Joh 14:6</a></em> the way, truth and life are all parallel- truth is a way of life; “truth is in Jesus” (<em><a href='B:560 4:21'>Eph 4:21</a></em> RV), we are to "do the truth", to walk in it (<em><a href='B:500 3:21'>Joh 3:21</a></em>; <em><a href='B:690 1:6'>1Jn 1:6</a></em>; <em><a href='B:690 1:8'>1Jn 1:8</a></em>; <em><a href='B:690 2:4'>1Jn 2:4</a></em>; <em><a href='B:700 1:4'>2Jn 1:4</a></em>; <em><a href='B:710 1:3'>3Jn 1:3</a></em>). This is all empowered by the gift of the Spirit of Jesus, the Comforter, "the spirit of truth" (<em><a href='B:500 14:17'>Joh 14:17</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 15:26'>Joh 15:26</a></em>), which guides us into truth (<em><a href='B:500 16:13'>Joh 16:13</a></em>)- not in an intellectual sense, but guiding us into the way of life and being which is "truth", which is freedom from sin. For the Spirit is the truth (<em><a href='B:690 5:6'>1Jn 5:6</a></em>); the gift of the Spirit empowers us to live "in truth", according to the life and spirit of Jesus.</p><p>The naturalness which Jesus had with people reflects His respect for the freedom which God has given His people to chose for themselves. He was Himself supremely free, due to His pure conscience before the Father. He was the red heifer “upon which never came yoke” (<em><a href='B:40 19:2'>Num 19:2</a></em>). We were set free from sin by Christ through “freedom” (<em><a href='B:550 5:1'>Gal 5:1</a></em> RV). But we were set free by Him as a person. His freedom, His freedom from sin and the freedom that must have characterized His person, is what liberates us too. And it is the experience of that freedom, the freedom from sin that comes through forgiveness (<em><a href='B:500 8:32'>Joh 8:32</a></em>), which can be ‘used’ to love others (<em><a href='B:550 5:13'>Gal 5:13</a></em>). He didn't spell things out to His followers in the detailed way many religious leaders do. And yet it is surely related to a sense one gets from re-reading the Gospels that Jesus was in tune with nature. He so often uses examples and parables grounded in a perceptive reflection upon the natural creation. He spoke of the carefreeness of birds and other animals; and yet He had the shadow of the cross hanging over Him. The way He was evidently so relaxed with people is a tremendous testimony to Him, bearing in mind the agony ahead. All this is what makes and made Jesus so compelling. On one hand, an almost impossible standard- to be perfect, as the Father is. And yet on the other, an almost unbelievable acceptance of fallen men and women. He didn't criticize those who came to Him. He Himself was the standard by which their consciences were pricked, and yet not in such a way that they were scared away from Him. This mixture of high standards and yet acceptance of people wherever they were is what we all find so elusive. The fact none of us get it right is what turns so many away from our preaching. How compelling He was is shown by how He polarized people- He sought to provoke a final decision in people for or against Him personally- not a yes or no to a particular dogma, rite or law. His compelling power is associated with the sense of urgency which there was in His teaching. The Lord repeatedly spoke of His return as being imminent- and surely His intention was to inspire in us&nbsp;a sense of urgency&nbsp;about His return, a living for His kingdom today rather than delaying till tomorrow. &nbsp;</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 8:33'>Joh 8:33</a></em>&nbsp;<em>They answered him: We are Abraham's seed, and have never yet been in bondage to anyone. What do you mean, you shall be made free?</em>- The life of freedom from sin is predicated upon living with the Spirit of the Lord Jesus, and not physical descent. "Truth" came by Jesus Christ, as the prologue states (<em><a href='B:500 1:17'>Joh 1:17</a></em>); and that truth is defined here as the life in the spirit of the Lord Jesus, free from sin.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 8:34'>Joh 8:34</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Jesus answered them: Truly, truly, I say to you: Everyone who commits sin is the servant of sin</em>- For all their detailed Bible study, they were servants of sin. To habitually live in sin "commits" in the ongoing sense is because we serve sin and have not been set free. Not sinning is not therefore just a question of white-knuckled struggle against temptation; it is more about an allowing of the Lord Jesus to free us from sin by His Spirit.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 8:35'>Joh 8:35</a></em>&nbsp;<em>And the servant does not stay in the house for ever. The son stays forever</em>- The Lord tweaks the metaphor a little, to argue that sinners are servants of sin; but the Lord is making us free from that servitude, turning us into freedmen, permanent members of the actual household. This metaphor of freedom from slavery is used heavily by Paul in his later explanations of the meaning of the Lord's death. A slave might spend his life in slavery within a household, but could never actually enter the family. The Son is master of the household, for ever.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 8:36'>Joh 8:36</a></em>&nbsp;<em>If therefore the Son shall make you free, you shall be free indeed</em>- As noted on :34, Paul also uses this metaphor of redeeming us from slavery to sin into free and actual members of the household family. But he sees this as an outcome of the crucifixion and resurrection. The Lord at this stage was confident as to the outcome of His mission.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 8:37'>Joh 8:37</a></em>&nbsp;<em>I know that you are Abraham's seed. Yet you seek to kill me, because my word finds no place in you</em>- The Jews could be described as both Abraham’s seed (<em><a href='B:500 8:37'>Joh 8:37</a></em>) and not Abraham’s seed (<em><a href='B:500 8:39'>Joh 8:39</a></em>); as having Abraham as their father (<em><a href='B:500 8:56'>Joh 8:56</a></em>), and yet also having the devil as their father (<em><a href='B:500 8:39-41'>Joh 8:39-41</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 8:44'>Joh 8:44</a></em>). This connects with the theme that the Jews on one level knew who the Lord was, and on another, did not. In John, one can see but not really see; believe but not really believe. The Lord Jesus described the unbelieving Jews as having Abraham as their father, and yet He also said that they weren’t the real children of Abraham. They appeared to believe in Him, but effectively denied Him (<em><a href='B:500 8:37'>Joh 8:37</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 8:39'>Joh 8:39</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 8:56'>Joh 8:56</a></em>). Like Israel, we can have an appearance of faith, an assumption that we believe because we are through baptism the children of faithful Abraham, when the real, house-on-the-rock faith is unknown to us.</p><p>The Jews thought that they were righteous because they were the descendants of Abraham. The Lord Jesus therefore addressed them as “the righteous” (<em><a href='B:470 9:12-13'>Mat 9:12-13</a></em>), and said “I know that you are Abraham’s seed” (<em><a href='B:500 8:37'>Joh 8:37</a></em>). But He did not believe that they were righteous, as He so often made clear; and He plainly showed by His reasoning in <em><a href='B:500 8:39-44'>Joh 8:39-44</a></em> that they were&nbsp;<em>not</em>&nbsp;Abraham’s seed. So He took people’s beliefs at face value, without immediately contradicting them, but demonstrated the truth instead. We have shown that this was God’s approach in dealing with the pagan beliefs which were common in the Old Testament times. His attitude to demons in New Testament times was the same; His God–provided miracles made it abundantly plain that illnesses were caused by God, not any other force, seeing that it was God who had the mighty power to heal them.</p><p>The argument was that if they were Abraham's seed they would not be seeking to kill the pre-eminent seed of Abraham, Messiah. "My word" had no place in them; and that word was therefore His self-proclamation of Himself as the seed of Abraham, a proclamation made through His life and character rather than any specific statement that "I am Messiah". "My word" therefore refers not to the whole Bible, nor to any specific spoken words of the Lord; but to His whole life and being, which was His word to men. His word was the Father's word (<em><a href='B:500 14:24'>Joh 14:24</a></em>), just as the prologue had declared the word, which was all about Jesus, to be God. His word was Him, His spirit, His life, His spoken words- which were to abide within them (:31).</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 8:38'>Joh 8:38</a></em>&nbsp;<em>I speak the things which I have seen with my Father, and you also do the things which you heard from your father</em>- The parallel indicates that being 'with the Father' was not to be understood in a literal sense. It was not that He heard words from God in Heaven which He then transported to earth, just as they did not hear words from a literal being called the devil in some underworld. He spoke not only what He heard, but what He 'saw' with the Father. His life and teaching was a reflection, an articulation in words, of what it meant to see the Father. Moses had been denied that honour, but the Son 'saw' the Father and reflected it to us in the 'word' or&nbsp;<em>logos</em>&nbsp;which was His life.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 8:39'>Joh 8:39</a></em>&nbsp;<em>They answered and said to him: Our father is Abraham. Jesus said to them: If you were Abraham's children, you would do the works of Abraham</em>- When the Jews proudly said “Abraham is our father” (<em><a href='B:500 8:39'>Joh 8:39</a></em>) they were showing the very same spirit as Ishmael- in persecuting Isaac / Jesus. They were proclaiming themselves to be the seed by the flesh but not of the Spirit nor according to the promise in Isaac. See on <em><a href='B:500 12:31'>Joh 12:31</a></em>. Intentionally, the Lord was saying that in one sense they were the seed of Abraham (:37) but in another sense they were not. Likewise they knew Him, but in another sense didn't know Him. The work of God is to believe in His Son (<em><a href='B:500 6:39'>Joh 6:39</a></em>), and it seems the Lord had that idea in view here. He appealed for them to be like Abraham in his belief in his Messianic seed.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 8:40'>Joh 8:40</a></em>&nbsp;<em>But now you seek to kill me, a man that has told you the truth, which I heard from God. This Abraham did not do</em>- "The truth" has been defined earlier as a way of life free from sin, the life of the Lord Jesus, His Spirit, living now the eternal life; see on :32. "The truth" that the Lord "told" them was not in learned lectures of courses of dissertations, but in the life lived which was a reflection of all He had heard and seen with the Father.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 8:41'>Joh 8:41</a></em>&nbsp;<em>You do the works of your father. They said to him: We were not born of fornication. We have one Father, even God</em>- They insisted that God and not "the devil" (:44) was their father. By insisting upon this, they were condemning themselves. For they sought to kill the Lord because He claimed to be God's Son. And now He had cleverly led them to make the same claim about themselves. He didn't do this to score debating points; He really wanted them to realize that in condemning Him, they were condemning themselves. They were furious that He should imply they were not full Israelites, of Abraham. "Born of fornication" was how the Jews referred to the descendants of Abraham through his other partners apart from Sarah, such as Hagar and Keturah:&nbsp;</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 8:42'>Joh 8:42</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Jesus said to them: If God were your Father, you would love me. For I came forth and am come from God. For neither have I come of myself, but He sent me</em>- It is impossible to love God without loving His Son, Jesus (<em><a href='B:500 8:42'>Joh 8:42</a></em>); and <em><a href='B:690 5:1-2'>1Jn 5:1-2</a></em> is alluding to this, saying that this principle means that we can't love God without loving&nbsp;<em>all&nbsp;His</em>&nbsp;sons, those who are in Christ, the Son of God. Christian disillusion with Christianity&nbsp;is disobedience to this. If we think we can love God while disregarding His sons, we are making the same mistake as the Jews; they confidently thought they could love God and disregard His Son. And this faulty logic led them to crucify the Son of God.</p><p>The fact that Jesus was humanly fatherless has been extensively commented upon by Andries van Aarde. He points out that: “Against the background of the marriage arrangements within the patriarchal mind-set of Israelites in the Second Temple period, a fatherless Jesus would have been without social identity. He would have been excluded from being called a child of Abraham, that is, a child of God. Access to the court of the Israelites in the temple, where mediators could facilitate forgiveness for sin, would have been denied to him. He would have been excluded from the privilege of being given a daughter in marriage”. Behold the paradox. Because He was the Son of God, He was written off by Israel as not being a child of God; because He was&nbsp;<em>the</em>&nbsp;seed of Abraham, He was rubbished as not being a son of Abraham. We can now understand better how He could attract other social outcasts to Him; we have another window into the fact He never married; we appreciate more deeply the significance of His offering forgiveness and fellowship with God to those who were outside of the temple system. He could offer a new social identity to people on the basis that He knew what it was like to be without it. All this is confirmed in the Biblical record. This is why the Jews accused the Lord of being both not a “child of Abraham” and also illegitimate” (<em><a href='B:500 8:42'>Joh 8:42</a></em>), a “sinner” (<em><a href='B:500 9:16'>Joh 9:16</a></em>). And He was also called a “Samaritan” (<em><a href='B:500 8:48'>Joh 8:48</a></em>). According to the Mishnah, “… they are the people of uncertain condition, with whom one may not marry: those of uncertain parentage, foundlings and Samaritans”. Refusing to declare Joseph as His father meant that the Lord would’ve been unable to marry, at least not any girl from a religious family:&nbsp;See on <em><a href='B:500 19:9'>Joh 19:9</a></em>.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 8:43'>Joh 8:43</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Why do you not understand my speech? Because you cannot hear my word</em>- They could not, it was not in their power Gk. to hear His&nbsp;<em>logos,</em>&nbsp;and so how He spoke, the language He used, was as it were foreign to them. They were not empowered to hear His<em>&nbsp;logos</em>, which according to the prologue was Him, His life and spirit, because they did not allow the movement of the Spirit in their hearts. And this is why people today cannot understand the Lord's teaching; it is because they refuse to accept His<em>&nbsp;logos</em>, His life and person coming into their lives as the light of their thinking and practice. And so His words / speech remain a jumble to them. Interpretation fails them, because they were refusing to hear Him as a person, His<em>&nbsp;logos</em>:&nbsp;<em>&nbsp;</em></p><h4>Intellectual failure to understand the teaching of Jesus is rooted in a resistance to having our lives disturbed in a moral sense. How many have started studying true doctrine, only to draw back, perhaps unconsciously even, because they sense that this stuff is life-changing, and altogether too demanding for them to handle in practice? This inextricable link between doctrine and practice is brought out by the Lord in <em><a href='B:500 7:17'>Joh 7:17</a></em>: “If any man willeth to&nbsp;<em>do</em>&nbsp;his will, he shall know of the doctrine…”. My expanded paraphrase of this would be: ‘If you want to do right before God in practice, then you will discern between right and wrong doctrine, because true doctrine leads to true practice. If you really want to be&nbsp;<em>doing</em>&nbsp;the right thing, then God will lead you to true doctrine’. And not long afterwards, the Lord hammers home His point: “Why do you not understand my speech teaching? Even because you cannot hear i:e. accept my word” (<em><a href='B:500 8:43'>Joh 8:43</a></em>).</h4><p>That refusing to believe or understand truth has a moral basis is brought out by the Lord's comment in <em><a href='B:500 8:46'>Joh 8:46</a></em>: "If I say the truth, why do you not believe me?". He surely implies that it's not hard in itself to believe and accept His words as true- but He explains that the Jews didn't believe because they preferred to believe the words of the "devil". The "devil" speaks his own language (<em><a href='B:500 8:44'>Joh 8:44</a></em> NIV), the Lord says, and the Jews preferred to hear&nbsp;<em>that</em>&nbsp;language because it was actually their own language. They did not "understand my word" because they preferred to do 'their own lusts' (<em><a href='B:500 8:43'>Joh 8:43</a></em>). Those 'lusts' are paralleled with the language of the devil- which is exactly what 'the devil' refers to in so many Biblical contexts. The point of all this is that misunderstanding God's word is because we prefer to hear the language of our own self talk, our own lusts, the Biblical 'devil'. "The lusts of the devil it is your will to do", the Lord commented (<em><a href='B:500 8:44'>Joh 8:44</a></em> RV). This was their "language", and therefore any other language which was not of their own self talk was 'foreign' to them. And in this we have the essential basis for why people misunderstand the Lord's words today.</p><p>The Lord's cryptic manner of speaking at times yielded "hard sayings"; and yet He utters most of them in conversation with His critics. Thus having said that "If a man keep my saying, he shall never see death", and the Jews predictably responded with misunderstanding and confusion, He goes straight on to utter an even harder saying: "Your father Abraham::. saw my day, and was glad". And they again come back at Him with the anger born of misunderstanding. And so He rounds off the episode with a yet harder saying: "Before Abraham was, I am" (<em><a href='B:500 8:51-58'>Joh 8:51-58</a></em>). In all this He was using "hard sayings"- which have come down to us as 'wrested scriptures, 'difficult passages'- in order to drive the unbelievers further down the downward spiral. And He does the same today, with the same passages. Because the Jews didn't "hear my word / logos", therefore they couldn't understand His speech, i:e. the words as individual words which He spoke (<em><a href='B:500 8:43'>Joh 8:43</a></em>). They stumbled over each word, as a child struggling to read a text way too advanced for her. Because they didn't hear His logos, the essence of Him. This is why the simplest minds which firmly understand the logos, the essential idea, the bigger picture, don't find the "hard sayings" to be hard for them, they aren't stumbled by them. But the word-by-word theologian does stumble at them, if he doesn't believe the simple logos of Jesus.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 8:44'>Joh 8:44</a></em> - see on <em><a href='B:350 6:7'>Hos 6:7</a></em>.</p><p><em>You are of your father the Devil, and your will is to do your father's desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and has nothing to do with the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies</em>- The Jewish religious leaders were “of your father the Devil” (<em><a href='B:500 8:44'>Joh 8:44</a></em>). This would explain the Lord’s description of Judas as a Devil (<em><a href='B:500 6:70'>Joh 6:70</a></em>) because the Jewish Devil had entered him and conceived, making him a ‘Devil’ also. In the space of a few verses, we read the Lord Jesus saying that “the Devil” is a “liar” – and then stating that His Jewish opponents were “liars” (<em><a href='B:500 8:44'>Joh 8:44</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 8:55'>Joh 8:55</a></em>). These are the only places where the Lord uses the word “liar” – clearly enough He identified those Jews with “the Devil”. If the Jews’ father was the Devil, then ‘the Devil’ was a fitting description of them too. They were a “generation of (gendered by) vipers”, alluding back to the serpent in Eden, which epitomized “the Devil”; “that old serpent, called (i:e. being similar to) the Devil and Satan” (<em><a href='B:730 12:9'>Rev 12:9</a></em>). In the same way as Judas became a Devil, the “false prophet, a Jew, whose name was Bar-Jesus” is called a “child of the Devil” (<em><a href='B:510 13:6'>Act 13:6</a></em>; <em><a href='B:510 13:10'>Act 13:10</a></em>), which description makes him an embodiment of the Jewish opposition to the Gospel. There are many other connections between the serpent and the Jews; clearest is <em><a href='B:290 1:4'>Isa 1:4</a></em> “A people laden with iniquity, a seed of evildoers, children that are corrupters”. This is describing Israel in the language of <em><a href='B:10 3:15'>Gen 3:15</a></em> concerning the serpent. Thus the Messianic <em><a href='B:230 140:3'>Psa 140:3</a></em>; <em><a href='B:230 140:10'>Psa 140:10</a></em> describes Christ reflecting that His Jewish persecutors “have sharpened their tongues like a serpent; adders’ poison is under their lips::. let burning coals fall upon them: let them be cast into the fire” (referring to the falling masonry of Jerusalem in A:D. 70?). It is quite possible that Christ’s encouragement to the seventy that “I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy” (<em><a href='B:490 10:19'>Luk 10:19</a></em>) has a primary reference to their ability to overcome Jewish opposition during their preaching tour.</p><p>We all personally struggle to accept basic Bible teaching about generosity, materialism and money. Think of what the Hebrew word “Cain” means- for he is alluded to by the Lord as the epitome of the “devil”, the “murderer from the beginning”, the archetypical sinner (<em><a href='B:500 8:44'>Joh 8:44</a></em> - perhaps because Adam and Eve’s sin was forgiven, whereas Cain was the first impenitent sinner). “Cain is defined on the basis of a double Hebrew etymology, as ‘possession’ (from&nbsp;<em>qana</em>&nbsp;= acquire) and ‘envy’ (from&nbsp;<em>qana</em>&nbsp;= be envious)”. Personal possession is almost- almost- inextricably linked with envy, and led to the lies and murder for which Cain was noted by the Lord. To have a strong sense of our personal ‘possessions’ will lead us into the same sins. Indeed, it’s the epitome of ‘the devil’. The concept of ‘private property’ is indeed a myth. For we die, and leave it all behind.</p><p>Ensure that all you are saying to yourself, even if it’s not about spiritual things, is at least truthful. This is where this great theme of truth starts and ends. Ideally, our self-talk should be of Jesus, of the Father, of the things of His Kingdom. Of anything that is just, true, of good report::. Yet our self-talk is closely linked to what Scripture would call the devil- the constant fountain of wrong suggestions and unspiritual perspectives that seem to bubble up so constantly within us. The devil- the Biblical one- is “the father of lies” (<em><a href='B:500 8:44'>Joh 8:44</a></em>). And untruthfulness seems to begin within our own self-talk. I would even go so far as to almost define the devil as our own self-talk. And it’s likened to a roaring, dangerous lion; a cunning snake. And it’s there within each of us. The control of self-talk is vital. And the Biblical guidance is to make sure it is truthful; for lack of truthfulness is the root of all sin. The account of the wilderness temptations is in my opinion a wonderful window into the self-talk of the Lord Jesus. He set the example there, of dealing with internal temptation by a self-talk based solidly on the truth of God's word. Sin is normally committed by believers not as an act of conscious rebellion, but rather through a complex process of self-justification; which on repentance we recognize was the mere sophistry of our own self-talk. This is why truthfulness is the epitome of the spiritual life. To deny ever being untruthful is to deny ever sinning. We all have this problem. It’s why the assertion of Jesus that He was “the truth” was tantamount to saying that He was sinless. Only thus is He thereby the way to eternal life.</p><p>For those who believe in an orthodox devil, bear in mind that the use of the pronoun “he” does not indicate that the Devil is a person. “Wisdom” is personified as a woman house–builder (<em><a href='B:240 9:1'>Pro 9:1</a></em>) and sin as a paymaster paying wages (<em><a href='B:520 6:23'>Rom 6:23</a></em>). Human lust is personified as a man who drags us away to enticement. If it is accepted that sin and sinful tendencies are personified, there should be no problem in imagining that persona being given a name – “Satan”, the adversary. There is no specific reference here to the serpent in Eden. We sin because of the lusts that begin inside us (<em><a href='B:480 7:21-23'>Mar 7:21-23</a></em>; <em><a href='B:660 1:14'>Jas 1:14</a></em>; <em><a href='B:300 17:9'>Jer 17:9</a></em>). Our evil heart – the real Devil – is the father of our lusts and sins. “The lusts of your father” the Devil, are thus the same as the lusts of our evil heart – the Devil. The Devil is a murderer. But “no murderer has eternal life abiding in him” (<em><a href='B:690 3:15'>1Jn 3:15</a></em>). The Devil must, therefore, die – but as angels cannot die (<em><a href='B:490 20:35-36'>Luk 20:35-36</a></em>) they are therefore immortal, and have eternal life abiding in them. As noted on <em><a href='B:480 4:15'>Mar 4:15</a></em>, the children of the Devil are those who obey their evil desires – the real Devil. The Jews had not literally seen a person called the Devil; the Lord was clearly using figurative language. They were&nbsp;<em>of</em>&nbsp;the Devil in the sense that “you do the deeds of your father” (:41), i:e. they continued the family likeness. If the Devil is a murderer then he isn’t immortal, for in commentary on this verse John later explained as if there had already arisen misunderstandings in the time between John’s Gospel and epistles: “No murderer has eternal life abiding in him” (<em><a href='B:690 3:15'>1Jn 3:15</a></em>). Angels are immortal (<em><a href='B:490 20:36'>Luk 20:36</a></em>), so therefore this “murderer” wasn’t a ‘fallen Angel’.</p><p>The Devil, the desires which are in our heart forming and stimulating an evil inclination, has the characteristics of the serpent, but it does not mean that the serpent was the Devil itself. The serpent was “subtil” (<em><a href='B:10 3:1'>Gen 3:1</a></em>; <em><a href='B:540 11:3'>2Co 11:3</a></em>); this may well be behind the description of the Jews consulting “that they might take Jesus by subtilty, and kill him” (<em><a href='B:470 26:4'>Mat 26:4</a></em>). The serpent in Eden was the prototype of the Jewish system; their killing of Jesus was the fulfilment of the prophecy that the seed of the serpent (sin manifested in the Jews, <em><a href='B:470 12:34'>Mat 12:34</a></em>; <em><a href='B:490 3:7'>Luk 3:7</a></em>, in its primary meaning) would wound the seed of the woman, Christ, in the heel (<em><a href='B:10 3:15'>Gen 3:15</a></em>).</p><p><em><a href='B:500 8:44'>Joh 8:44</a></em> is also a reference to Cain, the first murderer – “he was a murderer from the beginning” (<em><a href='B:10 4:8-9'>Gen 4:8-9</a></em>). He “abode not in the truth” as he was the father of the seed of the serpent who corrupted the true way of worshipping God. The letter of John often alludes to the Gospel of John, and <em><a href='B:690 3:12'>1Jn 3:12</a></em>; <em><a href='B:690 3:15'>1Jn 3:15</a></em>, is an example; it confirms this interpretation: “Not as Cain, who was of that wicked one (i:e. the Devil – <em><a href='B:470 13:19'>Mat 13:19</a></em> cp. <em><a href='B:480 4:15'>Mar 4:15</a></em>) and slew his brother:::Whosoever hateth his brother (as Cain did) is a murderer”. However, it is also true that <em><a href='B:500 8:44'>Joh 8:44</a></em> alludes to the serpent as well. The serpent told the first lie, “Ye shall not surely die” (<em><a href='B:10 3:4'>Gen 3:4</a></em>); he did not abide in the truth; he was a murderer in the sense that he brought about the death of Adam and Eve. “He is a liar, and the father of it”. Cain was not a super–human person called the Devil, but an ordinary man. He characterized sin, the Devil. The way in which the fire consumed Abel’s offering but not Cain’s is paralleled by the fire burning up Elijah’s offering but leaving those of the apostate Jewish Baal worshippers (<em><a href='B:110 18:19-40'>1Ki 18:19-40</a></em>). This would associate Cain with apostate Jews, i:e. the Jewish Devil.</p><p>Note: “:::he is a liar, and the father of it”. The Lord Jesus does not say “he was a liar”. If we tell a lie, it is a result of the Devil, in the sense of our evil desires prompting us – not due to any force outside of us. Lying is one of those things that Jesus lists in <em><a href='B:480 7:15'>Mar 7:15</a></em>; <em><a href='B:480 7:21-23'>Mar 7:21-23</a></em> as not entering a man from outside him, but originating from within him. The Devil is the ‘father’ of lies in the sense that they originate from within us – which is where the Biblical Devil is located.</p><p>“When he speaks a lie” – when someone lies, it is not a super–human person called the Devil standing in front of him, it is the Devil, in the sense of the man’s evil desires speaking to him. “Deceit” – i:e. lies – proceed “from within, out of the heart of men” (<em><a href='B:480 7:21-22'>Mar 7:21-22</a></em>).</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 8:45'>Joh 8:45</a></em>&nbsp;<em>But because I tell the truth, you do not believe me</em>- Truth is what makes a person believe the speaker. But the Jews did not believe exactly because the Lord told them "the truth". The "truth" in view is not therefore intellectually pure exposition. They did not believe because they were dominated by sin, "the devil", and sin is essentially a lie. So their sense of truth and error was inverted. "The truth" as explained on :32 was the Lord's sinless life, His Spirit; hence He challenges them in :46 as to who could convict Him of sin. "The truth" He told was that He was sinless. They did not want to believe that; it demanded too much, that a man of their nature could be sinless, and that His Spirit could enter them and transform their lives so as not to be servants of sin.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 8:46'>Joh 8:46</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Which of you convicts me of sin? If I tell the truth, why do you not believe me?</em>- As noted on :45, "the truth" was the Lord's sinlessness. They could not accept that, because it demanded too much of them. So much of the Trinitarian theological fog cast over the person of the Lord Jesus is psychologically rooted in a refusal to be so challenged; that our nature is capable of far more than we like to think; and that His spirit can be our spirit.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 8:47'>Joh 8:47</a></em>&nbsp;<em>He that is of God hears the words of God. For this cause you do not hear them, because you are not of God</em>- If they were the children of God, then the Father's words would be naturally discernible. There would be an intuitive sense toward them. In this we see the upward spiral of spirituality which belief in God’s word creates. In the same discourse the Lord reasoned "If you continue in my word::. you shall know the truth (the word- <em><a href='B:500 17:17'>Joh 17:17</a></em>)" (<em><a href='B:500 8:31-32'>Joh 8:31-32</a></em>). Note that believers in the Lord Jesus are here called "of God", just as the Son was "of God"; not in that they literally descended from Heaven, as required by the pre-existence idea; but in that they were His children rather than the children of this world.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 8:48'>Joh 8:48</a></em> - see on <em><a href='B:500 8:42'>Joh 8:42</a></em>.</p><p><em>The Jews answered and said to him: Say we not well that you are a Samaritan and have a demon?</em>- Perhaps the emphasis was upon "<em>you</em>". They complained that the Lord was casting aspersions about their purity of descent from Abraham (see on :41). Now they suggested that&nbsp;<em>He</em>&nbsp;was in fact the one of questionable descent from Abraham. Their 'research' of His family of origin had led to this aspersion- that Mary and / or Joseph had Samaritan connections. The Lord purposefully framed Himself as a Samaritan in the parable of the good Samaritan; perhaps they wilfully misinterpreted that as meaning that He was in fact a Samaritan.</p><p>It has been widely recognized that John’s Gospel often refers to the same themes found in the Synoptics, but in different language and from a different perspective. The account of the virgin birth as the word being made flesh is one such example. Another would be the effective repeating of the great commission in different terms. Yet another would be the description of water baptism as being born of water (<em><a href='B:500 3:3-5'>Joh 3:3-5</a></em>). The accounts of casting out demons which we have in the Synoptic Gospels are not found in John – not in so many words. But I suggest that the essence of it all is there in John, too. The battle between Jesus and the ‘Devil’ is referred to there frequently. He is accused of being in league with the Devil (<em><a href='B:500 7:20'>Joh 7:20</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 8:48'>Joh 8:48</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 10:20'>Joh 10:20</a></em>); but He labels His critics as being of the Devil (<em><a href='B:500 8:44'>Joh 8:44</a></em>). And in that same passage He redefines their view of “the Devil” as being a question of doing sinful “desires”. Judas is portrayed as being “of the Devil” (<em><a href='B:500 6:70-71'>Joh 6:70-71</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 13:2'>Joh 13:2</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 13:27'>Joh 13:27</a></em>). John speaks of an epic struggle between life and death, light and darkness, truth and error, faith and unbelief, God and evil / sin. In this struggle, the forces of evil have no real power over the Lord Jesus; He is greater than them and overcomes them to such an extent that they are effectively non-existent for those in Him. The Synoptics speak of the opposition to Jesus as being from Scribes, Pharisees etc. John describes this opposition as the Jewish ‘Satan’ or adversary to the Lord. John presents the opposition to Jesus from the Jews as being symbolic of evil and sin itself. Effectively, the more literal accounts of the Synoptics are saying the same thing – that the Lord showed that the power of God is so great that effectively, demons don’t exist as any realistic force in the lives of both Jesus and His people. John puts this in more epic and symbolic language – the forces of evil were overcome and revealed to be powerless by the Lord Jesus, ultimately expressing this through His death. And perhaps that’s why John’s Gospel doesn’t speak of the Lord casting out demons – because his record has made it clear enough that effectively, those things don’t exist.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 8:49'>Joh 8:49</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Jesus answered: I do not have a demon. I honour my Father, and you dishonour me</em>- When He was wrongly accused of being a Samaritan, Jesus did not deny it (<em><a href='B:500 8:48-49'>Joh 8:48-49</a></em> cp. <em><a href='B:500 4:7-9'>Joh 4:7-9</a></em>) even though his Jewishness, as the seed of Abraham, was vital within God’s plan of salvation (<em><a href='B:500 4:22'>Joh 4:22</a></em>). Even when the Jews drew the wrong conclusion (wilfully) that Jesus was “making himself equal with God” (<em><a href='B:500 5:18'>Joh 5:18</a></em>), Jesus did not explicitly deny it; instead He powerfully argued that His miracles showed Him to be a man acting on God’s behalf, and therefore he was&nbsp;<em>not</em>&nbsp;equal with God. The miracles of Jesus likewise showed the error of believing in demons. But here He does baldly deny the accusation that He 'had a demon' and was mad; because such dishonour of Him personally was a dishonouring of God. Attitudes to the Son were a statement about the Father. He therefore implies that by dishonouring Him, they were not honouring the Father; whereas He was all about honouring the Father. He is explicit in <em><a href='B:500 5:23'>Joh 5:23</a></em> that honour of the Son is honour of the Father, and vice versa. One cannot therefore claim to be honouring God when they are not honouring His Son. This means that all non-Christian religions are not offering any legitimate relationship with God the Father; for they do not honour His Son.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 8:50'>Joh 8:50</a></em>&nbsp;<em>I do not seek my own glory. There is One that seeks and judges</em>- God is seeking our salvation, and our glory in the true sense. If we believe this, we will not seek our own glory. The Father loves us, and is seeking out an eternal future for us, optimal for us personally. He is not simply passively prepared to grant us eternity; but is seeking our glory. The wonder of this means that like the Lord, we shall not seek glory of men, because it is God who wants to give us glory (<em><a href='B:500 5:41'>Joh 5:41</a></em>). This amazing Father who seeks our glory is also our judge; His judgment will be in accordance with His seeking out of glory for us. We need not therefore fear Him and His judgment.</p>


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<h4><em><a href='B:500 8:51'>Joh 8:51</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Truly, truly, I say to you: If a man keeps my word, he shall never see death</em>- <em><a href='B:690 2:4-6'>1Jn 2:4-6</a></em> defines keeping the Lord's word as keeping His commandments, walking as He walked, abiding in Him, living with His Spirit. We shall therefore live the kind of life we shall eternally live; we live the eternal life now, and in this sense we shall never see death in the sense of eternal death. We shall die, but not rise again. Death itself will be perceived differently by us, if our hearts are ever with Him who conquered death, and is the resurrection and the life. If our view of death itself, the unspoken deepest personal fear of all humanity, is different… we will be radically different from our fellows.</h4>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 8:52'>Joh 8:52</a></em>&nbsp;<em>The Jews said to him: Now we know that you have a demon. Abraham died, and the prophets, but you say: If a man keep my word, he shall never taste of death</em>- Again, they misunderstand His use of language. By "death" He refers to eternal death; there is "death" and "the second death"; but they did not perceive that difference. Just as unspiritual people can read God's words in the Bible and find it all a haze of contradiction and uncertainty, because they are not reading in a spiritual way. The Lord had promised that those who kept His word would never "see death"; but they misquote Him as saying that they would never "taste of death".</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 8:53'>Joh 8:53</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Are you greater than our father Abraham, who died, and the prophets who died? Whom do you make yourself?</em>- The Lord was not making Himself anything, because it was the Father who was glorifying Him (:54). The Jews perceived that offering eternal life was making those who received it greater than the prophets and Abraham who had died. The Sadducees disbelieved any resurrection; the Pharisees, according to the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, believed in existence as an immortal soul. Their views of immortality and "eternal life" were deeply wrong; they considered Abraham to be permanently dead. They didn't understand that he must rise again to inherit the land promised to him for an eternal possession. The Lord was teaching a resurrection of the body to eternal life, for those who lived that eternal life now in that they had His Spirit and lived His life.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 8:54'>Joh 8:54</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Jesus answered: If I glorify myself, my glory is nothing. It is my Father that glorifies me, whom you say is your God</em>- As the Father glorified the Lord, so He seeks out the glory of all his children (:50). If the Father was truly their Father, then they would perceive that the Lord was already being glorified by the Father. Again, there is an appeal to an intuitive sense which was lacking amongst the Lord's critics. These appeals to intuitive sense all reference the work of the Spirit and a person's acceptance or rejection of it.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 8:55'>Joh 8:55</a></em>&nbsp;<em>You have not known Him, but I know Him-&nbsp;</em>There are two different words used here. They did not know God, but the Lord had seen Him. The allusion is to Moses who desired to see God and could not. And the Lord implies that He all the time was seeing God, not just for a passing moment, but walking in the light of knowing Him.</p><p><em>And if I should say I know Him not, I shall be like you, a liar; but I know Him and keep His word</em>- The statement that He 'saw' God was deeply blasphemous to the Jews. He was tempted not to make it, knowing the persecution and anger it would create. But to do so would be to lie. To see / know God was to keep His word, living according to God's word.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 8:56'>Joh 8:56</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day, and he saw it, and rejoiced</em>- This is surely an allusion to how he laughed for joy at the promise of Isaac. He "gladly received the promises" (<em><a href='B:650 11:17'>Heb 11:17</a></em> RV). And realizing that through baptism the promises are made to us ought to inspire a deep seated joy too. The only time Abraham is recorded to have laughed and been glad was when he was given the promise that he would have a seed; he understood that ultimately that promise had reference to Jesus (<em><a href='B:10 17:17'>Gen 17:17</a></em>). Abraham “saw” ahead to Christ through the promises made to him concerning Jesus. He cryptically commented about the future sacrifice of Jesus: “In the mount of the Lord it shall be seen” (<em><a href='B:10 22:14'>Gen 22:14</a></em>). It was in this sense that Jesus speaks of Abraham as having seen him. It is in this context of speaking about the promises that Jesus could say “Before Abraham was, I am”. He appreciated that God’s promises to Abraham were revealing the plan about Jesus which God had known from the beginning of the world. That purpose, which had been “before Abraham was”, had been revealed to Abraham in the promises to him, and was now being fulfilled in the eyes of the Jews of the first century, as they stood in a ring around Jesus, “the word (of promise) made flesh”.</p><p>It seems reasonable to conclude that Isaac was offered on or near the hill of Calvary, one of the hills (Heb:) near Jerusalem, in the ancient “land of Moriah" (cp. <em><a href='B:140 3:1'>2Ch 3:1</a></em>). The name given to the place, Yahweh-Yireh, means ‘in this mount I have seen Yahweh’. The events of the death and resurrection of the Lord which Isaac’s experience pointed forward to were therefore the prophesied ‘seeing’ of Yahweh. When Abraham ‘<em>saw</em>&nbsp;the place of Isaac’s intended sacrifice afar off" (<em><a href='B:10 22:4'>Gen 22:4</a></em>), there is more to those words than a literal description. <em><a href='B:650 11:13'>Heb 11:13</a></em> alludes here in saying that Abraham&nbsp;<em>saw</em>&nbsp;the fulfilment of “the promises" “afar off". The Lord in <em><a href='B:500 8:56'>Joh 8:56</a></em> says that Abraham&nbsp;<em>saw</em>&nbsp;His day or time usually a reference to His sacrifice. And yet that place of offering was called by Abraham ‘Jehovah Jireh’, ‘Jehovah will be&nbsp;<em>seen</em>’. Note the theme of&nbsp;<em>seeing</em>. In some shadowy way, Abraham understood something of the future sacrifice of the Lord Jesus; and yet he speaks of it as the time when Yahweh Himself will be ‘seen’, so intense would the manifestation of God be in the death of His Son. See on <em><a href='B:500 19:19'>Joh 19:19</a></em>.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 8:57'>Joh 8:57</a></em>&nbsp;<em>The Jews replied to him: You are not yet fifty years old, and have you seen Abraham?</em>- Again they did not follow His reasoning. The Lord had said that Abraham had seen Him, not that He had seen Abraham. He was not saying that He was older than Abraham- obviously He was not older than Abraham. We observe that their guess at the Lord's age placed Him somewhat older than He was. Days and nights spent in prayer and focus upon the Father and others would have been reflected in His face and body; such was His humanity.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 8:58'>Joh 8:58</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Jesus said to them: Truly, truly, I say to you: I am of higher status than Abraham ever was</em>- When the Jews mocked Him for saying that He had seen Abraham, the Lord didn’t respond that of course that wasn’t what He meant; instead He elevated the conversation with “before Abraham was I am” (AV). These words are often misapplied to teach that the Lord Jesus existed before Abraham did. However, closer investigation reveals the opposite to be true. He did not say ‘Before Abraham was, I was”. He was the promised descendant of Abraham; we make a nonsense of God’s promises to Abraham if we say that the Lord Jesus physically existed before the time of Abraham. The context is the discourse with the Jews concerning Abraham. As far as they were concerned, Abraham was the greatest man who would ever live. The Lord Jesus is saying “I am now, as I stand here, more important than Abraham”. As they stood there, He was the one to be honoured rather than Abraham. He is saying ‘I am now, more important than Abraham ever was’. It is possible to understand “before” in <em><a href='B:500 8:58'>Joh 8:58</a></em> with some reference to time, in the sense that before Abraham existed, Christ had been in God’s plan right from the beginning of the world. It was because Jesus was “before” Abraham in this sense that he was “before” him in terms of importance. But the more comfortable reading is to understand "before" as referring to importance rather than time. In <em><a href='B:100 6:21'>2Sa 6:21</a></em> there’s a good example of “before” meaning ‘before’ in importance rather than time. David tells his wife: “The Lord chose me&nbsp;<em>before</em>&nbsp;your father Saul”. Actually, in terms of&nbsp;<em>time</em>, God chose Saul well before He chose David. But God chose David&nbsp;<em>above</em>&nbsp;Saul in terms of importance and honour.</p><p>"I am" may indeed be a reference to the Divine Name which Jesus, as the Father's Son, carried (<em><a href='B:500 5:43'>Joh 5:43</a></em>). But "I am" is also used by the healed blind man in <em><a href='B:500 9:9'>Joh 9:9</a></em> with no apparent reference to the Name. The same Greek words are also used by Asahel in the LXX of <em><a href='B:100 2:20'>2Sa 2:20</a></em>. Jesus and the Father were "one" and so for Jesus to bear the Father's Name is no reason to think that 'Jesus = God". Note however that the unity between Father and Son spoken of e:g. in <em><a href='B:500 10:30'>Joh 10:30</a></em> is the same kind of unity possible between the Father and all His children (John 17). The use of the neuter form for "one" (<em>hen esmen</em>) in <em><a href='B:500 10:30'>Joh 10:30</a></em> shows that the Father and Son aren't interchangeable- they are at one with each other, not one and the same. And sharing such unity it is quite appropriate for them to share the same Name. A related misunderstanding is often applied to the comment of John the Baptist about Jesus- that “He was before me” (<em><a href='B:500 1:30'>Joh 1:30</a></em>). John the Baptist was actually older than the Lord Jesus; he therefore meant that Jesus was “before” him in the sense of being more important than him. C:H. Dodd interprets this passage as meaning: “There is a man in my following who has taken precedence over me, because he is… essentially my superior” (C:H. Dodd,&nbsp;<em>Historical Tradition In The Fourth Gospel&nbsp;</em>(Cambridge: CUP, 1976) p. 274).</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 8:59'>Joh 8:59</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Therefore they took up stones to cast at him; but Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple</em>- They wanted to kill Him for blasphemy, as in <em><a href='B:500 10:31'>Joh 10:31</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 10:33'>Joh 10:33</a></em>; for He had just alluded to the "I am" Name of Yahweh. Perhaps He miraculously avoided them (as in <em><a href='B:490 4:30'>Luk 4:30</a></em>), or maybe as in:20 the very public spotlight upon them somehow held them back from stoning Him to death. It has been suggested that the stones were the stones left around as a result of the temple construction project. Again we see that the Lord gave His life, and it was not taken from Him.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 9:1'>Joh 9:1</a></em>&nbsp;<em>And as he passed by, he saw a man blind from his birth</em>- The same terms for "passed by" is used in the preceding <em><a href='B:500 8:59'>Joh 8:59</a></em>. As the Lord was ‘passing by’, more like quickly rushing away from His persecutors and would-be murderers, He takes time to heal a blind man, with quite a lengthy process. He didn’t allow His own fears and self-preservation instinct to make Him so self-centred that He didn’t notice and engage with others’ physical and spiritual needs.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 9:2'>Joh 9:2</a></em>&nbsp;<em>And his disciples asked him: Rabbi, who sinned, this man, or his parents, that he should be born blind?</em>- The section begins with the issue of sin and blindness, and ends with it (:41). D:A. Carson’s commentary on John lists Talmudic citations which show that the Jews considered each disability to be the result of specific sin; to be born blind was listed as the result of the mother committing adultery (hence their claim he was born in sin, <em><a href='B:500 9:34'>Joh 9:34</a></em>). This connects the incident with the previous chapter, as does the phrase “passed by” in <em><a href='B:500 8:59'>Joh 8:59</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 9:1'>Joh 9:1</a></em>. The Lord is consciously seeking to challenge the Jews’ false theology at the points in which it was devaluing to the human person- He wasn’t seeking theological controversy for the sake of it. See on <em><a href='B:500 9:6'>Joh 9:6</a></em>. Their question assumes that being born blind was an outcome of sin- their question was 'whose sin?'. As ever, the Lord attacks the terms of the question and lifts the issue far higher. He now dismantles the connection between sin and blindness.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 9:3'>Joh 9:3</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Jesus answered: Neither did this man sin, nor his parents; but that the works of God should be revealed in him</em>- The Lord isn't saying that they were not sinners, but that the issue of how a person got in the situation they were in wasn't the essential issue. We can learn a lesson from that, for so often, we like to focus on past behaviour as being so significant in present suffering. But the Lord urges us not to have that perspective, but rather to see the present suffering as an opportunity for God's works to be revealed within a person. "The works of God" is a phrase previously used in John's Gospel for miracles. The Lord is saying that the unleashing of power within the man was as great as the performance of any miracle, including healing from literal blindness. “<em>In</em>&nbsp;him”, rather than on or through him, suggests that the manifestation of God was to begin&nbsp;<em>within&nbsp;</em>the man, and the essential miracle was to be on his internal spiritual vision, through the work of the Spirit within him.</p><p>The Lord refused to get caught up in the philosophical questions about ‘Why suffering?’. Instead He saw the simple reality of human suffering as a call to do God’s work; the disciples like so many were caught up on the ‘fairness of suffering’ question to the extent that they didn’t perceive the extent of human need and try to do something about it.<br/>“But that the works of God should be manifest in him, I must work::." (Gk:) would suggest that God has prepared potential ‘works’ but we must do them; if we don’t, they will not be done. This is perhaps the sense of <em><a href='B:500 9:4'>Joh 9:4</a></em> - we only have limited opportunity to do this, life is brief, the night comes when no man can work. If we don’t use those opportunities, they are gone forever, and the works God potentially enabled will not be performed. Yet time can be frittered away today as never before.</p><p>'Revealed or "manifested" within him' may mean that the whole drama of blindness and healing happened so that God's work could be revealed within the man's heart. In this sense the Lord manifested God's Name to His disciples (<em><a href='B:500 17:6'>Joh 17:6</a></em>), His life,&nbsp;<em>the&nbsp;</em>life, was manifested in the hearts of His followers (<em><a href='B:690 1:2'>1Jn 1:2</a></em>). All that happens physically, externally in our lives is so that internally we might perceive spiritual things.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 9:4'>Joh 9:4</a></em>&nbsp;<em>We must work-&nbsp;</em>We are lights in the dark world (<em><a href='B:470 5:14'>Mat 5:14</a></em>; <em><a href='B:570 2:15'>Phi 2:15</a></em>), because we are in Christ, the light of the world (<em><a href='B:500 9:5'>Joh 9:5</a></em>). Notice how in the preceding verse, Jesus said spoke of how “I must work the works of him that sent me” (<em><a href='B:500 9:4'>Joh 9:4</a></em> AV), yet the RV reflects the manuscript difficulties by giving “We must work”. Could it be that the Lord said: ‘I must work, we you in me must work’? The Lord Jesus was the light of the world on account of His resurrection: “He first by the resurrection from the dead should proclaim light both to the Jewish people and to the Gentiles” (<em><a href='B:510 26:23'>Act 26:23</a></em> RV). If we are baptized into His death and resurrection, we too are the light of this world in that the light of His life breaks forth in us. And this is exactly why belief in His resurrection is an imperative to preach it. And it’s why the great commission flows straight out of the resurrection narrative.</p><p><em>The works of Him that sent me, while it is day. The night comes, when no one can work</em>- In the prologue, the night is the darkness of Jewish unbelief, and the light is that of the person of the Lord Jesus and His life. The coming of the night therefore refers to the Lord's death, the temporary extinguishing of the light by the darkness. There would be no works / miracles doable then, so the Lord was keen to bring light to people whilst He could. And likewise people only had a very short frame of opportunity to be in the light. Perhaps the Lord was speaking in a kind of soliloquy when He mused that "the night comes, when no man can work", and therefore man should walk and work while he has the light (<em><a href='B:500 9:4'>Joh 9:4</a></em>, quoting <em><a href='B:250 9:10'>Ecc 9:10</a></em>). He was speaking, in the context, not only of His own zeal to 'work' while He had life, but also applying this to His followers.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 9:5'>Joh 9:5</a></em>&nbsp;<em>While I am in the world, I am the light of the world</em>- The Jewish world only had the chance to see the light whilst the Lord was with them. His presence, His light, would continue for the believers in Him, but as the prologue puts it, the light shone briefly in darkness but they did not accept it. The Lord Jesus calls both Himself and us "the light of the world". He is "the light of the world" whenever we, who are in the world, are His light to people.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 9:6'>Joh 9:6</a></em>&nbsp;<em>When he had thus spoken, he spat on the ground and made clay of the spittle, and anointed his eyes with the clay</em>-D:A. Carson’s commentary on John cites Talmudic evidence that there were specific regulations against ploughing (cp. rolling spittle in the dirt), kneading (the clay), anointing and curing on the Sabbath. In this case, the Lord was purposefully seeking to provoke issues with the Jews regarding their false theology- see on <em><a href='B:500 9:2'>Joh 9:2</a></em>. The paradox was that the man was made yet further blind in order to have his sight restored. Commentators note that putting saliva on weak eyes was common in the first century; the Lord's point was that&nbsp;<em>His</em>saliva, Him, His word, the word that was Him, His Spirit (for His words were His Spirit, <em><a href='B:500 6:63'>Joh 6:63</a></em>) mixed with human flesh, the dust of humanity, could achieve permanent cure. The anointing with saliva was usually accompanied by some imprecation, cursing Satan or appealing to the gods. The Lord did none of that; instead, He mixed His saliva with the dust of humanity and there was permanent cure.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 9:7'>Joh 9:7</a></em>&nbsp;<em>And said to him: Go, wash in the pool of Siloam (which means Sent). He went away therefore and washed, and went home seeing</em>- In John’s Gospel, the Lord Jesus is the one “sent” from God- He has just stated this in <em><a href='B:500 9:4'>Joh 9:4</a></em>. The Siloam pool therefore represented washing / baptism in Him, becoming the 'sent one' just as He was. The cure was not immediate; it required washing. This speaks of how baptism was to be the requirement for the giving of the Spirit, the new psychology, the new vision, the new worldview.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 9:8'>Joh 9:8</a></em>&nbsp;<em>His neighbours and those that had seen him previously, as a beggar, said: Is this not he that sat and begged?</em>- He "went home" (:7) but perhaps he had not been home for a long time, hence the difficulty in recognizing him. "Neighbours" may well imply 'relatives'. His blindness had cut him off from his family, a situation made worse by all the myths about blindness being a punishment for sin. His cure therefore potentially enabled the re-establishment of relationships within his family, just as it can mean in lives today.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 9:9'>Joh 9:9</a></em> - see on <em><a href='B:500 9:27'>Joh 9:27</a></em>.</p><p><em>Others said: It is he. Others said: No, but he is like him. He said: I am he</em>- He repeated the “I am” used by Jesus in <em><a href='B:500 8:58'>Joh 8:58</a></em>, because God's Name was now being manifested in him. As Jesus was the light of the world, so should we be. His usage of "I am" is perhaps recorded intentionally, in order to demonstrate that usage of the term did not make a man God Himself, but rather spoke of the manifestation of God's Name through him. Trinitarian apologists need to accept this point more readily.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 9:10'>Joh 9:10</a></em>&nbsp;<em>They replied to him: How then were your eyes opened?</em>- Perhaps they wondered whose saliva and with what incantation his eyes had been opened. They were clearly struggling to believe that such a miracle could have been done.</p>


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<h4><em><a href='B:500 9:11'>Joh 9:11</a></em>&nbsp;<em>He answered: The man that is called Jesus made clay and anointed my eyes, and said to me: Go to Siloam and wash. So I went away and washed, and I received sight</em>- "The man" is yet another indication of the Lord's humanity. He was well known- He was a public figure in Jerusalem. He was known as "the man called Jesus"; He never gave any encouragement to see Him as anything other than a man, and certainly not as God. But consider how the healed blind man grew in his appreciation of the Lord: a man (<em><a href='B:500 9:11'>Joh 9:11</a></em>), a prophet (:17), the leader of disciples (:27), a man sent from God (:33), and finally, one to be worshipped as God is worshipped (:38). Because we've gone up one level in our appreciation of the Lord, don't think that we're there. Progressive growth in appreciation of Him should be true of us too. This experience of a growing appreciation of the Lord is in fact a foretaste of the Kingdom; for this will feature an everlasting growth in appreciation of the Lord's excellence (<em><a href='B:290 9:7'>Isa 9:7</a></em>). For us, that process has already begun. When Christ comes, we will say in that day "Lo, this is our God; we have waited for him, and he will save us:&nbsp;<em>this is the Lord</em>; we have waited for him, we will be glad and rejoice in his salvation" (<em><a href='B:290 25:9'>Isa 25:9</a></em>). It doesn't mean we'll turn into Trinitarians. It means we will behold and marvel at the greatness of the Lord Jesus Christ, to an extent hidden from mortal eyes:&nbsp;</h4>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 9:12'>Joh 9:12</a></em>&nbsp;<em>And they said to him: Where is he? He said: I do not know</em>- The questions 'Who is He?' and 'Where is He?' are commonly provoked in John's Gospel. The first hearers of the Gospel were encouraged to see themselves as these unbelievers, asking these same questions, and coming to faith. We are invited to enter into the feelings of all present then- that the Lord was not physically present, but clearly He was somewhere, and had power and authority beyond the level of any human miracle worker or quack doctor.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 9:13'>Joh 9:13</a></em>&nbsp;<em>They took him that was previously blind to the Pharisees</em>- "They took" may imply they marched him off, whether he wanted it or not. They considered the Pharisees as the judges of truth in these matters; the evidence before their eyes they didn't want to see nor judge. They, like many today, based their judgments upon what others thought.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 9:14'>Joh 9:14</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Now it was the Sabbath on the day when Jesus made the clay and opened his eyes</em>- The man's relatives and neighbours knew that the Pharisees would consider such healing to be working on the Sabbath. Even quack doctors were not allowed to work on the Sabbath, and they thought they had a great opportunity to get the Lord in trouble- One who had clearly done nothing but good to this man. No good deed goes unpunished, in our experience; and in those moments when we lament that fact, we find fellowship with our Lord's experiences.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 9:15'>Joh 9:15</a></em>&nbsp;<em>So the Pharisees asked him how he received his sight. And he said to them: He put clay upon my eyes, and I washed and I could see</em>- Perhaps the man was at pains to point out that this was no quack doctor miracle involving putting saliva on weak eyes; because he actually had to wash to remove the Lord's saliva before he could see. The further shutting of his eyes with clay was to underscore the point that he had to become yet more blinded before he could properly see.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 9:16'>Joh 9:16</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Therefore, some of the Pharisees said-&nbsp;</em>We notice it was only "some" of them who said this. Some Pharisees later believed and became Christians, and it is a theme of John that there was a significant sense amongst the Jews that the Lord was Messiah. His crucifixion was a result of the suppression of conscience, and of an embittered minority leading a majority to do the unthinkable, as so often happens in human societies.</p><p><em>This man is not from God, because he keeps not the Sabbath. But others said: How can a man that is a sinner do such signs? And there was division among them</em>- This division amongst the Pharisees even at this stage, relatively near to the Lord's crucifixion, shows how His destruction was the result of a weak minded majority, overly sensitive to their image, being lead to do the unthinkably evil. For the Pharisees as a group numbered no more than 5000 throughout the Roman empire. And even they were divided about the Lord. In :18 the language of 'belief' is even credited to them; but they still crucified the Lord. And so often this sad scenario plays out amongst religious people; fear of image and possible corollaries leads a majority to do evil which they would not otherwise have done.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 9:17'>Joh 9:17</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Therefore they said to the man born blind: What do you say concerning him, in that he opened your eyes? And he said: He is a prophet</em>- The Gospel records are full of questions posed about the person and nature of the Lord Jesus. "What do you think about the Christ?::. What do you think? Is He worthy of death?::. What do you think::. about the portrayal of the Father and son in various parables::." (<em><a href='B:470 21:28'>Mat 21:28</a></em>; <em><a href='B:470 22:42'>Mat 22:42</a></em>; <em><a href='B:470 26:66'>Mat 26:66</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 11:56'>Joh 11:56</a></em>). And we have another example here. In teaching his Gospel, John would have laboured these questions- 'What do&nbsp;<em>you</em>&nbsp;say concerning Him?'. It is hard for some of us to get a second naiveté and enter into the feelings of a secular person, or a Moslem or Buddhist, as they read the Gospels for the very first time. These questions are powerful, and they would have been powerful to the audiences to which the Gospel records were first read or recited.</p><p>"He is a prophet" was the response of the Samaritan woman (<em><a href='B:500 4:19'>Joh 4:19</a></em>). Miracles were understood as the validation of a prophet (<em><a href='B:500 6:14'>Joh 6:14</a></em>). There was no doubt the man considered that this miracle marked out the Lord as one sent from God. The Pharisees were seeking to elicit the answer "I think He is Messiah" so they could excommunicate him (:22). But the man didn't think that, at this stage. He had no knowledge about the Lord Jesus beyond the fact that He had done a miracle. We see here grace- that the Lord took the initiative to work in a man's life to bring him to faith, before the man had any faith or the knowledge upon which to base faith.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 9:18'>Joh 9:18</a></em>&nbsp;<em>The Jews did not believe him, that he had been blind and had received his sight, until they called his parents</em>- The implication is that they did believe once they were satisfied that he had indeed been born blind. See on :16.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 9:19'>Joh 9:19</a></em>&nbsp;<em>And asked them: Is this your son, who you say was born blind? How then does he now see?</em>- The implication was that the parents were lying. They asked the questions in a legal style, pressuring the parents to disown their son. This is so often the outcome of legalistic religion, when religious leaders have a point to make and have no thought for the collateral damage to human relationships caused by their obsession in proving someone else wrong.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 9:20'>Joh 9:20</a></em>&nbsp;<em>His parents answered and said: We know that this is our son and that he was born blind</em>- We sense their nervousness in answering up before this kangaroo court. They feared more than anything the social exclusion which would come as a result of excommunication.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 9:21'>Joh 9:21</a></em>&nbsp;<em>But how he now sees, we do not know. Or who opened his eyes, we do not know. Ask him He is of age. He shall speak for himself</em>- The Jews considered that any over 13 years of age were "of age" to answer for themselves in such cases. Surely they had been present at his "home" when he first returned with the amazing information about "the man called Jesus" and how his eyes had been opened by saliva and washing. They surely were aware of this information, and likely believed it in their hearts. But unlike their son, they feared excommunication. They would not come out openly in confessing faith, or even in accepting the simple reality that the Lord had performed a miracle. This theme of open confession rather than secret acceptance is significant in John, for he was probably using his Gospel record to preach to other Jews who were likewise cowed by the synagogue system into not openly confessing their faith.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 9:22'>Joh 9:22</a></em> - see on <em><a href='B:500 12:42'>Joh 12:42</a></em>.</p><p><em>These things said his parents, because they feared the Jews. For the Jews had agreed already, that if anyone should confess him to be Christ, he should be thrown out of the synagogue</em>- The fear of excommunication has stymied so much spirituality and faith over the centuries. John's initial audience were facing the same problem. "The Jews had agreed already" on this policy, but it was only some of them who forced it through; see on :16 and :18. This policy was apparently dropped when thousands of Jews were baptized into Christ at Pentecost, and remained within the synagogue system. The Lord however predicted that the time would come when this policy would again be enforced, and His followers would be excommunicated from the synagogues (<em><a href='B:500 16:2'>Joh 16:2</a></em>). And so it happened. Hebrews was apparently written to the last remnants of the Christians in Jerusalem, the majority of whom had caved in and returned to Judaism because of this policy.</p><p>Excommunication from the synagogue meant total social isolation; such a person could not buy from or sell anything to another Jew. The language of the mark of the beast in <em><a href='B:730 13:17'>Rev 13:17</a></em> is virtually quoting from Jewish synagogue excommunication language. Whatever later applications the beast has, John saw it in terms of the evil system of Judaism, based upon Jerusalem, the city spiritually called Sodom and Egypt, persecuting the saints and having its total destruction in the events of AD70:&nbsp;</p><p>The "man born blind" in John 9 was an eloquent type of the believers: the unclean one had the spittle (word / spirit) of the Lord Jesus mixed with dust (flesh) and placed on his eyes. Then he had to go and baptize himself at Siloam, and then his blindness was lifted. It is stressed, really stressed (12 times in 32 verses) that the man was "blind"; as if to emphasize how totally blind we are before our "washing", and how blind the unsaved world is. The result was that the man was “put out of the synagogue” (<em><a href='B:500 9:22'>Joh 9:22</a></em>)- and the very same phrase is used about all the other first century Jewish believers (<em><a href='B:500 16:2'>Joh 16:2</a></em>). They were to go through exactly what he did. The Lord Jesus was well known for His many miracles of curing blind people (<em><a href='B:490 7:21-22'>Luk 7:21-22</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 10:21'>Joh 10:21</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 11:37'>Joh 11:37</a></em>); it was as if he healed this affliction especially. All these miracles were surely acted parables of His work in saving men from the spiritual blindness of their earlier life. The figure of blindness being lifted is truly a powerful picture of what happened at our conversion. From then on, we began to see (i:e. understand) for the first time. We began to understand something properly for the first time. We were&nbsp;<em>blind</em>&nbsp;beforehand:&nbsp; Previously, all our 'knowledge' was just perception, passing through paradigms.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 9:23'>Joh 9:23</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Therefore his parents replied: He is of age, ask him</em>- Despite knowing the facts about their son's healing and the association of "the man called Jesus" with it, they refused to openly testify to what they knew. Fear of religious excommunication has led many over the centuries to put religious acceptance by others far before truth and basic family relationships.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 9:24'>Joh 9:24</a></em>&nbsp;<em>So they questioned the man that was born blind a second time, and said to him: Give glory to God. We know that this man is a sinner</em>- The demand to “Give God the glory” was an admonition to repent and tell the truth (<em><a href='B:60 7:19'>Jos 7:19</a></em>). But the man refused to take false guilt, piled onto him by his religious elders. There is true guilt, the guilt we should feel for actual sin; and false guilt, which is placed upon us by others. The man refused to take this, as we should. To receive grace is no crime.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 9:25'>Joh 9:25</a></em>&nbsp;<em>He answered: Whether he is a sinner, I do not know. One thing I know, whereas I was blind, now I see</em>- We see here how little the man knew about the Lord. Yet the Lord worked in his life to bring him to faith, before he believed. This is grace itself. It also puts a stop to all Pentecostal claims that faith is required before miracles can happen. The Lord's cures were by the power of the Spirit, and were not some form of faith healing, which requires the healed person to focus their minds in faith.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 9:26'>Joh 9:26</a></em>&nbsp;<em>They replied to him: What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?</em>- Playing the role of prosecutors, they asked him the same questions, hoping his answers would contradict themselves. But truth was on the man's side and his account was consistent. He refused to be brow beaten by them, unlike his parents.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 9:27'>Joh 9:27</a></em>&nbsp;<em>He answered them: I told you already and you did not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Would you also become his disciples?</em>- His styled was copied by the Lord Jesus- <em><a href='B:500 10:25'>Joh 10:25</a></em>. As Jesus was the “I am”, so this man too manifested God and uses the same phrase&nbsp;<em>ego eimi,&nbsp;</em><em><a href='B:500 9:9'>Joh 9:9</a></em>. They would have considered his attitude to be some form of contempt of court. He rightly perceived that they had been told the truth but did not 'hear' it. He is unconsciously repeating the Lord's own comment that they could not understand His speech because they did not hear His word (<em><a href='B:500 8:43'>Joh 8:43</a></em>). We can only respect the man; for he appeals to them to "become His disciples". If they would wish to become disciples, then he would repeat his testimony. But he wouldn't waste his breath for any other reason. As noted on :17, these questions are recorded in the way they are because they are the questions a person is being asked as they first hear the Gospel of Jesus. 'Will&nbsp;<em>you</em>&nbsp;also be His disciple?'.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 9:28'>Joh 9:28</a></em>&nbsp;<em>And they reviled him and said: You are his disciple, but we are disciples of Moses</em>- The man could hardly be described as a disciple of the Lord as he knew so little about Him. And yet his challenge to them to become the Lord's disciples (:27) was understandably read by them as meaning that he was a disciple of the Lord. Just as 'belief' is credited to people in John's Gospel when they still have major problems in their faith, so this man is presented as a disciple when he knew hardly anything. It was by their questioning of him that he came to articulate his own understanding and faith.</p>


