One In Jesus

Righteous judgment

Jesus, when challenged for healing on the Sabbath, responded,

(John 7:24 NAS)  “Do not judge according to appearance, but judge with righteous judgment.”

Really? “Appearances? It appeared very much that he healed on the Sabbath! But that’s a superficial judgment. It ignores the real dynamic. Continue reading →

Love for Samaritans and women

Jesus passed through Samaria in chapter 4 with the evident purpose of bringing the gospel to the Samaritans.

This is crazy. After all —

* Samaritans were known to kill Jews who passed through their territory, and yet Jesus chose to sit alone by a well, sending his disciples into town.

* Jesus chose to spread the gospel via the testimony of a woman, in a culture that considered women worthless as witnesses. Continue reading →

So who is this Jesus? Well, let’s pick out a few characteristics we find in John.

(It would be fun to work through the Synoptics as well, as there is so much more and different material in them, but this is about John’s Gospel.)

Calling the disciples

First, Jesus is pretty self-confident. It’s not that he never hesitates, but he normally proceeds with incredible certainty.

(John 1:43 NET) ⁴³ On the next day Jesus wanted to set out for Galilee. He found Philip and said to him, “Follow me.”

Really? That simple? Just a “Follow me” and Philip jumps up, leaves his family, and follows Jesus all over Judea, Samaria, and Galilee? Yes. Continue reading →

So what does that tell us? It’s subtle, but it’s an important starting point. Jesus was a Jew. The gospel went to the Jews first. Therefore, Jesus was sent to the Jews.

Jesus was circumcised, looked like Jew, and wore Jewish clothing. He was not pretty. He was not even ruggedly handsome. He was, at best, ordinary looking — ordinary enough to disappear into a crowd and to be so difficult to pick out from among the thousands of pilgrims in Judea that Judas had to be paid to identify him.

He washed himself before going to the Temple. He offered the required sacrifices (not to obtain forgiveness, of course, but to obey or out of gratitude — there were lots of reasons to offer a sacrifice). He attended the Jewish feasts, including those feasts, such as Hanukkah, invented by man without biblical authority of any kind. Continue reading →

Well, we started this — months ago — with this question: Who is this “Son of Man”? The question is borrowed from —

(John 12:34 NIV) The crowd spoke up, “We have heard from the Law that the Messiah will remain forever, so how can you say, ‘The Son of Man must be lifted up’? Who is this ‘Son of Man’?”

We discussed many posts ago the meaning of the phrase “Son of Man” to Jesus and his audience. It was an ambiguous phrase that could refer either to a human (in the Hebrew, it is literally “son of adam”) or to the Messiah (Dan 7:13). However, the phrase did not normally mean “Messiah” to a First Century Jew, allowing Jesus to be intentionally ambiguous when it suited him. Continue reading →

Another theme that subtly threads through the Gospel is the way Jesus treats women. Jesus went out of his way to elevate women.

For example, in John 4, Jesus’ goal was to bring the gospel to the Samaritans. This was a key step in God’s plans for the redemption of the world because the Samaritans were descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Although few in number and utterly without military or political power, they were children of Abraham, and God wasn’t about to forget them.

So what was Jesus’ plan? The obvious procedure would have been to go into Sychar with his disciples, buy food, drink some water, and do a miracle or speak a prophecy. In fact, in the culture of the day, Jesus would have been wise to speak first with the village elders, who controlled access to the city and who were likely the most respected, most honored men in the city. Continue reading →