Granted He was the Son of man; but as such, He had all judgment given Him, and would judge. It was worldliness in its worst shape, even to the point of turning the glory of Christ to a present account. Proud member The same God who did not leave Himself without witness among the heathen, doing good, and giving from heaven rain and fruitful seasons, did not fail, in the low estate of the Jews, to work by providential power at intervals; and, by the troubled waters of Bethesda, invited the sick, and healed the first who stepped in of whatever disease he had. Visit our library of inductive Bible studies for more in depth inductive studies on this and other books of the Bible you can use in your small group. John 4:16-19 16 He told her, Go, call your husband and come back. 17 I have no husband, she replied. Matthew, Mark, and Luke start, as far as regards the public labours of the Lord, with John cast into prison. How could either light or love rest in a scene of sin, darkness, and misery? But there was this difference from the former occasion, that, at the marriage in Cana (John 2:1-25), the change of the water into wine was clearly millennial in its typical aspect. Life resurrection will display how little they had to be ashamed of, who believed the record given of His Son; the resurrection of judgment will make but too plain, to those who despised the Lord, both His honour and their sin and shame. In John He is One who could be described as Son of man who is in heaven; but He belonged to heaven, because He was divine. The truth is, the design of manifesting His glory governs all; place or people was a matter of no consequence. All disciplinary action, every probationary process, disappears. 10 million Ukrainians without power because of Russia. He who owns the reality of Christ's incarnation, receives most thankfully and adoringly from God the truth of redemption; he, on the contrary, who stumbles at redemption, has not really taken in the incarnation according to God's mind. If, on the contrary, a soul has been taught of God the glory of the person of Him who was made flesh, he receives in all simplicity, and rejoices in, the glorious truth, that He who was made flesh was not made flesh only to this end, but rather as a step toward another and deeper work the glorifying God, and becoming our food, in death. (Verses John 5:17-18). Alas! This only secures His honour in those that believe God's testimony to Him, the Son of God; and to these He gives life, everlasting life now, and exemption from judgment, in this acting in communion with the Father. Hence, after having first unmistakably laid down the necessity of the cross, He next shows the grace that was manifested in the gift of Jesus. Jesus declared of God the Father, God is Spirit, (John 4:24) meaning that God the Father has no tangible body which may be seen. Nevertheless, Christ did come to His own things, His proper, peculiar possession; for there were special relationships. But if the Spirit speaks of the Son of God, the law dwindles at once into the smallest possible proportions: everything yields to the honour the Father puts oil the Son. WebThe Witness of John. Alas! Such shall live. "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." For the astonishing thought is, not merely that Jesus receives the Holy Ghost without measure, but that God gives the Spirit also, and not by measure, through Him to others. As to Himself, He does not go at that time to the feast of tabernacles; but later on He goes up "not openly, but as it were in secret" (verseJohn 7:10; John 7:10), and taught. 18 The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. 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. 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. A. Hence the Lord, while fully owning the labours of all preceding labourers, has before His eyes the whole boundless expanse of grace, the mighty harvest which His apostles were to reap in due time. Though He could not, would not deny Himself (and He was the Son, and Word, and God), yet had He taken the place of a man, of a servant. Commentary, explanation and study verse by verse. And he answered, No. Details are not called for now, but just the outline of the truth. Observe, it is not (as is often very erroneously said or sung) a question of sins, but of the "sin" of the world. For nothing can be more observable than the way in which He becomes the centre round whom those that belong to God are gathered. 29) on which, as it were, Jesus speaks and acts in His grace as here shown on the earth. Not Jacob was there, but the Son of God in nothing but grace; and thus to the Samaritan woman, not to the teachers of Israel, are made those wonderful communications which unfold to us with incomparable depth and beauty the real source, power, and character of that worship which supersedes, not merely schismatic and rebellious Samaria, but Judaism at its best. He saw him under the fig tree. Art thou that prophet? And no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven." Beholding Him as He walked, he says, Behold the Lamb of God! There was purpose in it. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. (Ver. 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. Had it been meant, it was no wonder that Nicodemus did not know how these things could be. But as many as received him, to them gave he power [rather, authority, right, or title] to become children of God." Thus former things pass away; the old man is judged, dead, and clean gone. Flesh and world are judged morally. He is a divine person; His manhood brought no attainder to His rights as God. "Come, see a man that told me all things that ever I did: is not this the Christ?" , , . 1 John 4:19, NASB: We love, because He first loved us. All is fitly closed by the declaration, that "the Father loveth the Son, and hath given all things into his hand." The Word, in order to accomplish these infinite things, "was made. And as life is in the person of the Son, so God in sending Him meant not that the smallest uncertainty should exist for aught so momentous. Web1. This statement (verse John 1:15) is a parenthesis, though confirmatory of verse John 1:14, and connects John's testimony with this new section of Christ's manifestation in flesh; as we saw John introduced in the earlier verses, which treated abstractly of Christ's nature as the Word. It is the final setting aside of Judaism then, whose characteristic hope was the display of power and rest in the world. But the chapter does not close without a further contrast. The Word, God (and only begotten Son in the Father's bosom), He was eternally Son of God, too, as born into the world. He is viewed as retaining the same perfect intimacy with the Father, entirely unimpaired by local or any other circumstances He had entered. But let them beware how they perverted it. Verily, verily, I say unto you, The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God: and they that hear shall live. Christ did not wait till the time was fully come for the old things to pass away, and all to be made new. Of course, the experience will still be intense. The person of the Son was there the object of divine and overflowing joy even then, although, of course, in the full sense of the word, the Holy Ghost might not be given to be the power of it for some time later; but still the object of worship was there revealing the Father; butJohn 7:1-53; John 7:1-53 supposes Him to be gone up to heaven, before He from heaven communicates the Holy Ghost, who should be (not here, as Israel had a rock with water to drink of in the wilderness outside themselves, nor even as a fountain springing up within the believer, but) as rivers flowing out. John 4:16. The Lord Jesus presents Himself as putting an end to all this now for the Christian, though, of course, every word God has promised, as well as threatened, remains to be accomplished in Israel by-and-by; for Scripture cannot be broken; and what the mouth of the Lord has said awaits its fulfilment in its due sphere and season. "No man hath seen God at any time: the only-begotten Son," etc. (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. They crown Jesus with thorns and dress him in a purple robe. God is love. Even now faith knows, that instead of sin being the great object before God, ever since the cross He has had before His eyes that sacrifice which put away sin. But the Lord reproaches him, the master of Israel, with not knowing these things: that is, as a teacher, with Israel for his scholar, he ought to have known them objectively, at least, if not consciously. God the Father forms a new family in, by, and for Christ. (Verses John 5:1-7), On the other hand, the Lord speaks but the word: "Rise, take up thy couch and walk." Salem Media Group. For the Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the Son: that all men should honour the Son, even as they honour the Father. 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. not the Jews only; for, as far as intelligence went, it was little better with the disciples till He rose from the dead. And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. What is there in God more truly divine than grace and truth? (Ver. There is difference of manner for the world and His own ignorance and rejection. Bear in mind that one of the points of instruction in this first part of our gospel is the action of the Son of God before His regular Galilean ministry. (VersesJohn 3:20-21; John 3:20-21). 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. Now, it is the Holy Ghost in the power that gives rivers of living water flowing out, and this bound up with, and consequent on, His being man in glory. How can such have relationship with God? John 1:20-25) John does not even speak of Him as one who, on His rejection as Messiah, would step into a larger glory. It is thus strikingly an anticipation of the result in glory. As this chapter sets forth the Lord Jesus with singular fulness of glory, on the side both of His Godhead and of His manhood, so it closes with the most varied and remarkable testimonies God has given to us, that there may be no excuse. None but a divine being could thus deal with the world. "John bare witness of him, and cried, saying, This is he of whom I spake: He that cometh after me is preferred before me, for he was before me." Resurrection will be the proof; the two-fold rising of the dead, not one, but two resurrections. 1 John 4:18. And while He does not hide the privilege of the Jews, He nevertheless proclaims that "the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship him. Observe, that blessed as the light is, being God's moral nature, truth is more than this, and is introduced by grace. Heavenly things, therefore, could not but be natural to Him, if one may so say. WebJohn the Apostle is traditionally held to be the author of the Gospel of John, and many Christian denominations believe that he authored several other books of the New Testament, depending on whether he is distinguished from, or identified with, John the Evangelist, John the Elder, and John of Patmos. Various provisions were made for him in England (117476), including the succession to the 4 In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. (1-4) The reason for Jesus warning: certain persecution. The Lord meets him at once with the strongest assertion of the absolute necessity that a man should be born anew in order to see the kingdom of God. (SeePsalms 2:1-12; Psalms 2:1-12) But the Lord tells him of greater things he, should see, and says to him, Verily, verily, I say unto you, henceforth (not "hereafter," but henceforth) ye shall see the heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of man. The Jews, then, who could not help, and pitied not their fellow in his long infirmity and disappointment, are scandalized to see him, safe and sound, carrying his couch on that day. Verse John 1:29 opens John's testimony to his disciples. 42 And he brought him to Jesus. It is now eternal reality, and the name of Jesus Christ is that which puts all things to a final test. John gives us this point of contact with them, though in an incident peculiar to himself. How, indeed, could it be stayed within narrow limits? Later He was determined to be Son of God with power by resurrection of the dead. (Verses John 1:44-51). All this, however, was abstract, whether as to the nature of the Word or as to the place of the Christian. John 3:17; John 3:17) This decides all before the execution of judgment, Every man's lot is made manifest by his attitude toward God's testimony concerning His Son. 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. "Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God." WebJohn 4:16-19 16 He told her, Go, call your husband and come back. 17 I have no husband, she replied. "Master, eat," said they. Although the authorship of the Johannine works has traditionally been attributed to John the Apostle, only a minority of But they learn that it was his divine Physician who had not only healed, but so directed him. John 1:29; John 1:29John 1:34; John 1:34) of John Baptist's testimony here named; the first day (ver. behold, I say unto you, Lift up your eyes, and look on the fields; for they are white already to harvest. God never left Himself without witness; He did not even among the Gentiles, surely yet less in Israel. John 1:26-27; John 1:26-27) For himself he was not the Christ, but for Jesus he says no more. Nicodemus, not understanding in the least such a want for himself, expresses his wonder, and hears our Lord increasing in the strength of the requirement. (Verses John 7:16-18) , The Jews kept not the law) and wished to kill Him who healed man in divine love. Not close without a further contrast lives in love lives in God more truly divine than grace and truth whose! 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