The Next Best Thing

1 John 4:12

          One of the struggles in life is that we don’t get the opportunity to see God face to face here on earth. We can see the abundant evidence of His handiwork in creation. We can see the results of His intervention in history. His existence helps us make sense out of what otherwise would be very difficult to explain. He is the best explanation for the way things really are. There are fewer difficulties with understanding the universe when we allow Him to be in the equation.

          There are several places in Scripture where the statement from our text is stated. “No one has ever seen God.” But as we read Scripture we find places where people have seen God. Jesus Himself tells the disciples that if they have seen Him, they have seen the Father. How do we understand these statements?

          The first important thing to realize is that false teachers from every age often claim a greater knowledge of God than their previous religious tradition. They claim personal encounters and direct revelation of new truths. They tell people that they have a new way based on what God revealed to them. They are the carriers of a new start, a new way to reach God. There is also usually the twist about the keepers of the old tradition got things mixed up for various reasons, so God had to resend the pure message through a new messenger, the new prophet.

          The word for “see” in this verse is used to talk about the kind of seeing that would take place in a theater. It is prolonged intense observation of something that is often unusual in nature or timing. It is much more than an instagram picture post. It involves observation and analysis. It takes seeing the object and then spending some mental energy trying to figure out what it means to me and the world. It is more than liking on Facebook. It involves some personal investment of attention and time.

          John’s point is that if we love one another, others will be able to do this kind of observing of God’s action in our lives. They will see Him working. They will gain a knowledge of His character by watching our character. And this is what is lacking in the lives of these false teachers. They don’t have the life of love that marks the life of a Jesus-follower. They have lots of talk, but their lives are empty of substance.

          Unfortunately, lack of substance isn’t something that was confined to the first century AD. All down through history there have been those who have pulled at the fringes of groups trying to create a following of their own. They claim to be able to lead in a way unlike others. They boast of their superior knowledge all the while claiming to be humble. They live unexamined lives. And they want to keep prying eyes from looking too deeply into their past or into their motives.

Life in a Bottle

1 John 1:2

          We live in a world of quick fixes. We take a pill to cure most illnesses. No more staying in bed for months hanging onto life and then recuperating from the hanging on process. Antibiotics take care of most of the illnesses that used to kill most people. Many of the diseases we now struggle with rarely occurred; people died of other things before they ever developed them. Many of our old age diseases just didn’t happen; no one lived that long.

          And even with all our modern medicine, we still don’t have cures for so many things. It would be nice if we could find a cure for our spiritual woes in a bottle, a one-stop shop, a universal cure. That would be something to BLOG about.

          Well, John tells us about just such a cure in the person of Jesus. John’s simple language portrays some of the most profound Truths available to humanity. He starts by saying that life appeared. He says it is eternal life that appeared to them. And that this life was with the Father before coming to appear. But how can this be? How can the embodiment of life come in a person? Mystery!

          But this is exactly what John proclaims. He says that Life, capital L life, came in the person of Jesus. That is because we know from other places in Scripture that Jesus was responsible with the Father and Holy Spirit for all of creation including life itself. His voice was heard when “Let there be” was spoken in the beginning of the universe. His voice continues to ring out as we look at creation. His voice it the voice in the stars that calls people to see His eternal power and divine nature, as Paul writes in Romans.

          To put it another way, when life is seen, Jesus speaks because He is the source of all life. But it is more than physical life. John qualifies this life as eternal life, not just life that goes on forever, but a quality of life that is present in the LORD Himself. We share in that life when we share in the life of Jesus. His life courses through our lives. If people see the results of the LORD’s work in our lives, it is the life of Jesus they are seeing. His life can’t help but shine and change us and those around us.

          John also wants to make sure that we know this was a real person, not just a vision seen by many people, or a ghostly divine being masquerading as a human. This was flesh and blood walking and living among them. This is not the invisible, disconnected, transcendent God that many people believe. He is not sitting on some distant throne watching the affairs of men, but never gets involved. He didn’t start the clock ticking and then step back and watch it wind down.

          Instead, our God got involved. In fact He was involved at every moment, even before time began to count off moments. And He is still involved at every moment. When suicide bombers kill people, the LORD is there, reaching out to both the bomber and the victims. He is there with the survivors reaching out, calling them to Himself and offering reconciliation and comfort.

          Are you ready to recognize the Life present in your life? Do you see Him at every turn and every pause? Are you proclaiming Him with your actions and your words?

Latest and Greatest

1 John 1:1

          Have you ever wanted to be one of the first to get your hands on a new technology? Have you ever waited in line or put in a pre-order? In recent years there has been a surge in the race to be on the frontlines of technology. From the latest phones to the sleekest high-tech car, people have expressed their interest by putting their money down.

          When pre-release products are distributed to leading tech writers their reviews get increased traffic. They can’t wait to get their hands on the product. They want to touch and handle it. They also want to take it apart and see what’s inside. They might actually take it apart or they might just do lots of diagnostics and pass along what they find out. There is nothing like actually having a product in hand that makes it more real.

          The same is true when you have a baby. When the baby is kicking around for the first time, there is a reality to that which grows exponentially when the baby is in your arms. Some say you aren’t really married until you have children. Before children you can live as you want. After children life is different, can I get an AMEN!

          John, one of Jesus’ disciples, has had the opportunity to handle the pre-release copy of the Gospel. He walked and talked with Jesus prior to His death and resurrection. And then he did the same after the resurrection. And he isn’t just being poetic. He actually heard, saw and touched Jesus. Jesus is the Gospel, the Good News.

          You see, the central message of Christianity is not the teaching of Jesus. It is not the way He spoke, or the miracles He did. He did not come to bring an alternative message. He didn’t want to introduce a superior ethic. He came to give Himself, so that we could be in proper relationship with him. He is the Gospel!

          So when John writes that Jesus was from the beginning and therefore the message of the Gospel was from the beginning he is telling us about the continuity of the message he received and passed along to his readers and to us by extension. Jesus is not a new thing. Even in the first chapters of the Scriptures Jesus is mentioned as the One who will crush the head of the Serpent.

          John’s message is particularly important for his day and age. There was a teaching that flourished during that time that taught that the divine could have nothing to do directly with the earthly. Divine was too holy and earthly was too corrupt. There was no way for the two to meet.

          So when John writes that he heard Jesus, saw Jesus, closely examined and touched Jesus, he was refuting this hyper-spiritual Gnosticism of that day. The Good News is that God added something to Himself, a human form, so that He could reconcile us to Himself. Jesus had to be fully human and fully God for the transaction to be successful. He had to be fully connected to this world. He couldn’t be a ghost of a man. The reality of His humanity was central to the message.

          This is a hard message to accept because the connection of Divine and Human in Jesus is a mystery. We don’t know exactly how He can be 100% God and 100% human. The math does not add up. And yet that is exactly what is proclaimed in the Gospel. Fully God, fully man. God with us, Immanuel.

          There are those today who want to extract some separate message from Jesus. They want to say the central message of the New Testament is love, not the person of Jesus. They want to downgrade Jesus to being a good moral teacher rather than the Divine Savior. In doing this they then want to make Christianity just another item on the heavenly road a la carte menu. You can choose what you like and they will all get you to heaven, or wherever you want to go. They want to say that they are all versions of the same lunch menu, all equally valid and all good with sprinkles on top.

          This belief that all religions are basically the same harmless belief leads society unable to name evil. The beheading of Coptic Christians by Muslims must be watered down because Muslims are peaceful, according to their conception of the world. So it becomes a non-descript group of people doing a random act on some other non-descript group of people, with no apparent cause or connection. It is instead a group of Muslims acting fully in accord with their religious beliefs. They are being good Muslims as they cut the throats of Christians.

          A time is coming when we in the West will have to stand up for Christ, and some of us will be killed. It is happening all over the globe right now. It is coming to a street near you. But be of good cheer, Jesus has overcome the world. He is real and just who He claimed to be. And John was an eye witness to that reality.