(Ver. This was necessary for the kingdom of God; not for some special place of glory, but for any and every part of God's kingdom. What is there in God more truly divine than grace and truth? Truth and grace were not sought nor found in man, but began to subsist here below by Jesus Christ. of but. The first four chapters of John precede in point of time the notices of His ministry in the other gospels. The law works no deliverance; it puts a man in chains, prison, darkness, and under condemnation; it renders him a patient, or a criminal incompetent to avail himself of the displays of God's goodness. Let them learn, then, that as Son of man (for which nature they despised Him, and denied His essential personal glory) He will judge; and this judgment will be no passing visitation, such as God has accomplished by angels or men in times past. convinced of their mistaken notions of him as a temporal prince: (Ver. This would make all manifest. But "as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must ( ) the Son of man be lifted up: that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life." For as the Father hath life in himself, so hath he given to the Son to have life in himself; and hath given him authority to execute judgment also, because he is the Son of man. Thus in one way or the other all must honour the Son. No man hath seen God at any time. Mark what, as such, He does declare Him. Thus we feed on Him and drink into Him, as man, unto life everlasting life in Him. So bright was His glory, so concerned was the Father in maintaining it, so immense the blessing if received, so tremendous the stake involved in its loss, that God vouchsafed the amplest and clearest witnesses. Nor would the rejected Christ, the Son of man; for if lifted up on the cross, instead of having the throne of David, the result would be not merely earthly blessing for His people according to prophecy, but eternal life for the believer, whoever. The Jan. 6 commission's death knell. Here (John 5:1-47) the first view given of Christ is His person in contrast with the law. "What is premillennialism?" Premillennialism is the view that Christ's second coming will occur prior to His millennial kingdom, and that . It was not intended for other beings it was God's free gift to man, to the believer, of course. In Mark 9:1, Jesus promised that some of the very ones in His presence would not see death until they saw the kingdom come with power. It was not that they were better than their neighbours. There He supposes His full rejection and death. But the chapter does not close without a further contrast. Such shall live. But He, being God, was manifesting and, on the contrary, maintaining the divine glory here below. Had it been meant, it was no wonder that Nicodemus did not know how these things could be. Glory would be displayed in its day. The truth is, the design of manifesting His glory governs all; place or people was a matter of no consequence. Nay, therefore it was they, reasoning, denied Him to be God. (Verses John 7:3-5) The Lord intimates the impossibility of anticipating the time of God; but then He does it as connected with His own personal glory. Sons they might have been in bare title; but these had the right of children. The allusion to the fig-tree confirms this. It is not merely or most of all a great prophet or witness: He is the Son; and the Father has given all things to be in His hand. It is not denunciation, but the most solemn sentence in the calmest manner. Jesus is the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world, but withal, as he had said, the eternal One, yet in view of His manifestation to Israel (and, therefore, John was come baptizing with water a reason here given, but not to the Pharisees in verses 25-27). John 1:26-27; John 1:26-27) For himself he was not the Christ, but for Jesus he says no more. 2. These are a test of evangelical authenticity. Thus, in His person, as well as in His work, they joined issue. it may be chiefly, that he prayed that God would open the minds Just as distinct and beyond comparison is His testimony who, coming from heaven and above all, testifies what He saw and heard, however it might be rejected. The hour was one for faith, or unbelief. All is in the character of the Son of man. In a certain sense, the principle of John 4:1-54 was made true in the woman of Samaria, and in others who received Christ then. He is a divine person; His manhood brought no attainder to His rights as God. How little they conceived of what was then said and done! (Verses John 5:17-18). He acts as such. He was God. He that believes on the Son has everlasting life; and he that disobeys the Son, in the sense of not being subject to His person, "shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him" Such is the issue of the Son of God present in this world an everlasting one for every man, flowing from the glory of His person, the character of His testimony, and the Father's counsels respecting Him. John 1:17; John 1:17) The law, thus given, was in itself no giver, but an exacter; Jesus, full of grace and truth, gave, instead of requiring or receiving; and He Himself has said, It is more blessed to give than to receive. (Ver. (VersesJohn 3:20-21; John 3:20-21). he would not. It passes over all question of dispensations, until it accomplishes, in all its extent, that purpose for which He thus died. , , . not the Jews only; for, as far as intelligence went, it was little better with the disciples till He rose from the dead. The thrust of Lindsey's book is two-fold: First, it espouses the premillennial theory of Christ's second coming. Later He was determined to be Son of God with power by resurrection of the dead. After this we have, suitably to this gospel, John's connection with the Lord Jesus. Meanwhile, for Christian worship, the hour was coming and in principle come, because He was there; and He who vindicated salvation as of the Jews, proves that it is now for Samaritans, or any who believed on account of His word. and the two disciples leave John for Jesus. Observe: not which was, but "which is." Here He is not portrayed as the Son of man who must be lifted up, but as the Son of God who was given. As being the omniscient God, who knew their hearts, and the secret thoughts and purposes of them; or, as man, understood by their words and gestures: that they would come and take him by force, and make him a king; that they had "determined", as the Arabic version renders it; or "had it in . This brings all to a point; for the woman says, "I know that Messiah cometh, which is called Christ: when he is come, he will tell us all things." (Verses John 1:41-44), On the morrow Jesus begins, directly and indirectly, to call others to follow Himself. However, we know that Jesus sat down at the right hand of the Father shortly after His resurrection and ascension (Hebrews 8:1; Revelation 4:2). He is ever God; He is the Son; He quickens and raises from the dead. So rich and transparently divine was the grace: not some souls, more meritorious than the rest, rewarded according to a graduated scale of honour, but "of his fulness have all we received." And Jesus answers, "I that speak unto thee am he." Persic versions leave out the word "again"; and the latter, It seemed natural: He had fed the poor with bread, and why should not He take His place on the throne? As a present fact, the Lord justifies the judicial act before their eyes by His relationship with God as His Father, and gives the Jews a sign in the temple of His body, as the witness of His resurrection power. Still the eternal day alone will show out the full virtue of that which belongs to Jesus as the Lamb of God, who takes away the world's sin. Jesus Walks on the Sea. In the Word was life, and the life was the light of men. John 6:15 Context. 15 When Jesus therefore perceived that they would come and take him by force, to make him a king, he departed again into a mountain himself alone. The issue of all is, that the will of man is the real cause and spring of enmity. (VersesJohn 3:7-8; John 3:7-8), It is hardly necessary to furnish detailed disproof of the crude, ill-considered notion (originated by the fathers), that baptism is in question. He wanted nothing; He came to give yea, the very best, so to speak, that God has. Man is morally judged. It was impossible that there should not be righteous dealing with human evil against God, in its sources and its streams. And herein is that true saying, One soweth, and another reapeth. Christ was the true sanctuary, not that on which man had laboured so long in Jerusalem. Nothing less than everlasting life in Christ can deliver: otherwise there remains judgment. It was not so. For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. For were it not God Himself in the person of Jesus, it had been no glory to God, but a wrong and a rival. Thus it is a kind of transitional fact for a most important part of our gospel, though still introductory. He will have all honour the Son, even as Himself. The premillennial concept is the result of literalizing a few symbolic verses in the book of Revelation, coupled with a considerable disregard for scores of Bible passages of clearest import. Why this is so hard for Traditionalists to comprehend is baffling; all they need to do is to follow TRADITION. [whose?] "For God sent not his Son into the world to judge the world; but that the world through him might be saved." Premillennialism turns Jesus into a liar. The Lord, it is true, could and did go farther than the prophets: even if He taught on the same theme, He could speak with conscious divine dignity and knowledge (not merely what was assigned to an instrument or messenger). Such was Jesus in person, contrasted with all who belong to the earth. it was no lack of testimony; their will was for present honour, and hostile to the glory of the only God. that we may give an answer to them that sent us. They spoke of the world; the world might hear them. It is our evangelist's way of indicating His Galilean sojourn; and this miracle is the particular subject that John was led by the Holy Ghost to take up. As a weapon of conviction, most justly had it in the mind of the Lord Jesus the weightiest place, little as man thinks now-a-days of it. "For God," He says, "so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life." Nor will the full force of this expression be witnessed till the glorious result of His blood shedding sweep away the last trace of sin in the new heavens and the new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness. 14 Then those men, when they had seen the miracle that Jesus did, said, This is of a truth . His aspect as thus tabernacling among the disciples was "full of grace and truth." To the Pharisees, indeed, his words as to the Lord are curt: nor does he tell them of the divine ground of His glory, as he had before and does after. Alas! Not only man under law has no health, but he has no strength to avail himself of the blessing that God holds out. The contrasts are as strong, at least, as the resemblance with the healing of the centurion's servant in Matthew 13:1-58 and Luke 7:1-50, which some ancients and moderns have confounded with this, as they did Mary's anointing of Jesus with the sinful woman's in Luke 7:1-50. In the five porches, then, of this pool lay a great multitude of sick, blind, lame, withered, waiting for the moving of the water. The Jews wanted to force Christ to be a king like Saul, David or Solomon. But when the Lord speaks of His cross, and not God's judicial requirements only, but the gift of Himself in His true personal glory as the occasion for the grace of God to display itself to the utmost, then, and not till then, do we hear of eternal life, and this connected with both these points of view. In these two points of view, more particularly, John gives testimony to Christ; He is the lamb as the taker away of the world's sin; the same is He who baptizeth with the Holy Ghost. No mere man, nor angel, not the highest, the archangel, but the Son. It was meet that so it should be; for, as a question of right, none could claim; and grace surpasses all expectation or thought of man, most of all of men accustomed to a round of religious ceremonial. 13 Therefore they gathered them together, and filled twelve baskets with the fragments of the five barley loaves, which remained over and above unto them that had eaten. Here, in suited circumstances to render the thought and way of God unmistakable, pure and boundless grace takes its own sovereign course, suitable to the love and personal glory of Christ. It is no question here of every man, but of such as believe. How, indeed, could it be stayed within narrow limits? Then said they unto him, Who art thou? And he saith, I am not. At once their malice drops the beneficent power of God in the case, provoked at the fancied wrong done to the seventh day. California - Do Not Sell My Personal Information. Hence the Son, being in this ineffable nearness of love, has declared not God only, but the Father. John 6:15. (Ed. As being the omniscient God, who knew their hearts, and the They had no common thoughts, feelings, or ways with the Father and the Son. It was an extraordinary birth; of God, not man in any sort, or measure, but a new and divine nature (2 Peter 1:1-21) imparted to the believer wholly of grace. John 6:15King James Version. It was worldliness in its worst shape, even to the point of turning the glory of Christ to a present account. The great fact of the incarnation is brought before us "The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father"). even took not his disciples with him, who were in the same way of All this, however, was abstract, whether as to the nature of the Word or as to the place of the Christian. Without it there is no divine understanding of Christ, or of His word, or of Scripture. He said, I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, Make straight the way of the Lord, as said the prophet Esaias. None the less did the result of His death proclaim His Deity. We have now the Word made flesh, called Jesus Christ this person, this complex person, that was manifest in the world; and it is He that brought it all in. A death knell is the ringing of a church bell immediately after a death to announce it. 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