Apostle John

The Totality of God’s Work At Calvary (Grace)

Published by Papa Giorgio

As you get older, the idea that the Old and New Testament are just about Jesus, comes into focus more-and-more. This explanation [below/right] of the scene in the Garden of Gethsemane, in focus, is another picture of the Salvation given us… let me repeat that… GIVEN/GIFTED TO US by our Great God’s work at Calvary

  • Then the other men [the company of soldiers, the commander, and the Jewish temple police] surged forward, took hold of Jesus, and arrested him. At that moment Simon Peter drew his sword and struck the high priest’s slave, Malchus’, right ear off. But Jesus responded, “No more of this!” Jesus said to Peter, “Sheathe your sword! […]”, the Jesus touched Malchus’ wound and healed him.

[Adapted telling from Luke 22:49-51; John 18:9-15; Matthew 26:49-55 via the International Standard Version (ISV) and the Holman Christian Standard Bible (HCSB)]

A neighbor noted this when watching that video of the “flyover country” Christian’s insight:

So good. Romans 8:1. There is now no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus. It’s the sweet exchange. As human beings, it’s normal to want to come and bring something, show some effort. Earn our salvation. But we can’t.

THIS IS WORTHY OF A FEW VERSES FROM ROMANS 8:1-5 (ISV):

  • Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in union with the Messiah Jesus. For the Spirit’s law of life in the Messiah Jesus has set me free from the Law of sin and death. For what the Law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the flesh, God did. By sending his own Son in the form of humanity, he condemned sin by being incarnate, so that the righteous requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us, who do not live according to human nature but according to the Spirit.

I have an insight into a verse many have not seen a connection in. The Apostle Paul visited the Church in Jerusalem ~ keep in mind that Paul was God’s replacement to Judas, not Matthias (who was chosen by lots). In visiting with some of the other Apostles in Jerusalem, he would have surely heard stories about Jesus’ life.

This event in John 13:1-20 would have been one:

JOHN 13:1-2; 4-8

Now before the Passover Festival, Jesus realized that his hour had come to leave this world and return to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.  [….] Because Jesus knew that the Father had given everything into his control, that he had come from God, and that he was returning to God, therefore he got up from the table, removed his outer robe, and took a towel and fastened it around his waist. Then he poured some water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to dry them with the towel that was tied around his waist.

Then he came to Simon Peter, who asked him, “Lord, are you going to wash my feet?”

Jesus answered him, “You do not realize now what I am doing, but later on you will understand.”

Peter told him, “You must never wash my feet!”

Jesus answered him, “Unless I wash you, you cannot be involved with me.”

Leon Morris notes of this section in one of the best commentaries on John that this was a story about the cross:

Many take the story as no more than a lesson in humility, quite overlooking the fact that, in that case, Jesus’ dialogue with Peter completely obscures its significance! But those words, spoken in the shadow of the cross, have to do with cleansing, that cleansing without which no one belongs to Christ, that cleansing which is given by the cross alone. As Hunter says, “The deeper meaning then is that there is no place in his fellowship for those who have not been cleansed by his atoning death. The episode dramatically symbolizes the truth enunciated in I John 1:7, ‘We are being cleansed from every sin by the blood of Jesus’.”4

4 Hunter A. M. Hunter, The Gospel according to John, The Cambridge Bible Commentary (Cambridge, 1965) Hunter adds, “Many people today would like to be Christians but see no need of the cross. They are ready to admire Jesus’ life and to praise the sublimity of his moral teaching, but they cannot bring themselves to believe that Christ died for their sins, and that without that death they would be lost in sin. This, as Brunner has said, is one of the prime ‘scandals’ of Christianity for modern man—and the very heart of the apostolic Gospel.”

Leon Morris, The Gospel according to John, The New International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1995), 544–545.

Now, this is me, but I think that that story was the Holy Spirit inspired precursor to this well known verse in Christendom.

In other words, Paul refashioned this Last Supper story of Jesus washing feet to Philippians 2:6–11:

He loved them to the end […] Jesus rising from his seat [throne], removed his outer robe [Godhood], took a towel and fastened it around his waist [took on humanity], he poured some water into a basin and began to wash the disciples [ work on the cross for our punishment]

… hence Paul’s rewording of the core of this story:

PHILIPPIANS 2:6–11

6 who, existing in the form of God,

 did not consider equality with God

as something to be exploited.

 7 Instead he emptied himself

 by assuming the form of a servant,

 taking on the likeness of humanity.

And when he had come as a man,

8 he humbled himself by becoming obedient

to the point of death—

even to death on a cross.

 9 For this reason God highly exalted him

and gave him the name

 that is above every name,

10 so that at the name of Jesus

every knee will bow—

in heaven and on earth

and under the earth—

11 and every tongue will confess

that Jesus Christ is Lord,

to the glory of God the Father.

Jesus’s “servant work” was to cleanse us completely! Even when we live our Christian life at times trampling on His Imago Dei in each of us causing his wrathful jealousy to protect this Image by judgement…

  • The remarkable plotline of God’s story is that the depth of the brokenness of the world’s inhabitants is answered by the uniqueness of Jesus. God is jealous of His own image in man, an image created to reflect the rays of His moral majesty. In fact, our creational identity as the image of God says a great deal about who we are, and our purpose, and meaning. (GOSPEL for LIFE)

…all He sees is Christ. It is the old man who is judged righteously in the trampling of this Holy Image in his or her rebellion. And they will know one day that God’s Grace was involved in every breath they took! Every tongue will confess…

And everyone will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord
  and bring glory to God the Father

Amen?

Man, God is Good.

A. W. Tozer said of Ravenhill: “To such men as this, the church owes a debt too heavy to pay. The curious thing is that she seldom tries to pay him while he lives. Rather, the next generation builds his sepulchre and writes his biography — as if instinctively and awkwardly to discharge an obligation the previous generation to a large extent ignored.”

Soak in this understanding of Law vs. Gospel via THE WHITE HORSE INN’s discussion of God’s grace in Genesis chapters 15 thru 18 and the promises of redemptive history. Here is the description of this episode from White Horse Inn:

In his Genesis commentary, Walter Brueggemann notes that in chapters 16 to 18, Abraham and Sarah “are not offered as models of faith but as models of disbelief.” In this part of the narrative, he says, “the call is not embraced, but is rejected as non-sensical.” This helps to explain why the couple sought to fulfill God’s promise with Hagar’s assistance. But as Paul explains in Galatians chapter 4, this entire narrative is a tale of two covenants: one of grace, and another of works. Shane Rosenthal talks with Mike Brown about these issues and more as we continue our series on the Gospel in Genesis.

Show Quote:

There are only two kinds of religions in the world – one that seeks righteousness by keeping the law and one that seeks righteousness through faith in Christ. With the exception of Christianity, all of the religions in the world with their pursuits of enlightenment, salvation or self-realization fall into the first category, the category of trusting in self, in one’s own obedience. It’s a religion of human ascent that tries to earn God’s blessing through personal effort rather that receiving God’s blessing by grace through faith alone.

Mike Brown

 

“DOOMSDAY” Variant (Keeping People Bound In Fear)

Published by Papa Giorgio

A friend posted an article that got my eschatological mind’s gears grinding again. Here is the article graphic of Newsweek’s cover:

My Comments, partly tongue-n-cheek, but not…. if that makes sense.

Doomsday?

CHECK.

Require proof of ID to buy and sell…..?

…..CHECK.

Sounds like a bit of stealth eschatology out in the world.  I mean, when the Apostle John penned this, there was no real way to (a) catalog anyone en masse  to “number” them. Nor (b) were there ways to curtail shopping for necessities for a large population.

Well, at least there isn’t technology for the world to view the Two Witnesses within days available to us (that an author in 90A.D. warned us about):

REVELATION 11:9-11 (NASB)

Those from the peoples, tribes, languages, and nations will look at their dead bodies for three and a half days, and [h]will not allow their dead bodies to be laid in a tomb. And those who live on the earth will rejoice over them and celebrate; and they will send gifts to one another, because these two prophets tormented those who live on the earth. And after the three and a half days, the breath of life from God came into them, and they stood on their feet; and great fear fell upon those who were watching them.

I mean, that would take some small device that most people would own in the world, small enough for a pocket, or something most homes have, and shareable with those who don’t have one.

[Nervous] Lol.

It isn’t like the poorest of people living on our streets have them?

…Research shows that many homeless people have cell phones. In Karin M. Eyrich-Garg’s study of homeless people in Philadelphia, 44% of the adult participants already had their own cell phones. (Amongst those participants, 80% owned, 18% borrowed long-term, and 2% rented.)

In another study, 70.7% of homeless patients visiting emergency departments had cell phones, compared to 85.9% of people who were stably housed.  

Similarly, in Melody Kim, Melissa Cameron and Alex Fung’s study in San Diego, 8 out of 11 participants had cell phones and the other 2 were seeking replacements…

(HOMELESS HUB)

Oh… wait.

Well.

It isn’t like the cave dwelling peoples of places like Afghanistan have these devices!

Mmm… maybe that isn’t the best example either.

Oh well. It isn’t like we have a large set of moral busy bodies concerning themselves with what others do.

BIBLICAL COMMENTARRIES

  • The ENTIRE WORLD WILL WATCH (undoubtedly on the latest form of visual media) and glorify the Antichrist as the bodies of the dead prophets who have been killed begin to decay. — John F. MacArthur Jr., The MacArthur Study Bible: New American Standard Bible. (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 2006), Re 11:9.
  • The death of the two prophets (v. 7) will set off a GLOBAL CELEBRATION among unbelievers who have hated their message of truth. — Earl D. Radmacher, Ronald Barclay Allen, and H. Wayne House, The Nelson Study Bible: New King James Version (Nashville: T. Nelson Publishers, 1997), Re 11:9–10.
  • TV news services can broadcast the awe-inspiring drama. — James E. Rosscup, An Exposition on Prayer in the Bible: Igniting the Fuel to Flame Our Communication with God (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2008), 2772.

Remembering the reaction of Pharaoh to the plagues of Moses, one can easily imagine the frustration of the general public at finding their water turned to blood, conditions of worldwide drought, and the visitation of various other plagues. Doubtless, all of this is blamed, and with some accuracy, on the two witnesses since it is not readily discerned as a part of the overall judgment of God. However, equally probable is the possibility that the “torment” people experience is also due to the fact that these are “witnesses.” In other words, probably they did a great deal more than simply announce the inevitability of certain plagues on the earth. They were preachers of morality, witnesses of God and Christ, and harbingers of the coming of even more severe judgments of God in the days to follow. Again, recalling Exodus, the audacity of Moses to stand before Pharaoh and command him to let God’s people go and sacrifice to him in the wilderness was doubtless just as irritating as the plagues to Pharaoh. So it would be if these two witnesses opposed the worldviews, system of morality, and violation of the laws and purposes of God. This torment was simply too great and thus engendered the wrath of the beast.

Another interesting observation concerns the information that “men from every people, tribe, language and nation will gaze on their bodies.” The fulfillment of such an anticipated event would be incredible and even unthinkable until modern times. Certainly there is no reason for anyone to doubt the prophet even in AD 95 since after all he is the prophet of a miracle-working God. BUT THAT WHICH WAS UNTHINKABLE IN AD 95 WITHOUT A MIRACLE OF GOD IS NO LONGER EVEN IMPROBABLE IN THE ERA OF SATELLITE COMMUNICATION. Hence, events that happen in faraway places are now almost instantly available around the globe to observers with the proper equipment. Too often interpreters of Revelation and of all apocalyptic/prophetic literature read modernity back into the text in a way totally unanticipated by the author and inevitably incorrectly. Here to read modernity into the text would certainly be anachronistic, but at the same time the text may render an understanding even more comprehensible to the contemporary era than it was to the recipients of John’s Apocalypse.

— Paige Patterson, Revelation, ed. E. Ray Clendenen, vol. 39, The New American Commentary (Nashville, TN: B&H, 2012), 249.

The martyrdom of the witnesses (vv. 7–10). This comes only when they have finished their testimony. God’s obedient servants are immortal until their work is done. “The beast” (Antichrist) is now in power and wants to take over the temple; but he cannot succeed until the two witnesses are out of the way. God will permit him to slay them, for no one will be able to make war against “the beast” and win (Rev. 13:4).

The witnesses will not even be permitted decent burial (see Ps. 79:1–3). But even this indecency will be used by God to bear witness to mankind. NO DOUBT THE TV CAMERAS IN JERUSALEM WILL TRANSMIT THE SCENE TO PEOPLE AROUND THE WORLD, AND THE NEWS ANALYSTS WILL DISCUSS ITS SIGNIFICANCE. The earth-dwellers will rejoice at their enemies’ removal and will celebrate a “satanic Christmas” by sending gifts to one another. It thus would appear that the power of the two witnesses will not be limited to Jerusalem, but that they will be able to cause things to happen in other parts of the world.

— Warren W. Wiersbe, The Bible Exposition Commentary, vol. 2 (Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1996), 599.

  • Although THE EARTH rejoices that the testimony of the church is in the end apparently snuffed out, the temporary triumph of evil (“three and a half days”) will turn to heavenly vindication as the two witnesses (the people of God) are raised from the dead. — Robert B. Sloan, “The Revelation,” in Holman Concise Bible Commentary, ed. David S. Dockery (Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1998), 674.

BONUS COMMENTARY I LIKE

11:9–10 People Rejoice over the Witnesses’ Bodies

The Sight of the Righteous Vexes the Unrighteous. Tyconius: Since they do not allow their bodies to be gathered in a suitable place, they prevent a day for their memory to be indicated by a sacred celebration of the living.… It is no wonder that the earthly minded rejoice over the deaths of the righteous. For in addition to the plagues that beset the human race on account of the testaments of God, even the very sight of the righteous oppresses the unrighteous, as it is written, “Even the sight of him is a burden to us.” Not only does it oppress, it also causes him to melt away, and so the psalm says, “The sinner will see and be angry; he will gnash his teeth and melt away.”61 Commentary on the Apocalypse 11:9–10.

The Wicked Delight in the Death of God’s Witnesses. Oecumenius: And seeing the destruction of the witnesses, those from every nation who have been deceived by the antichrist will rejoice over them, as though their own king had conquered. That they exchange gifts is another indication of their glee and delight. It says, “Because the two prophets had been a torment to those living on the earth.” [The prophets] will not torment them with any physical torment, but spiritually by mocking and reproving them for their sins and by making utterly clear their deceit. Commentary on the Apocalypse 11:7–10.

The Impious Strive to Remove the Church from the World. Primasius: The intentions are expressed by which the impious strive to remove the church of Christ from the world, as the psalmist says, “Let the name of Israel be remembered no more!” And although they are unable to fulfill their desire, yet they make their evil intention known. Commentary on the Apocalypse 11:9.

Let Us Pray That God Reprove Us. Andrew of Caesarea: Those Jews and Gentiles, who once were overpowered by the false wonders of the antichrist and who had indelibly engrafted that abominable name upon their hearts, prohibited the holy bodies from being buried, and they rejoiced because they were free from the torments that [the prophets] gave for their correction. For they did not acknowledge that “the Lord reproves him whom he loves,” and that “he scourges every son whom he receives” and “by muzzle and bridle he will pull and tug at those who are not near to him.” And God works in this way so that they might turn from necessity into the straight way from which they turned aside when they were deceived. We must make petition of the Lord and pray, “It is good for me that I was afflicted, that I might learn your statutes,”68 and “Turn us, O God of our salvation, that you do not enter into judgment with your servant.” “When we are judged by you, our beneficent master, we are chastened so that we may not be condemned along with the world”70 but may rather through a few torments escape an eternal punishment. Commentary on the Apocalypse, 11:9–10.

William C. Weinrich, ed., Revelation, Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2005), 164–165.

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