This is the third of six parts in the Jewels from John series. As with the other ‘jewels’, I selected these four passages for this post because I felt the Holy Spirit was directing me to them. I want to keep research and analysis to a minimum and rather reflect on what the Spirit says.

John 6:66-69 ‘From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him. “You do not want to leave too, do you?” Jesus asked the Twelve. Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.”’  NIV

The background to this passage is as follows: After feeding the 5,000 from practically nothing, Jesus uses this mighty miracle to teach his followers something wonderful about himself. The crowd followed Jesus to the other side of Lake Galilee because they saw him as a free and abundant food source. He corrected this misconception by equating himself to true bread that came down from heaven to give them spiritual and everlasting ‘food’. John 6:51-59 sums up the conclusion of the Lord’s teaching with:

This confounded the crowd following him and even his disciples muttered, “This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?” As usual, they could not discern the profound spiritual truth clothed in physical analogy. They literalised what Jesus was saying and thought that he was proposing cannibalism where he was the main course! This idea is profoundly disturbing to all of us, but to the Jews of that day, it was blasphemous heresy.

Imagine that! Well, we know better now, in the 21^st century, don’t we? Really? What is the Roman Catholic doctrine of Transubstantiation then? Trans what now? A short definition is ‘the conversion of the substance of the Communion elements of bread and wine into the actual body and blood of Christ at consecration by the Priest, with only the appearances of bread and wine still remaining’. And that makes those who consume the elements what exactly? Oh, and before we curl our lips and shake our heads pityingly for our RC brethren, consider that in many conservative Protestant churches, only clergy may ‘consecrate’ the communion elements. Then they traditionally hold up the bread and wine before the congregations with the words “The body and blood of Christ.” So, perhaps there are millions of Christians today who get it as wrong as that first crowd of 5,000. Of course, nobody admits to this and covers the matter over with a thick veil of unintelligible theology. On the other hand, those who have been born again of the Spirit know exactly what Jesus was teaching because the Holy Spirit opens their minds to the greater reality beyond the physical.

Intellectually, we also grasp that Jesus was using radically confrontational and physically graphic language to drive home the enormous import of the truth he was teaching. He, Jesus is the source of eternal life, just as bread signifies the source of mundane physical life.

Now the first disciples thought that Jesus was proposing holy cannibalism, then they were right to say that it was a hard teaching that nobody could accept. If this was indeed what Jesus was proposing then the crowds were also right to turn away from him. Even the Twelve didn’t understand what Jesus was truly teaching but they had come to realise that he was the only person on planet Earth who had ‘the words of eternal life’.

My plea is that we re-examine where we take the words of the Lord Jesus and bible authors superficially at surface level only. Pray and reflect deeply until the veil parts and we ‘see’ clearly. There are several things in our lives of Faith where this could apply. For instance:

• Do you regard the bible as the inerrant source of truth or do you understand that it is the inspired collection of writings that reveals Jesus, the actual source of truth?
• Is prayer a form of power or is it the means of communicating with the Holy Spirit who is the true source of spiritual power?
• Are Spiritual Gifts the abilities God gives believers to use or abuse at will, or are they gifts to people in need that we have the privilege of delivering in Jesus’ name?

And so on …

John 7:43 ‘Thus the people were divided because of Jesus’. NIV

Almost everyone, except genuine atheists, accepts that God exists, although not all will use a capital G in ‘God’. Their idea is often that the word describes some non-personal force or even the Universe itself. In any event, talking about God seldom offends anyone to the point of division. However, talk of Jesus as divine causes an entirely different reaction. Some might recognise him as a prophetic figure from the distant past or an example of how to live well. Others might respect him while some will be indifferent to him, but this all changes when he is presented as the eternal personal God. When we present him as this we are often accused of dogmatism, intolerance, extremism, and divisiveness. If not this, then the reaction is one of pitying condescension.

The Apostle Paul quoted Isaiah and referred to Jesus as ‘a stone that causes men to stumble and a rock that makes them fall.’ The idea is that we either build our eternal lives on Jesus as the cornerstone or we stumble over him and fall flat on our faces. Jesus’s birth divides history into before and after, and he has the same effect on individual lives.

When we speak of Jesus as God incarnate then we immediately offend Jewish, Islamic, Jehovah’s Witnesses and a raft of other religious people. Sadly, we also tend to offend a lot of people who describe themselves as Christians. The WOKE liberal majority like to castigate us as being insensitive to the beliefs of others. Jesus divides, so no wonder he said that he had not come to bring piece but a dividing sword.

These reactions are okay and to be expected. Our response is to act as Jesus did with grace and respect. We don’t need to be divisive even if others feel that need.

John 8:53b “Who do you think you are?” NIV

His critics accused Jesus of being demon-possessed because he claimed to be superior to Abraham and they ended with the indignant, “Who do you think you are?” Peter Sellers’ Indian character in the film The Party answered the same question with; “In India, we do not think who we are, we know who we are”.  Jesus, of course, knew exactly who he was. In John’s account of the washing of the disciples’ feet, he records that Jesus assumed the least important duties because he knew who he was, that he had come from heaven, and that all things were under his power. No, it was the Pharisees who did not know who they were.

I want to reflect on the question from a personal perspective. Like most of us, I sometimes lose my sense of purpose and direction. On more than one of these occasions, I have heard the Lord’s voice in my spirit: “Remember who you are.” However, I don’t want to consider my particular calling, or anything like that, but rather apply the question to all of us. Who do you think you are?

When introduced to someone new to you it doesn’t take long before one of you asks the other, “So what do you do?” The answer is usually to do with profession, position, or vocation … what we DO most of the time. Sometimes the person may respond with “I am a Christian” but this is rare. We ask people what they do, not who they are, and even if we phrased it differently the answers would be the same. However, what is more important in life, what we do or who we are?

When we hit the invisible ‘retirement’ metamorphosis many of us tend to conflate what we do with who we are (I should know). Suddenly we have no position, profession, or vocation and as a result, conclude that we must be pretty darn worthless. This also happens when we are unemployed, or incapacitated by an infirmity. Who am I if I am not doing what I think I should be doing?

This perspective makes a profound difference in how we deal with adversity, problems, frustrations, and so on. This is both logical and biblical, but the problem is that we tend to forget who we are. In this, most important matter, we have an inexplicable memory loss.

So, perhaps the challenge is not only “Who do you think you are?” but also, “Remember who you are.”

John 9:1-7 ‘As he passed by, he saw a man blind from birth. And his disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus answered, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him. We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming, when no one can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” Having said these things, he spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva. Then he anointed the man’s eyes with the mud and said to him, “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam” (which means Sent). So he went and washed and came back seeing’.  ESV

There are so many interesting aspects to this passage, but I need to focus on just three for now:

1. How could someone born blind be responsible for his own blindness?

The Jews of that time regarded infirmity as a result of sin. So, if parents sinned in some way then God would punish them by causing their child to be born blind or infirm in some other way. Consider what that says about the character and nature of God! Some Jewish scholars taught that people had some sort of pre-existent life before being born into this world. So, the idea here was that perhaps the blind man had himself sinned in his previous life.

Jesus refuted the disciple’s contentions and instead indicated that the man’s blind condition was an opportunity for the glory of God to be displayed. Jesus did not work his miracles randomly and John picked up on this by featuring seven of them in the first part of his book. This recreative miracle is the 6^th sign in the Gospel of John and serves as a dramatic demonstration of what Jesus then taught concerning spiritual blindness. It also gave compelling evidence that Jesus was the light of the world.

2. Why do almost all translations use the plural ‘we must work the works of him who sent me’ when the context indicates that Jesus was referring to himself and not necessarily his disciples?

I paused to reflect on this question because it is one of many examples of a weakness in the postmodern way of understanding scripture. Both the Hebrew of the Old Testament and the Greek of the New Testament lack vowels. With only consonants to work with it is often possible to translate words in the scriptures in several different ways. This could lead to some confusing and contradictory interpretations of the text. Because of this, the context of the words and phrases is of prime hermeneutical importance. In the passage in question, the context points firmly to the fact that Jesus was referring to himself and not his disciples, either then or now. “I must do my Father’s work because while I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” For one reason or another scholars have focused more and more on the individual words of scripture as the prime determinant of meaning, sometimes contrary to their context. However, context trumps linguistics which should serve to determine primary meaning only when the context does not. This is something worthy of your reflection.

3. Why did Jesus cake the man’s sightless eyes with mud?

Jesus could have healed the man with a word or a touch but instead he chose a strangely different way. He spat onto the red dust at his feet and made clay and smeared it over the man’s eyes. The healing would surely have been effected at that moment but the man could not see anything until he washed off the clay. Commentators have written about the significance of the spit and the name of the pool in which the man washed, but this is all peripheral. The question remains, why did Jesus heal using clay?

When he later revealed who he was to the man he healed, he called himself ‘The Son of Man’, and the man responded by worshipping him as he would the Lord God. The Apostle Paul later described Jesus as the last Adam (1 Corinthians 15:45-47) and he no doubt remembered that he had witnessed Steven’s powerful testimony to Jesus: ‘Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, looked up to heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. “Look,” he said, “I see heaven open and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.” (Acts 7:55-56). Wonderful, isn’t it!?

I must tell you that I am enjoying producing this Jewels from John series and I hope that you too are as blessed.