^{John 21:9} As soon then as they were come to land, they saw hot coals, and fish laid thereon, and bread. ¹⁰ Jesus said unto them, Bring of the fishes, which ye have now caught. ¹¹ Simon Peter stepped forth and drew the net to land full of great fishes, an hundred, fifty and three: and albeit there were so many, yet was not the net broken.¹² Jesus said unto them, Come, and dine. And none of the disciples durst ask him, Who art thou? seeing they knew that he was the Lord. ¹³ Jesus then came and took bread and gave them, and fish likewise.

^{Acts 10:39} And we are witnesses of all things which he did both in the land of the Jews, and in Jerusalem, whom they slew, hanging him on a tree. ⁴⁰ Him God raised up the third day, and caused that he was showed openly: ⁴¹ Not to all the people, but unto the witnesses chosen before of God, even to us which did eat and drink with him, after he arose from the dead.

^{John 20:25} The other disciples therefore said unto him, We have seen the Lord: but he said unto them, Except I see in his hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and put mine hand into his side, I will not believe it. ²⁶ ¶ And eight days after, again his disciples were within, and Thomas with them. Then came Jesus, when the doors were shut, and stood in the midst, and said, Peace be unto you. ²⁷ After said he to Thomas, Put thy finger here, and see mine hands, and put forth thine hand, and put it into my side, and be not faithless, but faithful.

^{Luke 24:36} As they were talking about these things, Jesus himself stood among them, and said to them, “Peace to you!” ³⁷ But they were startled and frightened and thought they saw a spirit. ³⁸ And he said to them, “Why are you troubled, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? ³⁹ See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Touch me, and see. For a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” ⁴⁰ And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. ⁴¹ And while they still disbelieved for joy and were marveling, he said to them, “Have you anything here to eat?” ⁴² They gave him a piece of broiled fish,^{[b] 43} and he took it and ate before them.

Clearly what we can see that the Gospels are trying to have us understand is that when the Lord Christ resurrected He resurrected remaining 100% man. True, His body was glorified so that it had capacities that it did not have before but those added capacities did nothing to negate him remaining very man of very man.

Considering these texts we find the Lord Christ eating. Eating implies digestion. It all very human. We find the Lord Christ putting on display His injured body parts. We find the Lord Christ commanding them to touch him to confirm his bodily resurrection. The Gospel writers went out of their way to communicate a post resurrection human Christ.

This physicality of the Lord Christ was in defiance of the early Church heresy of Gnosticism which taught that the physical and the corporeal body was inherently evil. The Gnostic divided the world into two halves — Spiritual reality and physical reality — and proceeded to say that the spiritual reality was what was really important and the material reality was a lesser reality. The Gnostics denied the bodily resurrection of Christ because for them there was nothing noble in the physical.

 Gnosticism taught that salvation was found through secret and hidden knowledge which enabled the redemption of the human spirit from its yucky mortal coil. Salvation in the Gnostic scheme was not from sin and death — and it certainly didn’t include the body — salvation was a setting free of the divine spark that was and is trapped in our material bodies. The goal was to get to a pure spiritual existence. So, for the Gnostics there was a revolt against our creaturliness in favor of the attempt to live a higher form of life that rose above the creaturliness given by the Spirit creator God.

In many times throughout Church History the Gnostics succeeded in reinterpreting Christianity to fit their pagan religion. They superimposed their understanding upon Christianity and co-opted the Christian faith to do service for their pagan faith system. In their scheme the importance of Jesus death and resurrection gives way to the importance of His bringing this special esoteric knowledge to awaken the divine  in all of us and so set free the divine spark trapped in all of us living in these humdrum bodies.

The teaching about the person and work of Gnosticism differed from the Christology we find in Scripture. In some forms of Gnosticism it was asserted that both the humanity and materiality of Christ were a deceptions.  The Lord Christ did not really become man. It only appeared that way. In other forms of Gnosticism Jesus was only a man though the divine Spirit / Logos came upon him after Baptism and inhabited departing before the crucifixion.

The Scripture resists this by going out of its way to repeatedly give us a resurrected Lord Christ who did things that pure spirits don’t do. He consumed fish with His disciples. He showed off His scars.

This Gnosticism … this desire to get outside of our creaturliness … this trying to rise above the God givenness of who we are … has plagued the Church throughout her history. They’ve had, what sounds to us as funny names. Bogomils, Flaggelants, Albigensians, and Cathari. They’ve been called Diggers, and Ranters, Levelers, and Fifth Monarchists men.

This 1st century Gnosticism remains with us in the Church today. It takes on different forms but it all stems from this denial of God’s pleasure in corporeality. That we have a problem with this ancient heresy is seen in a TIME magazine report.

At the close of the last century Time magazine had reported that two thirds of Americans who say they believe in the resurrection of the dead do not believe they will have bodies after the resurrection. More recently, a Scripps Howard/Ohio University poll interviewed 1,007 American adults and discovered that only 36% of them said “yes” to the question: “Do you believe that, after you die, your physical body will be resurrected someday?” Yet most of these same Americans also acknowledged being believers and going to church.

One of the innovators of this type of belief was a chap named Rudolph Bultman. Bultman’s dates are, 1884-1976.

“An historical fact which involves a resurrection from the dead is utterly inconceivable,” Bultman admitted. For him, the Easter event is not something that happened to the Jesus of history, but something that happened to the disciples, who came to believe that Jesus had been resurrected. Moreover, the resurrected Jesus is indeed a living presence in the lives of Christians.”

A living presence in the lives of Christians but not a living savior back from the dead.

In a recent conversation I found a modern Gnostic saying,

Gnostic: And that resurrection can only take place when the spirit is free from the flesh, free from the pain and the pleasures of physical existence . . . and that separation of spirit from flesh at the crucifixion is how a Gnostic would describe Jesus’ resurrection. So you see the resurrection of Jesus was not a resurrection of a mass of flesh and sinful temptations, but an rising of the spirit up out of the physical nature.

Robin Phillips tells us

“For the Gnostics Jesus merely appeared to have a material body. In some versions of Gnosticism, such as that reflected in the Gospel of Judas, it seems that Jesus did have a physical body, yet wished to reject His body since it bound Him to this world. In the Gospel of Judas, Jesus gives Judas permission to betray Him in order that through death the spiritual person imprisoned within might be liberated. Again, the basic idea is that the realm of the spirit is at utter odds with the realm of matter, and in order to accept the former one must reject the latter.”

Clearly there is confusion about this matter of the Resurrection. And yet we know that our bodies shall be resurrected because we are told in reference to the resurrection, “Christ the firstfruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ.” The thrust of  this is that as Christ was resurrected bodily so we will follow being bodily resurrected.

This our Catechism confirms reflecting the teaching of Scripture,

A.  Not only shall my soul after this life immediately be taken up to Christ, my Head, ¹ but also this my flesh, raised by the power of Christ, shall be reunited with my soul and made like Christ’s glorious body.

This denial of the goodness of a bodily resurrection manifests itself elsewhere in different ways in the Church. The idea that physicality is ignoble compared to spiritual categories makes its ways into other thought realms.

What I’m trying to get at here is this original denial of the goodness of our creaturliness and the physical givenness of who we are via the denial of the physicality of Christ began to shape shift into other thought areas. Just as Darwin’s biological evolution eventually became Social evolution in the hands of Herbert Spencer so the denial of Christ’s human physicality by the Gnostic showed up at other intellectual zip codes.

We see this Gnosticism rise up in the Church today where we see a tendency to  deprecate the corporeal world through a pitting of spiritual reality against physical reality. We hear Gnosticism when Christians emphasize Christians being separate from the world in the sense of having nothing to do with it because, as I’ve heard some say, “It’s all going to burn anyway.” Material world bad. Living apart from material world good.

This is Gnosticism because it is implicitly saying the world is bad or is not our concern. It springs from the same origin as those who denied the resurrection of Christ. This Gnosticism pushes Christians to focus on the inward and personal to the neglect of the world around us or to public responsibilities. Reading our bibles, prayer, attending Church … GOOD. Seeking to take every thought captive to Christ in that real world out there … BAD.

D. L. Moody, famous evangelist at the turn of the 20th century capture this mindset when he said, “Don’t spend too much time polishing the brass rails on a sinking ship.” The point, of course, is that the physical world is a sinking ship, and rather than polishing its brass rails, it’s better to reach souls for Christ and prepare them to get off the ship. The concern is about souls and not about souls as they live in this  world.

The examples of Gnosticism in the Church today are abundant. Here are just a few.

1.) Traction is being gained in the Church today for a doctrine called Full Preterism which teaches that all the prophecy in Scripture without exception has been fulfilled. Christ has returned. The resurrection has occurred. The final judgment past. The Gnosticism is found in this doctrine when it insists that our physical bodies are not resurrected. Consistent Preterism teaches that our persons are resurrected but not our bodies. There are many problems with Full Preterism but the one we are considering today is this form of Gnosticism with its denial of the resurrection of the physical body. Quite to the contrary we see the full orbed commitment  to a bodily resurrection in one of the oldest books of the Bible,

Job 19:26Even after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God. 27 I will see Him for myself; my eyes will behold Him, and not as a stranger. How my heart yearns within me!

2.) Another example of Gnosticism in the Church today is found in the canker that is eating the Reformed Church whole .. a cancer that is seemingly predominant in Reformed Seminaries across the country and that cancer is the cancer that is Radical Two Kingdom theology. R2K is Gnostic inasmuch as in R2K God is only really concerned with the realm of grace. R2K fanboy Darryl Gnostic Hart reveals his Gnosticism when he writes,

“After examining myself and studying historical subjects I am not so convinced that religion is so basic to a person’s identity….

In other words, life as a Christian is complicated. The best word to describe that is one that the intellectual historian, David Hollinger, coined in his book Postethnic America — hyphenation. To recognize that people (even Christians) are a mix of different responsibilities and loyalties is to admit that “most individuals live in many circles simultaneously and that the actual living of any individual life entails a shifting division of labor between the several ‘we’s’ of which the individual is part….

 It strikes me that admitting this complicated outlook is basic to being human as opposed to living up to some sort of super-spiritual ideal of a life dedicated and consecrated to Christ 24/7. “

What Dr. Hart is calling a “hyphenated-life” is just a clever replacement for the word that has always followed Gnosticism and that is the word “Dualism.” Hart is advocating for a Dualism in Christian living and dualism has always been part of what Gnosticism means with its “spirit good, matter bad” insistence. Instead what we are getting with the R2K crowd is spiritual really important, the material world … not so much.

This Gnostic dualism is seen again by Dr. David Van Drunen when he says;

“Traditional marriage is part of the created order that God sustains through his common grace, not a uniquely Christian institution, and society as a whole suffers when it is not honored. Christians are responsible to commend the goodness and benefits of marriage in the public square…. To call attention to that evidence in the public square is a way of communicating that marriage is not a uniquely Christian thing, but a human thing, and that all people have an interest in getting marriage policy correct.”

The Gnostic dualism is easy to see here. Marriage exists in the common realm and not in the realm of grace. Because of that there can be no such thing as Christian marriage vis-a-vis a non-Christian marriage.

This is all Gnosticism. Perhaps one could say it is not 100 proof belly up to the bar Gnosticism but it remains Gnosticism all the same. And the reality here is, is if you pull the string of all this back to its origin you’ll find that it stems from a problem with the resurrection. Ideas have consequences.

Dorthy Sayers, living a few decades after some of the gnostic chaps we’ve quoted understood that Christianity does not equal Gnosticism. Sayers was a Christian and associated with Inklings was an informal literary discussion group associated with the University of Oxford. Other members included C. S. Lewis, Tolkien, Charles Williams and Owen Barfield.

Sayers did battle with Gnosticism during her time and once wrote,

“Notice how entirely different [Christianity] is from the Gnostic and Neoplatonic thought which characterises the great Oriental religions and so often tried to infiltrate into Christianity. For the Gnostics, creation is evil, and the outflowing of the One into the Many is a disaster: the true end of the Many is to lose the derived self and be reabsorbed into the One. But for the Christian, it is not so. The derived self is the glory of the creature and the multiplicity and otherness of the universe is its joy. The true end of the creature is that it should reflect, each in its own way and to its capacity great or small, some tiny facet of the infinite variety comprised within the unity of the One.

The characteristic belief of Christendom is in the Resurrection of the Body and the life everlasting of the complete body-soul complex. Excessive spirituality is the mark, not of the Christian, but of the Gnostic.

The visible universe is not an illusion, nor a mere aspect of Divinity, nor identical with god (as in Pantheism), still less a ‘fall into matter’ and an evil delusion (as in the various Gnostic or Manichee cults). The Universe is made by God, as an artist makes a work of art, and given a genuine, though contingent, real existence of its own, so that it can stand over against Him and know Him as its real Other.

This Gnosticism that the inspired authors of Scripture fought, that the Church has fought throughout History, that Sayers inveighed against is ubiquitous and unrelenting in the Church today.

Gnosticism shows itself in the Church when you

*  run into the pietistic idea that the Biblical worldview is primarily about what happens in our heart, rather than something that applies to all of culture and the world. Churches around the world sing this every year, “You ask me how I know he lives … he lives within my heart.”

* hear someone say that Christianity isn’t a religion, it’s a relationship, where the person who says this is wishing to de-emphasizes the authoritative revelation of God’s word in favor of one on one alone time with Jesus. Again… the emphasis is on the personal and individual and invisible relationship.

* hear anybody suggest that doctrine and theology is stuffy whereas what is really important is “spirituality.” We even hire people in our Seminaries to do and teach “spiritual formation” when all that is really needed is repeated dosages of good systematic theology well understood. This would itself do the trick of “spiritual formation.”

* come across the idea that there is a complete discontinuity between what happens in this world and what will happen in the age to come so that this world is sinful while the heavenly world is where we should be focusing upon.

*  come across the notion that institutional religion and/or religious rituals are at odds with genuine heart-felt faith, and that whatever we give to the former is less we have left over for the latter. The result of this is that the importance of the visible Church and of Word and Sacrament are severely diminished in favor of one on one time with Jesus.

The teaching of the gnostics emphasize Christians being separate from the world, and would have Christians focused on the inward and personal to the neglect of the outward world and the public.

This gnostic tendency can be found everywhere,

We see it in changing Protestant funeral liturgies. In his book Accompany Them With Singing: The Christian Funeral, Thomas Long shows that a ‘disembodied, quasi-gnostic cluster of customs and ceremonies’ now surround the Christian funeral. (p. 72).  Wheras we once spoke of the saint as with God awaiting the resurrection and the glorified renewal of heaven and earth, we now more commonly hear about how the disembodied deceased is in heaven looking down on us as a Spirit and giving us strength. Funerals are no longer about not the deceased who is completing his Baptismal journey by travelling to Christ, but about the mourners, on an intrapsychic journey from sorrow to stability. (p. 96-97)

And that’s just in the Church. Outside the Church Gnosticism, with its belittling and even denial of the material, corporeal, physical world is what is driving us to suggest that our lineage and / or gender is just a social construct that we have to escape. Our physical bodies will not stand in the way of who we say we are. Our creaturliness and the givenness of who God has made us to be, as evidenced by our bodies, is something that can be denied or changed out. We must be free of the testimonies of our bodily existence. This is 21st century gnosticism.

And so the Gnostic impulse accounts a great deal for the desire to ink ourselves, pierce ourselves, and transgender ourselves. It cuts us off from our lineage and our past as well as our progeny and our future since grandfathers and grandchildren are yucky corporeal stuff. Gnosticism is the root idea that has strange consequences. We will not accept our creaturliness … our givenness and so we will seek to escape it to get in tune with our spiritual self … our inner self … our gnostic selves.

All this hubbub this past week in Indiana is really just Gnosticism on display. Christianity insists that the gender that God has created us with is static and cannot be changed or altered and that such a view that allows for this cannot be countenanced in the public square. To act as if gender isn’t important is to insist that the body parts are meaningless. In the end Indiana legislated in favor of Gnosticism.

And how does Christianity fight all this?

With a Resurrected savior eating fish and drinking wine in communion with His disciples. Christianity fights this ubiquitous Gnosticism with the continued invitation to examine the scars and to come and see and touch. It fights this with Catechisms that teach that Christ as very man has ascended and is at the right hand of the Father. It fights this by the constant reminder that this world, despite the fall, has been Redeemed and a Kingdom has come that pronounces this World, as Redeemed in Christ, very good.

The bodily Resurrection of the Lord Christ is the only truth that will set us free of the self destructiveness of Gnosticism all about us. God grant us Reformation in this physical world.

Christ is risen.

^{John 12:20} Now there were some Greeks among those who were going up to worship at the feast; ²¹ these then came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida of Galilee, and began to ask him, saying, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” ²² Philip *came and *told Andrew; Andrew and Philip *came and *told Jesus. ²³ And Jesus *answered them, saying, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. ²⁴ Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. ²⁵ He who loves his life loses it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it to life eternal. ²⁶ If anyone serves Me, he must follow Me; and where I am, there My servant will be also; if anyone serves Me, the Father will honor him.

Jesus Foretells His Death

²⁷ “Now My soul has become troubled; and what shall I say, ‘Father, save Me from this hour’? But for this purpose I came to this hour. ²⁸ Father, glorify Your name.” Then a voice came out of heaven: “I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again.” ²⁹ So the crowd of people who stood by and heard it were saying that it had thundered; others were saying, “An angel has spoken to Him.” ³⁰ Jesus answered and said, “This voice has not come for My sake, but for your sakes. ³¹ Now judgment is upon this world; now the ruler of this world will be cast out. ³² And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to Myself.” ³³ But He was saying this to indicate the kind of death by which He was to die.

I.) The Inquiry (20-22)

A.) Identity of “The Greeks”

In vs. 19 the Pharisee’s lament that “the world has gone after him.” In vs. 20 we meet some of those who part of that throng who were going after Christ.

There is some debate among the commentariat on who exactly these Greeks are. It seems likely that these Greeks were what we call proselytes. They were non-Jews who had converted to the monotheistic religion of Judaism.  It may be that these are some of those whom Jesus spoke of when he said earlier that,

^10:16 Other sheep I have also, which are not of this fold: them also must I bring, and they shall hear my voice: and there shall be one sheepfold, and one shepherd.

If these Greeks are non Jews then John may be hinting here at the missional purpose of the Gospel. This is especially so as the request for an audience with the Lord Christ is immediately connected to the idea of Christ’s death and the fruit such a death will bring forth (23f).

These Greeks go to a disciple with a Greek name (Philip)  a person whom Jesus had called near the start of his earthly ministry (1:43). Philip contacts Andrew and together they attempt to make “Introduction,” and so arrange audience between Jesus and the Greeks.

Doubtless, they had heard about the recent raising of Lazarus from the dead.  And as seeing is believing in John’s Gospel (6:14, 30; 19:35; 20:27),  when the Greeks ask to see Jesus, they are, perhaps, expressing their desire in matters pertaining to salvation.

B.) Philip & Andrew’s role

Whatever there intent was in desiring to “see Jesus” the request from the Greeks channeled through Philip and Andrew brings a response on Christ that focuses on the matter of the Greeks, and mankind’s salvation.

II.) The Response

It seems the desire of an audience with Christ by the Greeks triggers a connection in Christ’s thought. There is something about this request that the Lord Christ associates with His death. Could the appearance of the Greeks be themselves the fruit of His death that He speaks of now? Isaiah spoke of the connection between the offering up of the Messiah with the fact that such offering for sin would mean that the Messiah shall see his seed (Isaiah 53:10). In the request of the Greeks Jesus perhaps sees His seed — that is His numerous spiritual posterity and so speaks of His death.

A.) The Glorification of the Son is Identified w/ His Death

It sounds odd, should we pause to think about it, that Christ’s connects the idea of His Glory with His death. And yet that is exactly what He does. Christ is to be glorified in His Death because in His death there is the salvation of His people. Of course, what lay on the other side of the humiliation is the exaltation of Christ. The glorification of Christ thus is both His humiliation and His exaltation but never the exaltation apart from the humiliation.

The centrality of Christ’s death is something we must never move from the center of our understanding of our Faith. It is true that the life of Christ is, in many ways, one to be emulated and followed. But Christ’s primary purpose in coming was not to set an example (though He certainly does that). Christ’s primary purpose in coming was to be lifted up in humiliation and then Exaltation. When we reinterpret Christianity from Christ as our bloody substitute to Christ the great moral example we have shifted the meaning of Christianity from Christ’s performance for us to our performance for Christ. The Cross and Christ’s work must always be at the center of our thinking just as it was at the center of Christ’s thinking here in John 12:20f.

In vs. 28 we see the glorification of the Son is at the same time the glorification of the Father. In the death of Christ the Father is glorified. We might ask ourselves how this is so?

And the answer is that in the glorification of the Son the Father is glorified because in that death of Christ, whereby the demand of God’s law for death for sin and sinner, as they fall short of God’s glory, is kept, the Father is seen as Holy and as Just as He never ceases to be. God’s honor and glory is kept. No accusation can be brought against His character as “liar” or “unjust” for not giving to Sin what Sin deserves in the death of His Son as substitute.  No accusation can be brought against the Father’s glory as “unloving” or “un-merciful” for not providing a means by which men can sue for Peace with God.

In the Cross all the potentially contradictory attributes of the Father are harmonized and reconciled. Love and Justice Kiss. The tenderness of Mercy and the demands of Holiness find agreement in the Cross of Christ. God’s Faithfulness to Himself in upholding His law-Word and to His Son in rewarding Him with a people, and to sinners in providing a means of redemption are all present in the Lifting up of the Lord Christ.

B.) The repeated usage of “Hour” in John’s Gospel

Johannine Texts:

• Jesus, to his mother, at the Wedding at Cana:
  2:4 – “Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.”
• Jesus, to the Samaritan at the well:
  4:21 – “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem.”

  4:23 – “But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him.”

• Jesus, to the Jews:
  5:25 – “Very truly, I tell you, the hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live.”

  5:28 – “Do not be astonished at this; for the hour is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his voice.”

• Jesus, to the Jews (using the word “kairos”):
  John 7:6 – Jesus said to them, “My time has not yet come, but your time is always here.”
  John 7:8 – “Go to the festival yourselves. I am not going to this festival, for my time has not yet fully come.”
• The Evangelist/Narrator:
  7:30 – Then they tried to arrest him, but no one laid hands on him, because his hour had not yet come.
  8:20 – He spoke these words while he was teaching in the treasury of the temple, but no one arrested him, because his hour had not yet come.
• Jesus, to his disciples, after Andrew and Philip tell him that some Greeks wanted to see him: 
  12:23 – “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.”
  12:27 – “Now my soul is troubled. And what should I say—‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour.”
• The Evangelist/narrator, beginning the “Book of Signs”; introducing the Washing of the Feet:

  13:1 – Now before the festival of the Passover, Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.

• Jesus, praying to his Father, at the end of the Last Supper Discourses:
  
  17:1 – After Jesus had spoken these words, he looked up to heaven and said, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you.”

  What might we learn from this usage?

  Well, clearly there is underneath all of this the sense of God’s predestinating Sovereign hand. A hour is coming that can neither be hastened nor delayed. One gets the sense from this overview that “the hour” spoken of is a certainty and a divine appointment that can not be altered, and further one gets the sense from the passage that the Lord Christ is fully cognizant concerning the timing of “the hour.”

  All of this should be comforting to us. Our lives are not lived in a haphazard patch-worked series of uncertainties. Our lives are designed and determined by the sovereign creator of the Universe. We live in the context that God holds all of our “hours” in His hands. There is no divine appointment that we will fail to keep. No opportunity that we will miss. No instance where we will wonder if God somehow fell asleep. He holds all our Hours just as He held that significant “Hour” of the Lord Christ.

III.)  The Consequences of Christ’s Death

A.) The bearing of much fruit

B.) Judgment upon the World

This idea of Judgment is associated with condemnation. Because of the death of Christ the “world” is condemned.

But how we to understand the word “world” here? Is it the physical world that is condemned?

John uses the word “world” in ten different ways in his Gospel.

1. The Entire Universe – John 1:10; 1:3; 17:5

2. The Physical Earth – John 13:1; 16:33; 21:25

3. The World System – John 12:31; 14:30; 16:11 (see also similar usage in Gal 1:4 — Paul)

World in this usage has to do with the realm or sphere that is actuated and moves in terms of evil and the evil one. It is mankind as alienated and hostile from and to God. It is the City of Man as opposed to the City of God. 

³⁰ Hereafter will I not speak many things unto you: for the prince of this world cometh, and hath nought in me,

John 15:18-21

18 “If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. 19 If you were of the world, the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the  world hates you. 20 Remember the word that I said to you, `A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will persecute you; if they kept my word, they will keep yours also. 21 But all this they will do to you on my account, because they do not know him who sent me.

John 16:11

¹¹ Of judgment, because the prince of this world is judged.

John 18:36 — Jesus answered, My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, my servants would surely fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews: but now is my kingdom not from hence.

In John 12:31f then we take “world” to mean the operating systems of men that has Satan at its head and finds his agents in the the Jewish people who rejected him, their leaders who instigated the Jewish zombies against him, Judas who betrayed Christ, Pilate who sentenced Christ for political gain, and the Roman soldiers who crucified Him.

4. All humanity minus believers – John 7:7; 15:18

5. A Big Group but less than all people everywhere – John 12:19

6. The Elect Only – John 3:17

7. The Non-Elect Only – John 17:9

8. The Realm of Mankind – John 1:10;

9. Jews and Gentiles (not just Israel but many Gentiles too) – John 4:42

10. The General Public (as distinguished from a private group) – not those in small private groups – John 7:4

One simply cannot read John’s Gospel aright unless one understands the different connotations and denotations of the word “world” in John’s Gospel. As just one example, when we read John 18:36 (“My Kingdom is not of this world”) as if it means “My Kingdom is not in this world” we end up developing theologies that insist that the Kingdom of God does not intersect or bring leverage upon the institutions, social orders, and public squares in which we live.

C.) Casting Out of Satan

In the crucifixion Satan wins the battle but loses the War.

D.) Drawing of all men

IV.) Christ’s Dying and Ours (25-26)

Now as much as there is here about the Son’s glorification and the Father’s glorification there is some here that deals with the characterization of the Disciple. He must lose his life.

Christ alone dies as the substitute and in that substitutionary death there is the bearing of much fruit that will abide.

Still, when God calls men to Christ He bids them to come and die.

So … for Christ, if there is to be fruit He must die

And for the followers of Christ there must be a willingness to die for the cause of Christ.

Throughout the Gospel Christ gives this call to prioritize Him above all else one holds dear including their own life.

Mt. 10:37-39

Matthew 16:24-26

Mark 8:34-38

Luke  9:23-26

Luke 17:32, 38

We die to all else but Christ.

Practically speaking, for us, I think this means dying to our desire to be popular… dying to our desire for “fun” as those outside of Christ count “fun.” It means standing up for Christ and His authoritative word even when to do so invites the sure to come scorn and ostracization of others.

We are surrounded by those today who refuse to prioritize Christ over other high loves. Recently one of the Presidents of Bob Jones University (B. J. III) apologized for agreeing with Scripture in 1980. However, there have been those who have surrendered all to not be ashamed of Christ.

John 3:14-21

Jesus said to Nicodemus, “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.

“Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God. And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed. But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God.”

Introduction

Note during the advent season that the passages keep drawing us back to the Person and work of the Jesus Christ. Each week, during Lent, we are reminded of the centrality of Christ and the Cross.

Week #1 — Christ’s Baptism and it’s relation to the Cross work
Week#2 — Peter’s rebuke of Christ for speaking about his coming suffering and death
Week#3 — Jesus Cleansing of the Temple and His coming death & resurrection as a confirming sign for his authority
Week#4 — Christ’s conversation with Nicodemus regarding about Christ’s coming “lifting up.”

Lent then, in our Lord’s Days is emphasizing the work of Christ. This season is not so much about our work as it is about Christ’s work for His people. Christ and His Cross-work is our contemplation during this season. The season is only about our self denial in light of Christ’s self-denial in making Himself of no reputation and so becoming obedient even unto the death of the Cross.

Lent brings us back to the Cross and it is good that we should be brought back. There are those who would tire of the Cross saying, “Yes, yes, we know all that. What we need is instruction on how to live the Christian life.” And that is true. We do need instruction on how to live the Christian life but the beginning of all instruction on how to live the Christian life is a firm grip on the meaning of the Cross. That this necessity exists to get a firm grip on the Cross is due to the fact that there is no living the Christian life that is acceptable to God apart from the premise of the Cross. That this necessity exists to get a firm grip on the Cross is due to the fact that apart from the preaching of the Cross it is sure to be the case that instruction in godly living, as disconnected from the Cross, will likely result in some form of ugly self-righteousness because we see ourselves as such good people because of how we please God.  Apart from the preaching of the Cross our obedience is likely to become “legal” as opposed to “evangelical.” It has been my experience among Theonomists that our zeal for God’s law often times keeps us from returning to the Cross. It is as if we forget that the Cross is not merely the beginning of the Christian message but rather is the message that is interwoven with all our attentiveness to God’s Law.

And so during Lent we preach Christ and Him crucified. We don’t preach that in a vacuum. We don’t preach Christ Crucified apart from Christ as the incarnation of God’s Law Word. We don’t preach Christ Crucified as if Christ crucified as no implications for our ongoing sanctification.

Here we come to John 3 and Jesus’ interview with Nicodemus. Nicodemus comes  under cover of night in order to try and get his mind around Jesus of Nazareth. We might say that Nicodemus, as a ruler, is of the establishment and He is here trying to understand what to him is the anti-establishment. In the context of this discussion Jesus reaches back to an OT account and help define Himself and His intent to Nicodemus.

I.) Christ’s Appeal To Revelation

OT Wilderness Serpent Account — Numbers 21:4-9

In the account from Numbers, referenced by our Lord Christ in John 3, God’s people murmured against God’s calling them into the wilderness. As a punishment God sent poisonous serpents into the Israelite camp. When the people repented, God told Moses to fashion a serpent out of bronze and lift it on a pole, so that anyone bitten by a serpent could look and live. The serpent, thus in the Numbers account, was a mark of God’s anger and God’s mercy. God’s people might be saved by the mercy of God from the anger of God, if only they would look upon the image of that which would have brought about their death.

II.) Christ’s Language of Being “Lifted Up.”

The Lord Christ says he must be ‘Lifted up”

This idea of being lifted up becomes a mini-theme in John’s Gospel. It is used here in connection with the OT account of serpents raised for healing. Once that connection is made then we can hear the same connection where it is used elsewhere in John’s Gospel.

—  John 8:28, 12:32,  19:18

^8:28 Then said Jesus unto them, When ye have lifted up the Son of man, then shall ye know that I am he, and that I do nothing of myself, but as my Father hath taught me, so I spake these things.

^12:32 And I, if I were lift up from the earth, will draw all men unto me…. 34.) Repeated back to Christ by audience.

“Lifted up” (hypsoo) — The word can also mean “exalt.” It could be said that “one was lifted up to a high position.” As such we hear it as a referent both to Christ’s own Crucifixion and to His exaltation.

So, when the Lord Christ speaks of his being “lifted up” there is communicated a double meaning. The first meaning of course is as a pointer to the Crucifixion. Christ will be lifted up on the Cross and suspended between Heaven and Earth giving a visual of being the Mediator — the one who stands between God’s Wrath and Man’s Peace with God. Here the idea of Christ’s being lifted up speaks to the apex of His humiliation.

However, the idea of being “lifted up” can also refer to the exaltation of Christ as He is “lifted up” from the Dead and is “Lifted up” to the right hand of God, communicating power and majesty, in His ascension.

So, we would say that in terms of human agency, of course, the cross is a “lifting up” that communicates a profound humiliation and defeat. But in Christ’s language, crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension are collapsed into a single movement of divine agency: Jesus is “lifted up” by God.

III.) Clearing Up The Usage of “World”

A good many Evangelicals make the mistake with John 3:16 to make it read that God loves each and every individual that has ever lived. This is simply not true. The word “world” in John 3:16 is used in order to reveal that God’s program of redemption was not merely for the Jewish tribe. Our Lord Christ says “world” here so that the Jews might understand that His work went beyond the borders of Israel. We know that “world” here does not mean each and every individual who has ever lived because of John’s own Gospel. John’s Gospel is perhaps the most Calvinistic of all the Gospels. In John’s Gospel we chapters 6, 10, and 17 we find Jesus repeatedly making distinctions between people he came to save and people He didn’t come to save.

6:39″And this is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all that he has given me, but raise them up at the last day. 40For my Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.”

Here John, quoting Jesus, clearly makes a distinction between people whom the Father has given to Jesus and people whom the Father has not given to Jesus. Why didn’t the Father give everyone to Jesus? The answer is because the Father does not love everyone.

10:26but you do not believe because you are not my sheep. 27My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. 28I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one can snatch them out of my hand. 29My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all[d]; no one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand. 30I and the Father are one.”

Here the inspired Apostle clearly records Jesus saying that there is a distinction between those who hear His voice and those who don’t and goes on to say that the reason that they do not believe is because those who do not believe are not His sheep.

Why are they not His sheep we might ask? The answer is clearly because the Father does not love them.

Note also here the verse that teaches that those who belong to Jesus can’t not fall away.

17:9I pray for them. I am not praying for the world, but for those you have given me, for they are yours.

Jesus here prays for His people and decidedly not for those who are not His people. Jesus makes a distinction between those who are His and those who are not His.

Why are some His and some not His? The answer is that the Father does not love all people.

God does not love everybody. Jesus did not come to die for everybody though the death of Christ is sufficient for whosoever believes. If you have been given belief you can be sure that Christ died for you.

This is because there are a few that are like Esau whom God hates (See Romans 9). These were hated before they were born or did anything good or bad.

However, having said that we note that God sent Christ that those set apart for salvation might be saved (17), and in the doing of that the whole Cosmos will be saved and renewed by the finished work of Christ. The fact that Christ has come to save the world indicates an expansiveness of God’s grace. True … all will not be saved but so many will be saved that it will be rightly said that the whole world was saved and renewed by the death of Christ.
IV.) Series of Sharp Anti-thesis

condemnation (17-18) and salvation (17)

(Condemn = Penalty after sentence // Language from the courtroom)

This text reminds us that all people stand either in the way of salvation or in the way of condemnation. There is no third way or tertim quid.

Reminds us that our problem is forensic or legal and so requires a legal solution.

Part of the problem in the church today is that we make Christianity about our subjective experiences or our emotive disposition but Christianity, while affecting those realities primarily speaks to our objective legal position. We are either in the way of legal condemnation or we are in the way of legal vindication (salvation). God has a lawsuit against us and our condemnation or vindication rests not upon our experience or emotive dispositions but rather the verdict rests upon our legal relation to the one who God provides as our legal substitute. If we believe in and upon Christ we are vindicated (saved) if we believe not we remain in the legal position of being condemned.

This brings us to another anti-thesis

belief and unbelief (vs. 18)

stay in the darkness and come into the light (19)

This preference for darkness among those who belong to darkness should serve as a reminder for our evangelism. Men do not refuse to come to Christ because they cannot understand the the light of truth. Men refuse to come to Christ because their preference for darkness will not consent to understanding the light of truth. The problem in evangelism is often not the message but those hearing the message. This is absolutely necessary to keep in mind.

John begins this chapter by telling us that Nicodemus comes in the dark. By the end of John’s Gospel (19:39) Nicodemus is out in the light.

do evil and doing what is true (20)

Conclusion

The Cross