The Life that Changes Lives
Commentary
It was a dark and stormy night. Lightning flashed and thunder crashed. Suddenly, Kimberly, our middle daughter, was standing next to our bed, sobbing in fear. My wife held and comforted her for a few minutes, and then I led her back to the room she shared with her older sister Kristyn. I tucked her tightly into the sandwich of her sheets and blankets, snugging things up for extra safety.
But when the big boomers rolled again through the furious skies, Kimberly cried in redoubled terror. I soothed her as best I could, telling her that God was always there in the room, even when Mom and I were across the hall in our bedroom. That didn’t seem to quiet Kimberly, and Kristyn, in her nearby bed, knew why. Sitting up, she declared, matter-of-factly, “But Dad, Kimberly wants somebody with skin on!”
Each of today’s lectionary passages shares that desire. When Roman Centurion Cornelius prays to the unseen God of the Jews, Peter is dispatched to be God with skin on; and when faith invades Cornelius’ house, the Spirit whistles through until it is embodied in all present. Later, when John writes against the growing Gnostic heresy tearing at the fabric of young congregations in what is now southwestern Turkey, he declares the proof of true faith as the testimony that Jesus is the love of God with skin on. All of this is but a reflection of Jesus’ own final instructions to his disciples in the upper room of the Last Supper, when he urged them to remain in him and live in love. In this, the world would know God.
Acts 10:44-48
These few verses belie a monumental event that will transform the entire human race. Jesus appeared in history as a Jew, proclaiming the fulfillment of scriptural prophecies about the coming of the “Day of the Lord,” and the arrival of the Kingdom of God. Even though not all Jews were of a common mind about Jesus, no one questioned the idea that Jesus emerged from and spoke within the context of Jewish religious identity. Thus, when a segment of Jewish society began proclaiming Jesus as risen from the dead, and the ever-living Messiah, it was an understandable mutation of Jewish identity.
But when the Roman Centurion Cornelius became a believer in Jesus, lines of social clarity became blurred. Peter, leader among the disciples of Jesus who had become the key apostolic witnesses, had to be led against his will into an evangelistic encounter with Cornelius, even though Cornelius was about the most ready convert in history. Even then, Peter was astounded that without training in Jewish theology, Cornelius not only understood that Jesus was his Savior and the way to the one true God, but also that the Holy Spirit of God invaded Cornelius and his family, affirming his participation in the new family of faith. Before this time, ethnicity meant everything for true theology and faithful response to the God of creation and salvation. Now, suddenly, this God was accessible by all people of all ethnicities and backgrounds. This astounding turn of events is summarized in today’s brief lectionary passage.
When Peter’s exploits with the Roman centurion Cornelius at Caesarea nurtured the new Gentile mission of the church (Acts 10-11), Diaspora-born Paul (Saul by his other name) became the perfect candidate to partner with Barnabas in establishing an international congregation in the eastern Roman capital city of Antioch (Acts 12). Soon this congregation became the launching pad for the great mission journeys of Paul and his companions (Acts 13-19) that would forever relocate the expansion of the Christian church outside of Jerusalem and Palestine.
What had been a centripetal energizing motion during the first phase of God’s recovery mission on planet earth (that is, drawing the nations toward a re-engagement with their creator through the strategically-placed nation of Israel) was now shifted into a centrifugal motion of divine sending out to the nations in ever-widening circles of witness. The Christian church, born as a Jewish messianic sect, became a global religion.
1 John 5:1-6
Although we do not have any actual writings that might have been circulated by the false teachers, or first-person written reports of their oratory, we can read backward through John’s main points of emphasis, and decipher nuances of the heresy propounded. Against what the others must have been teaching, John stresses these things:
Gnosticism saw the world as cosmologically dualistic. All of physical reality was bad and degraded, while spiritual dimensions of life were good and empowering. The ultimate deity was like that of the Greek Stoics — nonrelational, dispassionate, impassive, unchanging, and transcendent. But since the material world actually existed, an emanation (called the Demiurge) from the transcendent god must have served as a secondary or subordinate creator. Of course, any god which would bring into being material things was already compromised. So, clearly, the deity of the Jews, the Creator God of the Old Testament, had to be a bad god. This distinguished Christianity from Judaism. Like the Demiurge (or identified with the Demiurge), the god of Genesis (and therefore all of the Hebrew scriptures) was certainly less than perfect, and may well have been an ogre with a sadistic mean streak. Human beings, after all, are at best an evil joke. Many of us (but not all), have a divine spark trapped within our material shells, imprisoned almost to extinction by the loathsome attachments we have to passion and appetites.
Christianity, however, is the religion of Jesus, the liberator. Obviously, if Jesus is to bring salvation, He needs to transcend the material world, which is inherently bad. So Gnostic forms of Christianity took one of two approaches when theologizing about Jesus. The Docetists (from the Greek word meaning to “seem” or “appear”), believed that Jesus was only a divine projection into our world (like a hologram), who was not actually human and did not really interact directly with material substance. It was precisely because of His intrinsic difference from us that He was able to speak to our condition, and provide a means of spiritual escape.
The Adoptionists, on the other hand, believed that Jesus was a very good human being, who was then adopted by God to be used as a temporary transmitter of divine teachings. When Jesus was baptized by John, the Holy Spirit came upon him, granting to the man Jesus the ability to see, know, and understand transcendent, spiritual things. Later, when Jesus was being crucified, he himself acknowledged what had happened, for he raised his face toward heaven and cried out, “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit!” This, of course, was the release, or separation, of the divine spirit from the human Jesus. Many of the Adoptionists believed that God was deeply grateful to Jesus (the man) for his faithful service and partnership for a time with the divine spirit, and that after Jesus (the man) died, God raised him up as a new kind of creature. This resurrected Jesus was the prototype that true Christians should emulate, and toward which they should aspire.
If we as humans are to gain release from our material prisons and become truly liberated spirits, we need several things. First, we must gain the appropriate knowledge. This is the origin of the term Gnosticism, which is simply taken from the Greek word, γνωσις, meaning “knowing” or “knowledge.” Since we are all trapped in the same material muddle, only a transcendent, divine spirit can communicate this necessary knowledge to us. Jesus’ life was all about this, whether as a projection into our experiences who was not himself fully, materially human, or by way of the unique divine insights and abilities granted the man who was adopted by God, and endowed with a special spiritual connection. So we need to learn the teachings of Jesus, because these will help us shed the claws of materialism that dig into the divine sparks many of us are beginning to realize that we have. Of course, the sayings and parables of Jesus would be interpreted differently by Gnostic teachers than they would by John and those who followed in his steps. That was the reason for the controversy which erupted in Gaius’s congregation in the first place.
Second, we must engage in rituals of purification, through which we learn to transcend our own evil flesh, and purify the growing power of our spirits. These may be negations of bodily functions, or solitary mystical reveries. In any case, they are very myopic and self-focused: “I am on a spiritual quest …” “I am seeking truth, which you might not be privy to …” “I cannot be bothered by your needs or concerns, since I have moved into transcendence …”
Third, we must release the divine spark within us, ultimately through the death of our physical bodies. This is why, in the Gnostic Gospel of Judas, for instance, Jesus tells Judas that Judas’s planned betrayal of Jesus is of supreme importance, and constitutes the most necessary task that any of the disciples could accomplish. Judas is the hero of the story, for Judas alone understands that Jesus cannot be a fully blessed immaterial spirit until his physical flesh and blood dies. Only this will release the divine spark within him. So Judas is praised by Jesus as the one who does the very best thing in having Jesus killed. Physical death is the only guaranteed way to get rid of the material substance that diminishes true human life. Thus, Jesus’ death and resurrection are at the center of Gnostic theology, but their purposes are strikingly different than expressed in the rest of Christian hope and understanding. For Paul and John and the rest of the New Testament writers, Jesus’ death was a scandal and a tragedy, even if it was part of the divine purpose and will. Jesus’ resurrection was an affirmation of the goodness of human life restored, precisely in its material state. For Gnostics, however, things were exactly the opposite. Jesus’ death was the great release, and the resurrected Jesus was fully spiritual, completely separated from physical influence or limitation.
These opposing perspectives about the intended or best expression of human life produced the ethical concerns that John addresses. Some Gnostics evidently believed that since we are powerless to transform our bodies or material substance into anything good, we might as well allow our flesh to enjoy its pitiable quest for passion, and indulge ourselves in any gross sensuality that our bodies might lead us into. After all, our truest beings are not really engaged in these things; it is only our weak and self-destructive bodies that are so inclined. Meanwhile, our spirits are set on higher goals and purposes.
A second element of Gnostic behavior, apparently, was that of ignoring the plight of others. Why should we try to alleviate the suffering which others experience in their flesh, since comfort only buttresses the pretense that their bodies have some meaning. We ought not to care for others, because such investments mess us up with material reality. These actions, in turn, only pull us away from our truest spiritual goals, strengthen the capacities and resolve of the material prisons of our bodies which hold our spirits in check, and prevent others, whose flesh is weakening, from gaining more quickly the blessed release that will happen to their spirits when their bodies actually die.
All of this seems to have fostered a kind of Gnostic elitism. If some of us know these things, and others do not, we who know are better than those who do not know. We who have true knowledge from Jesus are on the track toward illumination and release, while those others are dumb dodos. Too bad they aren’t like us, but there is not a thing we can do about it. We are enlightened; they are not.
In the face of these teachings, which were dividing at least this one congregation and threatening the gospel that John knew so well and had taught for so long, John gives some very pointed instructions. Right at the start of his short lecture, he affirms that the God of the Old Testament is also the true Creator God (1 John 1), and that there is no cosmological dualism in which good and evil coexist in the eternal forms of spirit and matter. Evil is not an inherent part of human identity; it is an intruder (1 John 1:6-10). Nor is evil automatically connected only with the material dimension of human existence; our spirits can be sinful, just as our hands can be engaged in things that are good and right and noble (1 John 2:9-11).
When focusing on Jesus, John declares without qualification that he is the divine Son of God, who actually became flesh and blood (1 John 2:20-23). Jesus is neither a holographic spiritual projection into our world, untouched by material plight or passionate feelings, nor an adopted superman, who is so divinely charged that he no longer fully participates in the experiences of the rest of us. This counters the Gnostic ideas about their supposed divine teacher, and turns the testimony of the incarnation into the critical test for defining which teachings are true and which are not (1 John 4:1-3).
Furthermore, since God cares about us as fully integrated flesh-and-blood-and-spirit creatures (after all, we are brought into being by the true and good Creator), we must also care about each other (1 John 3:7-24). Since God loved us so much that God entered our world in the person of Jesus, we ought also to fully engage in each other’s lives for help, encouragement, and care (1 John 4:7-21). In fact, the test of love is whether one has learned to care about the physical needs of a sister or brother (1 John 4:19-21). Christianity does not remove us from pain, but causes us to enter into it on an even deeper level, just as it brought Jesus into his stormy and tortured existence with us, and ultimately crucified Him (1 John 5:1-12).
Thus, salvation is both physical and spiritual. We are already “children of God” (1 John 3:1), and we are also becoming more fully the family of the Creator (1 John 3:2-3). Love is the highest moral good, the truest expression of “Light” against the “Darkness” that evil and sin have brought into our world. This is why the last line of John’s teaching (“Dear children, keep yourselves from idols”), often considered cryptic or ill placed, is actually the summation of the entire teaching. It is the idolatry of self or spirit that misled these false teachers. They were neither superior spiritual gurus nor better human beings than those who did not believe in their proto-Gnostic teachings. In the end, they were false messiahs (thus, “antichrists”) of the cult which, in its most dastardly expressions, was merely self-absorbed childishness, where “I” stands at the center of the universe. John believes that God does a better job in that location, and that our lives are meant to radiate the divine glory wherever we find ourselves. After all, “we love because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19).
John 15:9-17
These verses are at the heart of what we call Jesus’ “Farewell Discourse” (John 13-17). One engaging study (see The Literary Development of John 13-17: A Chiastic Reading [SBL, 2000]) has shown how the discourse as a whole is wrapped around this passage in chiastic literary development. In outline the discourse is shaped as follows:
A. Gathering Scene (Focus on unity with Jesus expressed in mutual love) – 13:1-35
B. Prediction of the disciple’s denial – 13:36-38
C. Jesus’ departure tempered by assurance of the Father’s power – 14:1-14
D. The promise of the Paraclete as a continuing link to Jesus – 14:15-26
E. Troubling encounter with the world – 14:27-31
F. The Vine and Branches teaching (“Abide in me!”) – 15:1-17
E1. Troubling encounter with the world – 15:18-16:4a
D1. The promise of the Paraclete as a continuing link to Jesus – 16:4b-15
C1. Jesus’ departure tempered by assurance of the Father’s power – 16:16-28
B1. Prediction of the disciples’ denial – 16:29-33
A1. Gathering Scene (Focus on unity with Jesus expressed in mutual love) – 17:1-26
While this is not the only possible way to understand the literary structure of the Farewell Discourse, it certainly makes plausible both the reason for the repetitions in the passage as a whole as well as the manner in which the themes resonate and circle around the idea of remaining in Jesus for light and life.
Indeed, there is a truly remarkable way in which the actions of Judas in chapter 13, coupled with Jesus’ encounter with Nicodemus in chapter 3, help illustrate what Jesus is trying to say in these eight verses. Nicodemus came secretly (“by night”) to Jesus to find out more about the teachings which were troubling society in his day. Jesus talked with him about being born a second time (spiritually), but there is no indication in chapter 3 whether Nicodemus actually steps across the line and becomes a believer. We are led to assume it, however, because Jesus continues to talk in that passage about being in the light and walking in the light and living in the light. Furthermore, according to John’s gospel, Nicodemus emerges from the shadows at Jesus’ death in order to care for Jesus’ body and provide it with an appropriate burial (19:39). One might say, from the witness of John 3, that Nicodemus comes to Jesus by night, and leaves in the light.
Keeping that in mind, it is striking to see the reverse movement taking place in Judas’ life in chapter 13. Jesus announces that his hour has come, the hour in which the glory of God will be revealed. We know, from John 1, that this glory of God is the Light of the world. So Jesus enters the room for the final meal, bringing his disciples with him surrounded by the glory (light) that is emerging through Jesus in this final revelatory event. Yet as they sit at table together, Jesus identifies the devious manipulations prancing about in Judas’ heart and the disciples is caught cold. He leaves the table and the room, we are told, “and it was night” (13:30). In other words, Judas comes in the light, and leaves into night. Exactly the opposite of Nicodemus.
The interwrappings of the monologues and dialogues of the Farewell Discourse expound upon these themes: stay close to Jesus and you have life and light; leave Jesus and it is death and night. That’s why Peter, along with the other disciples, needs to undergo the washing in chapter 13. Without this sacramental sign, he would be an outsider, and would be considered part of the night. Similarly, it is Jesus’ departure, elaborated upon in chapters 14 and 16, that becomes the cause of concern for the disciples, for then they will feel the troubling of the world. Yet Jesus will not leave them disconnected, for he will send the Paraclete, the Spirit, to reconnect them to him, and when the Paraclete comes, they will be reminded of all that Jesus taught.
With these things in mind, the Vine and Branches teaching seems like a summary exhortation. Our very spiritual genes are spliced into God through Jesus. We cannot be part of the family if we give up our birthright. But when we remain connected to the source of our existence, the RNA of his Spirit ensures that life flows through out mortal veins. And when it does, whatever our lives are about will bear the fruit of his grace.
Application
C. S. Lewis captured the tension of Light and Darkness in spiritual combat in his space trilogy about Venus. The planet Mars, in his tale, is populated by an ancient race of God’s creatures who never gave in to the lure of evil, and remain holy and just. Earth, as we know, has fallen under the domain of the dark shadows, and the Great Creator has posted warning signs around it in space. It is off limits to other races, quarantined until the end of time.
Venus, though, is a freshly birthed planet with a more recent “Paradise” story of creaturely development. A newly formed pair similar to Earth’s Adam and Eve dance about in innocent delight.
The evil power in the universe will not allow a divine masterpiece to go long unmarred, however, and he sends a vicious Earth scientist named Weston to introduce sin on Venus by corrupting its Lord and Lady. In a countermove the Great Creator sends an ambassador of his own to Venus. The universe holds its breath as the future of this bright world hangs in the balance.
In these novels Lewis pictured the tension in every human heart. Like Adam and Eve at Earth’s creation, and like the Lord and Lady of Venus, we are surrounded by dark powers, yet long for the light of redemption and love. Most of our lives we struggle to see more clearly.
Still, life gets lost for us, often, in the shadows. But grace breaks through, now and again, in moments of insight and illumination, and those are the moments we have to hang onto. That is why John 3:16 has become one of the most widely known verses of the Bible. It summarizes the scriptural message as that of God looking for us in love.
Like a mother who brings a child into this world, God is protective of the lives birthed on planet Earth. When sin stains and decadence destroys, God’s first thought is to rescue and redeem and recover the children God so dearly loves.
This is a theme repeated throughout the Bible. If God is saying anything through its pages, at least this much is clear: it is the whisper of divine love.
Alternative Application (John 15:9-17)
Sometimes there are children who can show the teaching of Jesus about living in God’s love in remarkable ways, as Dale Galloway related in his book Dream a New Dream. A friend’s son was very shy, he said. Chad was usually by himself, and others took no effort to include him in their circles of friends. Every afternoon Chad’s mother would see the children would pile off the school bus in groups, laughing, playing, and joking around with each other. Chad, however, would always be the last down the steps, always alone. No one ever paid much attention to him.
One day in late January Chad came home and said, “You know what, Mom? Valentine’s Day is coming and I want to make a valentine for everyone in my class!”
Chad’s mother told Dale how terrible she felt. “Oh no!” she thought. “Chad is setting himself up for a fall now. He’s going to make valentines for everyone else, but nobody will think of him. He’ll come home all disappointed, and just pull back further into his shell.”
But Chad insisted, so they got paper and crayons and glue. Chad made thirty-one valentine cards. It took him three weeks.
The day he took them to school his mother cried a lot. When he came off the bus alone as usual, bearing no valentine cards from others in his hands, she was ready for the worst.
Amazingly Chad’s face was glowing. He marched through the door triumphant. “I didn’t forget anybody!” he said. “I gave them all one of my hearts!”
That day Chad gained something more than just friends. He gained a sense of himself. He won a sense of dignity and worth. “I gave them all one of my hearts!” he said.
That is where Jesus wants to bring us. Circles of hatred erased by circles of love. Circles of judgment blurred by widening circles of mercy. Circles of Death that give way to circles of Life. The Bible says that when we had drawn God out of our circles, divine love drew us in. Perhaps Edwin Markham’s poem could be translated into the conversation of heaven as the Father and the Son reflect about me:
He drew a circle that shut us out —
Heretic! Rebel! A thing to flout!
But our love alone had the wit to win:
We drew a circle that took him in!
It’s all about love. Of course, love begins with God. In Jesus. Somebody with skin on.
But when the big boomers rolled again through the furious skies, Kimberly cried in redoubled terror. I soothed her as best I could, telling her that God was always there in the room, even when Mom and I were across the hall in our bedroom. That didn’t seem to quiet Kimberly, and Kristyn, in her nearby bed, knew why. Sitting up, she declared, matter-of-factly, “But Dad, Kimberly wants somebody with skin on!”
Each of today’s lectionary passages shares that desire. When Roman Centurion Cornelius prays to the unseen God of the Jews, Peter is dispatched to be God with skin on; and when faith invades Cornelius’ house, the Spirit whistles through until it is embodied in all present. Later, when John writes against the growing Gnostic heresy tearing at the fabric of young congregations in what is now southwestern Turkey, he declares the proof of true faith as the testimony that Jesus is the love of God with skin on. All of this is but a reflection of Jesus’ own final instructions to his disciples in the upper room of the Last Supper, when he urged them to remain in him and live in love. In this, the world would know God.
Acts 10:44-48
These few verses belie a monumental event that will transform the entire human race. Jesus appeared in history as a Jew, proclaiming the fulfillment of scriptural prophecies about the coming of the “Day of the Lord,” and the arrival of the Kingdom of God. Even though not all Jews were of a common mind about Jesus, no one questioned the idea that Jesus emerged from and spoke within the context of Jewish religious identity. Thus, when a segment of Jewish society began proclaiming Jesus as risen from the dead, and the ever-living Messiah, it was an understandable mutation of Jewish identity.
But when the Roman Centurion Cornelius became a believer in Jesus, lines of social clarity became blurred. Peter, leader among the disciples of Jesus who had become the key apostolic witnesses, had to be led against his will into an evangelistic encounter with Cornelius, even though Cornelius was about the most ready convert in history. Even then, Peter was astounded that without training in Jewish theology, Cornelius not only understood that Jesus was his Savior and the way to the one true God, but also that the Holy Spirit of God invaded Cornelius and his family, affirming his participation in the new family of faith. Before this time, ethnicity meant everything for true theology and faithful response to the God of creation and salvation. Now, suddenly, this God was accessible by all people of all ethnicities and backgrounds. This astounding turn of events is summarized in today’s brief lectionary passage.
When Peter’s exploits with the Roman centurion Cornelius at Caesarea nurtured the new Gentile mission of the church (Acts 10-11), Diaspora-born Paul (Saul by his other name) became the perfect candidate to partner with Barnabas in establishing an international congregation in the eastern Roman capital city of Antioch (Acts 12). Soon this congregation became the launching pad for the great mission journeys of Paul and his companions (Acts 13-19) that would forever relocate the expansion of the Christian church outside of Jerusalem and Palestine.
What had been a centripetal energizing motion during the first phase of God’s recovery mission on planet earth (that is, drawing the nations toward a re-engagement with their creator through the strategically-placed nation of Israel) was now shifted into a centrifugal motion of divine sending out to the nations in ever-widening circles of witness. The Christian church, born as a Jewish messianic sect, became a global religion.
1 John 5:1-6
Although we do not have any actual writings that might have been circulated by the false teachers, or first-person written reports of their oratory, we can read backward through John’s main points of emphasis, and decipher nuances of the heresy propounded. Against what the others must have been teaching, John stresses these things:
- There is clear continuity between Old and New Testament ages (1:1-4)
- God has given a recent new revelation, the person of Jesus (1:2-3)
- There is only one God, and this divine Being is entirely unified in character (1:5)
- Sin is an obvious reality, and cannot be ignored or presumed out of the human picture (1:6-10)
- Jesus actually died, and this happened as a sacrifice that had religious transactional qualities; it was redemptive (1:7, 2:1)
- There is a unity of theology and ethics; what you believe must come out in your practices, or it is not truly held at all (2:3-6)
- Followers of Jesus are, by their very nature and calling, concerned about the physical well-being of others (2:9-11)
- Godly people need to deny worldly desires that constantly plague the human race (2:15-17)
- The highest value of all is love expressed in relationships (3:10-15, 4:21)
- Jesus actually died, and this was an atoning sacrifice (3:16, 4:10)
- The Holy Spirit is one with the Father and the Son (3:21-4:6)
- Jesus is and remains truly flesh and blood (4:2, 5:6-8)
Gnosticism saw the world as cosmologically dualistic. All of physical reality was bad and degraded, while spiritual dimensions of life were good and empowering. The ultimate deity was like that of the Greek Stoics — nonrelational, dispassionate, impassive, unchanging, and transcendent. But since the material world actually existed, an emanation (called the Demiurge) from the transcendent god must have served as a secondary or subordinate creator. Of course, any god which would bring into being material things was already compromised. So, clearly, the deity of the Jews, the Creator God of the Old Testament, had to be a bad god. This distinguished Christianity from Judaism. Like the Demiurge (or identified with the Demiurge), the god of Genesis (and therefore all of the Hebrew scriptures) was certainly less than perfect, and may well have been an ogre with a sadistic mean streak. Human beings, after all, are at best an evil joke. Many of us (but not all), have a divine spark trapped within our material shells, imprisoned almost to extinction by the loathsome attachments we have to passion and appetites.
Christianity, however, is the religion of Jesus, the liberator. Obviously, if Jesus is to bring salvation, He needs to transcend the material world, which is inherently bad. So Gnostic forms of Christianity took one of two approaches when theologizing about Jesus. The Docetists (from the Greek word meaning to “seem” or “appear”), believed that Jesus was only a divine projection into our world (like a hologram), who was not actually human and did not really interact directly with material substance. It was precisely because of His intrinsic difference from us that He was able to speak to our condition, and provide a means of spiritual escape.
The Adoptionists, on the other hand, believed that Jesus was a very good human being, who was then adopted by God to be used as a temporary transmitter of divine teachings. When Jesus was baptized by John, the Holy Spirit came upon him, granting to the man Jesus the ability to see, know, and understand transcendent, spiritual things. Later, when Jesus was being crucified, he himself acknowledged what had happened, for he raised his face toward heaven and cried out, “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit!” This, of course, was the release, or separation, of the divine spirit from the human Jesus. Many of the Adoptionists believed that God was deeply grateful to Jesus (the man) for his faithful service and partnership for a time with the divine spirit, and that after Jesus (the man) died, God raised him up as a new kind of creature. This resurrected Jesus was the prototype that true Christians should emulate, and toward which they should aspire.
If we as humans are to gain release from our material prisons and become truly liberated spirits, we need several things. First, we must gain the appropriate knowledge. This is the origin of the term Gnosticism, which is simply taken from the Greek word, γνωσις, meaning “knowing” or “knowledge.” Since we are all trapped in the same material muddle, only a transcendent, divine spirit can communicate this necessary knowledge to us. Jesus’ life was all about this, whether as a projection into our experiences who was not himself fully, materially human, or by way of the unique divine insights and abilities granted the man who was adopted by God, and endowed with a special spiritual connection. So we need to learn the teachings of Jesus, because these will help us shed the claws of materialism that dig into the divine sparks many of us are beginning to realize that we have. Of course, the sayings and parables of Jesus would be interpreted differently by Gnostic teachers than they would by John and those who followed in his steps. That was the reason for the controversy which erupted in Gaius’s congregation in the first place.
Second, we must engage in rituals of purification, through which we learn to transcend our own evil flesh, and purify the growing power of our spirits. These may be negations of bodily functions, or solitary mystical reveries. In any case, they are very myopic and self-focused: “I am on a spiritual quest …” “I am seeking truth, which you might not be privy to …” “I cannot be bothered by your needs or concerns, since I have moved into transcendence …”
Third, we must release the divine spark within us, ultimately through the death of our physical bodies. This is why, in the Gnostic Gospel of Judas, for instance, Jesus tells Judas that Judas’s planned betrayal of Jesus is of supreme importance, and constitutes the most necessary task that any of the disciples could accomplish. Judas is the hero of the story, for Judas alone understands that Jesus cannot be a fully blessed immaterial spirit until his physical flesh and blood dies. Only this will release the divine spark within him. So Judas is praised by Jesus as the one who does the very best thing in having Jesus killed. Physical death is the only guaranteed way to get rid of the material substance that diminishes true human life. Thus, Jesus’ death and resurrection are at the center of Gnostic theology, but their purposes are strikingly different than expressed in the rest of Christian hope and understanding. For Paul and John and the rest of the New Testament writers, Jesus’ death was a scandal and a tragedy, even if it was part of the divine purpose and will. Jesus’ resurrection was an affirmation of the goodness of human life restored, precisely in its material state. For Gnostics, however, things were exactly the opposite. Jesus’ death was the great release, and the resurrected Jesus was fully spiritual, completely separated from physical influence or limitation.
These opposing perspectives about the intended or best expression of human life produced the ethical concerns that John addresses. Some Gnostics evidently believed that since we are powerless to transform our bodies or material substance into anything good, we might as well allow our flesh to enjoy its pitiable quest for passion, and indulge ourselves in any gross sensuality that our bodies might lead us into. After all, our truest beings are not really engaged in these things; it is only our weak and self-destructive bodies that are so inclined. Meanwhile, our spirits are set on higher goals and purposes.
A second element of Gnostic behavior, apparently, was that of ignoring the plight of others. Why should we try to alleviate the suffering which others experience in their flesh, since comfort only buttresses the pretense that their bodies have some meaning. We ought not to care for others, because such investments mess us up with material reality. These actions, in turn, only pull us away from our truest spiritual goals, strengthen the capacities and resolve of the material prisons of our bodies which hold our spirits in check, and prevent others, whose flesh is weakening, from gaining more quickly the blessed release that will happen to their spirits when their bodies actually die.
All of this seems to have fostered a kind of Gnostic elitism. If some of us know these things, and others do not, we who know are better than those who do not know. We who have true knowledge from Jesus are on the track toward illumination and release, while those others are dumb dodos. Too bad they aren’t like us, but there is not a thing we can do about it. We are enlightened; they are not.
In the face of these teachings, which were dividing at least this one congregation and threatening the gospel that John knew so well and had taught for so long, John gives some very pointed instructions. Right at the start of his short lecture, he affirms that the God of the Old Testament is also the true Creator God (1 John 1), and that there is no cosmological dualism in which good and evil coexist in the eternal forms of spirit and matter. Evil is not an inherent part of human identity; it is an intruder (1 John 1:6-10). Nor is evil automatically connected only with the material dimension of human existence; our spirits can be sinful, just as our hands can be engaged in things that are good and right and noble (1 John 2:9-11).
When focusing on Jesus, John declares without qualification that he is the divine Son of God, who actually became flesh and blood (1 John 2:20-23). Jesus is neither a holographic spiritual projection into our world, untouched by material plight or passionate feelings, nor an adopted superman, who is so divinely charged that he no longer fully participates in the experiences of the rest of us. This counters the Gnostic ideas about their supposed divine teacher, and turns the testimony of the incarnation into the critical test for defining which teachings are true and which are not (1 John 4:1-3).
Furthermore, since God cares about us as fully integrated flesh-and-blood-and-spirit creatures (after all, we are brought into being by the true and good Creator), we must also care about each other (1 John 3:7-24). Since God loved us so much that God entered our world in the person of Jesus, we ought also to fully engage in each other’s lives for help, encouragement, and care (1 John 4:7-21). In fact, the test of love is whether one has learned to care about the physical needs of a sister or brother (1 John 4:19-21). Christianity does not remove us from pain, but causes us to enter into it on an even deeper level, just as it brought Jesus into his stormy and tortured existence with us, and ultimately crucified Him (1 John 5:1-12).
Thus, salvation is both physical and spiritual. We are already “children of God” (1 John 3:1), and we are also becoming more fully the family of the Creator (1 John 3:2-3). Love is the highest moral good, the truest expression of “Light” against the “Darkness” that evil and sin have brought into our world. This is why the last line of John’s teaching (“Dear children, keep yourselves from idols”), often considered cryptic or ill placed, is actually the summation of the entire teaching. It is the idolatry of self or spirit that misled these false teachers. They were neither superior spiritual gurus nor better human beings than those who did not believe in their proto-Gnostic teachings. In the end, they were false messiahs (thus, “antichrists”) of the cult which, in its most dastardly expressions, was merely self-absorbed childishness, where “I” stands at the center of the universe. John believes that God does a better job in that location, and that our lives are meant to radiate the divine glory wherever we find ourselves. After all, “we love because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19).
John 15:9-17
These verses are at the heart of what we call Jesus’ “Farewell Discourse” (John 13-17). One engaging study (see The Literary Development of John 13-17: A Chiastic Reading [SBL, 2000]) has shown how the discourse as a whole is wrapped around this passage in chiastic literary development. In outline the discourse is shaped as follows:
A. Gathering Scene (Focus on unity with Jesus expressed in mutual love) – 13:1-35
B. Prediction of the disciple’s denial – 13:36-38
C. Jesus’ departure tempered by assurance of the Father’s power – 14:1-14
D. The promise of the Paraclete as a continuing link to Jesus – 14:15-26
E. Troubling encounter with the world – 14:27-31
F. The Vine and Branches teaching (“Abide in me!”) – 15:1-17
E1. Troubling encounter with the world – 15:18-16:4a
D1. The promise of the Paraclete as a continuing link to Jesus – 16:4b-15
C1. Jesus’ departure tempered by assurance of the Father’s power – 16:16-28
B1. Prediction of the disciples’ denial – 16:29-33
A1. Gathering Scene (Focus on unity with Jesus expressed in mutual love) – 17:1-26
While this is not the only possible way to understand the literary structure of the Farewell Discourse, it certainly makes plausible both the reason for the repetitions in the passage as a whole as well as the manner in which the themes resonate and circle around the idea of remaining in Jesus for light and life.
Indeed, there is a truly remarkable way in which the actions of Judas in chapter 13, coupled with Jesus’ encounter with Nicodemus in chapter 3, help illustrate what Jesus is trying to say in these eight verses. Nicodemus came secretly (“by night”) to Jesus to find out more about the teachings which were troubling society in his day. Jesus talked with him about being born a second time (spiritually), but there is no indication in chapter 3 whether Nicodemus actually steps across the line and becomes a believer. We are led to assume it, however, because Jesus continues to talk in that passage about being in the light and walking in the light and living in the light. Furthermore, according to John’s gospel, Nicodemus emerges from the shadows at Jesus’ death in order to care for Jesus’ body and provide it with an appropriate burial (19:39). One might say, from the witness of John 3, that Nicodemus comes to Jesus by night, and leaves in the light.
Keeping that in mind, it is striking to see the reverse movement taking place in Judas’ life in chapter 13. Jesus announces that his hour has come, the hour in which the glory of God will be revealed. We know, from John 1, that this glory of God is the Light of the world. So Jesus enters the room for the final meal, bringing his disciples with him surrounded by the glory (light) that is emerging through Jesus in this final revelatory event. Yet as they sit at table together, Jesus identifies the devious manipulations prancing about in Judas’ heart and the disciples is caught cold. He leaves the table and the room, we are told, “and it was night” (13:30). In other words, Judas comes in the light, and leaves into night. Exactly the opposite of Nicodemus.
The interwrappings of the monologues and dialogues of the Farewell Discourse expound upon these themes: stay close to Jesus and you have life and light; leave Jesus and it is death and night. That’s why Peter, along with the other disciples, needs to undergo the washing in chapter 13. Without this sacramental sign, he would be an outsider, and would be considered part of the night. Similarly, it is Jesus’ departure, elaborated upon in chapters 14 and 16, that becomes the cause of concern for the disciples, for then they will feel the troubling of the world. Yet Jesus will not leave them disconnected, for he will send the Paraclete, the Spirit, to reconnect them to him, and when the Paraclete comes, they will be reminded of all that Jesus taught.
With these things in mind, the Vine and Branches teaching seems like a summary exhortation. Our very spiritual genes are spliced into God through Jesus. We cannot be part of the family if we give up our birthright. But when we remain connected to the source of our existence, the RNA of his Spirit ensures that life flows through out mortal veins. And when it does, whatever our lives are about will bear the fruit of his grace.
Application
C. S. Lewis captured the tension of Light and Darkness in spiritual combat in his space trilogy about Venus. The planet Mars, in his tale, is populated by an ancient race of God’s creatures who never gave in to the lure of evil, and remain holy and just. Earth, as we know, has fallen under the domain of the dark shadows, and the Great Creator has posted warning signs around it in space. It is off limits to other races, quarantined until the end of time.
Venus, though, is a freshly birthed planet with a more recent “Paradise” story of creaturely development. A newly formed pair similar to Earth’s Adam and Eve dance about in innocent delight.
The evil power in the universe will not allow a divine masterpiece to go long unmarred, however, and he sends a vicious Earth scientist named Weston to introduce sin on Venus by corrupting its Lord and Lady. In a countermove the Great Creator sends an ambassador of his own to Venus. The universe holds its breath as the future of this bright world hangs in the balance.
In these novels Lewis pictured the tension in every human heart. Like Adam and Eve at Earth’s creation, and like the Lord and Lady of Venus, we are surrounded by dark powers, yet long for the light of redemption and love. Most of our lives we struggle to see more clearly.
Still, life gets lost for us, often, in the shadows. But grace breaks through, now and again, in moments of insight and illumination, and those are the moments we have to hang onto. That is why John 3:16 has become one of the most widely known verses of the Bible. It summarizes the scriptural message as that of God looking for us in love.
Like a mother who brings a child into this world, God is protective of the lives birthed on planet Earth. When sin stains and decadence destroys, God’s first thought is to rescue and redeem and recover the children God so dearly loves.
This is a theme repeated throughout the Bible. If God is saying anything through its pages, at least this much is clear: it is the whisper of divine love.
Alternative Application (John 15:9-17)
Sometimes there are children who can show the teaching of Jesus about living in God’s love in remarkable ways, as Dale Galloway related in his book Dream a New Dream. A friend’s son was very shy, he said. Chad was usually by himself, and others took no effort to include him in their circles of friends. Every afternoon Chad’s mother would see the children would pile off the school bus in groups, laughing, playing, and joking around with each other. Chad, however, would always be the last down the steps, always alone. No one ever paid much attention to him.
One day in late January Chad came home and said, “You know what, Mom? Valentine’s Day is coming and I want to make a valentine for everyone in my class!”
Chad’s mother told Dale how terrible she felt. “Oh no!” she thought. “Chad is setting himself up for a fall now. He’s going to make valentines for everyone else, but nobody will think of him. He’ll come home all disappointed, and just pull back further into his shell.”
But Chad insisted, so they got paper and crayons and glue. Chad made thirty-one valentine cards. It took him three weeks.
The day he took them to school his mother cried a lot. When he came off the bus alone as usual, bearing no valentine cards from others in his hands, she was ready for the worst.
Amazingly Chad’s face was glowing. He marched through the door triumphant. “I didn’t forget anybody!” he said. “I gave them all one of my hearts!”
That day Chad gained something more than just friends. He gained a sense of himself. He won a sense of dignity and worth. “I gave them all one of my hearts!” he said.
That is where Jesus wants to bring us. Circles of hatred erased by circles of love. Circles of judgment blurred by widening circles of mercy. Circles of Death that give way to circles of Life. The Bible says that when we had drawn God out of our circles, divine love drew us in. Perhaps Edwin Markham’s poem could be translated into the conversation of heaven as the Father and the Son reflect about me:
He drew a circle that shut us out —
Heretic! Rebel! A thing to flout!
But our love alone had the wit to win:
We drew a circle that took him in!
It’s all about love. Of course, love begins with God. In Jesus. Somebody with skin on.
