John 12

John 12 records the end of Jesus' public ministry as he moves into Jerusalem for his passion.  It also offers us a good point to stop and reflect broadly on where we've been in the first half of John's gospel.  Chapter 12 is full of themes and motifs used through the entire gospel:

·      light-Here John records Jesus' words, "You are going to have the light just a little while longer.  Walk while you have the light, before darkness overtakes you.  The man who walks in the dark does not know where he is going.  Put your trust in the light while you have it, so that you may become sons of light" (v. 35).  These words echo John 1, where Jesus is presented as "the true light that gives light to every man" and Jesus' own words in John 9, where as he heals the blind man he says, "While I am in the world, I am the light of the world."  John wants desperately for us to know that Jesus alone can open our eyes to where we should go and how we should live.  Without his light, we stumble blindly through our broken lives, confused and afraid.

·      life-Near the end of the chapter, Jesus says, "I know that his [the Father's] command leads to eternal life" (v.50).  In chapter  11 Jesus said, "I am the resurrection and the life.  He who believes in me will live even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die."  In John 6, Jesus says, "I am the bread of life.  He who comes to me will never go hungry. . . Everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life."  And famously in John 3 Jesus claims, "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life."  Over and over, John makes clear that Jesus has the power and the desire to give us life-true life-now and forevermore.  No failure, no mistake, no disease, no power, can stop him.

·      the unity of Father and Son-Why can Jesus do all this?  Because he is no less than God himself, clothed in human flesh that we might know him.  Here Jesus explains, "For I did not speak of my own accord, but the Father who sent me commanded me what to say and how to say it.  I know that his command leads to eternal life.  So whatever I say is just what the Father has told me to say" (v. 49-50).  Again, the words resonate because we've heard similar ones before-frequently.  In John 10 Jesus says, "Is it not written in your Law, 'I have said you are gods'? If he called them 'gods,' to whom the word of God came-and the Scripture cannot be broken-what about the one whom the Father set apart as his very own and sent into the world?  Why then do you accuse me of blasphemy because I said, 'I am God's Son'? . . . The Father is in me, and I in the Father."  Or in John 8, Jesus says, "If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God and now am here.  I have not come on my own; but he sent me."  Jesus and the Father are one.  God almighty loves us so much he became one of us that we might know him and rest in his love.

·      belief/unbelief-To receive this light and life and rest, we need only believe.  Many whom Jesus encountered did believe; many others did not.  By the end of Chapter 12, the word believe has appeared 64 times in the gospel of John.  Clearly, we have a choice to make: will we believe or not?

Chapter 12 ends with Jesus uniting all these motifs in a single last public statement before beginning the road to the cross.  In a loud voice, Jesus cries out, promising us light, life, and rest in God if only we'll believe. 

Believe.

Written by Jeff DeVries, a member of New Life Church.

John 9

When Jesus’ disciples approach him about the man blind from birth, they never consider the possibility of healing.  Despite the miracles they’ve seen, they enter into an argument about the blind man’s past, about the sin that brought him where he is.  From their perspective, the past is a sequence of events begetting events.  Everything has a cause, and the disciples want to know where to lay the blame for this man’s blindness.

But Jesus tells them they are asking the wrong question, that they are looking in the wrong direction.  This man is blind “‘so that the work of God might be displayed in his life.’”  In other words, Jesus has less interest in the past.  Grace is about to interrupt the old chain of events and create a bright new future

And this idea of looking in the wrong direction is echoed later when the Pharisees challenge Jesus’ authority.  Rather than celebrating in the blind man’s healing and promising new future, they look back to the Old Testament law of abstaining from work on the Sabbath.  Jesus, according to their interpretation of Torah, had broken the Sabbath and was blameworthy.

The past—for the Pharisees and the disciples—determines both the present and the future.  The past is responsible for the blind man’s condition.  The past holds Jesus in violation of Torah.  The past condemns all hope for a better future.  It’s simple karma—what goes around, comes around.

But Jesus is trying to get us to imagine a world that operates outside karma, a world where the past cannot dictate the future.  Instead, he introduces the notion of grace.  Even in our brokenness, God promises to make “‘everything new’” (Revelation 21:5).

And that’s the beauty of this chapter.  Grace interrupts the past.  It frees us from the curse of karma.  We need only to believe—as the blind man did and as the former slaver John Newton did.  Then we too can sing: “I once was lost / but now am found / was blind but now I see.”

Written by Ben DeVries, a New Life member and a senior at Illiana Christian High School.