03/17/2023 – Gospel of John Fellowship – Chapter One / Lenten Study through Maundy Thursday.
Blessings! Note: Our fellowship, either original posts or a stream of individual commentaries on all our Bible studies are evergreen, they go on till the 2nd coming. If you are reading ahead , go ahead and make an originating post for that day.
Reminders: If you are “read only”, you will need a logon just to have read access, let alone “write” access. So, contact me at Semikkah7@protonmail.com, or call me 24/7 on my cell. I would be happy to have a telephone session to give you a fast start on the blog structure and tools, an open offer going forward.
Here are our some suggested questions for Socratic fellowship that I will start with on every chapter (unchanged from my post dated March 3rd at this point):
- What does the text reveal about God’s character? (#1)
- How has this reading generated prayer for you and/or us? (#2)
- What themes stand out to you in this bible study? (#3)
- How does our reading fit into the bigger picture (creation, the fall, restoration, etc.)?
(#4)
- What verse(s) jumped out at you like never before? Is it explainable at this point?
(#5)
- Do you have any questions you would like to put before the group as to how to interpret any particular verse(s) in our reading. Let scripture testify to scripture: Share with us where you sense contradiction between passages elsewhere in the Bible.
(#6)
- What did you find convicting and inspiring at the same time? Share with us how the Spirit of God is working within you as a messenger, both within and outside of our fellowship group.
(#7)
- Share with the group how our study is calling or confirming to you a new mission to glorify God in our times.
(#8)
My reflections:
#1: God is all-powerful and all-unloving, unfathomably so. I remember Bishop Fulton Sheen noting in one of his books that all analogies are weak, but Jesus becoming flesh (v14) would be like us entering a dog’s body. We are talking a life filled with suffering from the git go, with an end at the cross, before His resurrection.
Related: I recall in a multi-week Lutheran church class on witnessing to Muslims, it was recommended that we not mention the Trinity early on in our witness to Current Muslim / Future Christian brothers and sisters, and to expect a very long process with prayer. The class overall was a gem. But early on, I broke that rule with Khan, a work colleague, over lunch. I shared with him, that if we Christians were wrong, we would go to hell for polytheism. I went on: “We believe that God is so unfathomably and sublimely awesome that we cannot even begin to comprehend. So: ‘How can three persons be one God?’ How about perfect agape love? You cannot have a perfect all-loving uni-personal god, for love by definition is relational. And prior to the creation of man, there would be no one else.
So, if Christians are right, the consequences are eternally horrific for those who reject the Truth, for we believe you cannot get to heaven without accepting Jesus Christ (Massih to Muslims) as your personal Lord and Savior. I shared with Khan on St Paul’s Gospel note, paraphrased: “If we are wrong, Christians are the most miserable creatures that have ever lived.”
#7: Related to #1, convicting and inspiring at the same time: I believe we were born for this time, so it ties into #8 as well. In a world that has gone mad, I need to focus on evangelizing the Good News, even if it is the expense of human survival. Bear in mind, human survival is critical to a build up of the impregnable remnant church, so that we can reach the lost in a fallen world, before it is too late. So, I need to become “comfortable” with “worldly uncomfortable”. Certainly to fight, but mainly just to Love and Trust our Lord.
#4: Big Picture:
I may not get beyond “Barclay’s: The Gospel of John – Volume 1”, but to just give you an idea, the Gospel of John introductory section is 24 pages, and just Chapter One runs 71 pages. There are a number of Old Testament verses that Barclay references for Chapter One alone.
#5: The verse that jumped out at me like never before: John 1: 38: To the two disciples (one was Andrew with the other likely to be John) that were following Him, Jesus asks : “What are you looking for?” This is puzzling on the surface since I have been a christian as long as I can remember. But my reply remains: “Lord, for the agape love that you alone can offer mankind forever. ” The question : Is my walk matching my talk? So again, this is the same “convicting” noted above in #7, and I pray not to move off of it. “Convicting” like never before and that is good! No one can be saved from their walk but that is not the point.
As Barclay points out, as Christians, we should with prayer, continue to revisit the questions: “What am I really trying to get out of life? What is truly eternally significant in my daily walk? What is my aim? We are mere messengers but I oftentimes find myself recharging by visioneering forward into heaven, being greeted by the soul I didn’t know in this world with: “You are the messenger that invited me here!” So, how does that measure up against all the stuff in this world that burns like chaff? (Scriptural connection: “What if you gain the whole world and lose your soul in the process?)
Help me fill in all the gaps; it takes a remnant village! Invite loved ones. We call this a men’s bible study blog. But women are welcome. The only precondition, married women participants must have the permission of their husbands. (Husbands are the spiritual leaders of their families)
In this section, just for chapter one, I am going to summarize notes from prior posts the past two weeks on our Gospel of John twenty one chapters in twenty one days:
Date of Post / Summary
- 02/27/2023 – “Day 365…” : My contact information & Useful tools: Search Tools and Filters. The filters come in handy; bear in mind, we have almost 2,000 posts over a 2 year history , so on average, a single week of posts goes a little beyond a single page or screen. Also: We have had two complete cycles of our Semikkah7 read through the Bible plan. If you search on “Day 211” for example, your results will show all posts for Chapter 1 and 2 over both cycles. If you filter on “Gospel of John – 21 chapters in 21 days” you will get all posts to date on this study, now starting it’s 2nd cycle. There is currently at least one post for each of the 21 days.
- 03/03/2023 – Our standard list of questions noted above.
- 03/03/2023 – “Bible commentaries” – This is categorized under “getting started” filter also. It lists all the primary commentaries I have used over the past two years.
- 03/04/2023 – “Introduction” – A recommendation of the 2003 movie: “The Gospel of John”.
- 03/06/2023 – An original post that is a summarized compare and contrast of the Gospel of John with the other three synoptic gospels: Matthew; Mark; and Luke.
For this section, I will just share some excerpts from Barclay’s commentary over Chapter One:
Chapter 1: V. 1-18, or hereafter in the form: “1: 1-18” (pgs 25 thru 36)
“In the Jonathan Targum the phrase the word of God occurs no fewer than about three hundred and twenty times. It is quite true that it is simply a periphrasis for the name of God; but the fact remains that the word of God became one of the commonest forms of Jewish expression. It was a phrase which any devout Jew would recognize because he heard it so often in the synagogues when scripture was read. Every Jew was used to speaking of the Memra, the word of God…
(iv). At this stage, we must look more fully at something we already began to look at in the introduction. The Greek term for the word is Logos; but Logos does not only mean word; it also means reason. For John, and for all the great thinkers who made use of this idea, these two meanings were always closely intertwined. Whenever they used Logos the twin ideas of the Word of God and the Reason of God were in their minds.
The Jews had a type of literature called the Wisdom Literature which was a concentrated wisdom of sages. It is not usually speculative and philosophical, but practical wisdom for the living and management of life. In the Old Testament the great example of Western Literature is the Book of Proverbs. In this book there are certain passages which give a mysterious life-giving and eternal power to Wisdom (Sophia)*A. In these passages Wisdom has been, as it were, personified, and is thought of the as the eternal agent and co-worker of God. There are three passages…
“*A – Jimmy insert – We have many main line heretical branches or denominations in our day. Back two+ decades ago, the PCUSA – Presbyterian church was “touting” the goddess Sophia out of their main office publications. So, this Wisdom literature was spun off into a Christian heresy, popping up its ugly Gnosticism.”
See Proverbs 3: 13-26 / Proverbs 4: 5-13 / Proverbs 8: 1-9; and, 22-30.
The Greek Background
“… In 560 B.C., there was an Ephsian philosopher called Heraclitus whose basic idea was that everything is in a state of flux. Everything was changing from day to day and from moment to moment. His famous illustration was that it was impossible to step twice in the same river… To Heraclitus everything was like that, everything is in a constantly changing state of flux. But if that is so, why was life not complete chaos? How can there be any sense in a world where there was constant flux and change?
The answer of Heraclitus was : all this change and flux was not haphazard; it was controlled and ordered, following a continuous pattern all the time; and that which controlled the pattern was the Logos, the word, the reason of God. To Heraclitus, the Logos was the principle of order under which the universe continued to exist. Heraclitus went further. He held that no only was there a pattern in the physical world; there was also a pattern in the world of events. he held that nothing moved with aimless feet; in all life and in all events of life there was a purpose, a plan and a design. And what was it that controlled events? Once again, the answer was Logos.
Heraclitus took the matter even nearer home. What was it that in us individually told us the difference between right wrong? What made us able to think and reason? What enabled us to choose aright and to recognize the truth when we saw it? Once again Heraclitus gave the same answer. What gave a man reason and knowledge of the truth and the ability to judge between right and wrong was the Logos of God dwelling within him. Heraclitus held that in the world of nature and events ‘all things happen according to the Logos,’ and that in the individual man ‘the Logos is the judge of truth.’ The Logos was nothing less than the mind of God controlling the world and every man in it.”
… “Greek though knew all about the Logos; it saw in the Logos the creating and guiding and kept it going. So John came to the Greeks and said: ‘For centuries you have been thinking and writing and dreaming about the Logos, the power which made the world, the power which keeps the order of the world, the power by which men think and reason and know, the power by which men come into contact with God. Juses is the Logos come down to earth.’ ‘The Word,’ said John, ‘became flesh.’ we could put it another way —‘ The Mind of God became a person.” (pg 36)
1: 1,2 (note: Barclay’s book goes back to single or just a few verses to review in further detail, from here forward till the end of chapter one commentary)
“… What Jesus did was to open a window in time that we might see the eternal and unchanging love of God.”
“When John said the word was God he was not saying that Jesus was identical with God (*B); he was saying that Jesus was perfectly the same as God in mind, in heart, in being that in him we perfectly see what God is like.”
*B – (Jimmy insert): I take issue with christians that say “God and Jesus” , as opposed to “God the Father” and “God the Son”. Or throw in Jesus for “God the Son.” Thoughts? Does that not suggest a belief that Jesus is not co-equal and co-eternal with the Father? (Arianist: as in Church of Later Day Saints (Mormons) and Jehovah’s Witness , to site just two examples)
Personal note: I use “Yeshua”, not “Jesus” . I prefer the name that Joseph and Mary used. There is no “J” sound in Hebrew nor Aramaic.
1: 1-5 : “And the Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not put it out.”
-Barclay comments: “… ‘there is a power in Jesus that is undefeatable. The darkness can hate him, but it never can get rid of him.’ As has been truly said: ‘Not all the darkness in the world can extinguish the littlest flame. The unconquerable light will in the end defeat the hostile dark. John is saying: ‘Choose your side in the eternal conflict and choose aright.’
1: 14:
“(c) Even when Jesus left this earth in the body, he left us his Spirit to guide us into the truth. His Spirit is the Spirit of truth (14: 17 ; 15:26; 16:13 )… Still to this day, we can ask Jesus what to do, for his Spirit is with us every step of the way.”
And I am going to add John Gill’s commentary for just this one verse as well:
https://www.biblestudytools.com/commentaries/gills-exposition-of-the-bible/john-1-14.html
(Jimmy insert: It is not about the messenger, but I call John Gill my “one verse commentator closer.” haha)
1:18: ” No one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only, who is at the Father’s side, has made him known.”
Barclay comments: “In Jesus Christ, the distant, unknowable, invisible unreachable God has come to men; and God can never be a stranger to us again.”
1: 19-28:
“What John was saying was: I am nobody; I am only a voice telling you to get ready for the coming of the King, for he is on the say…” And Barclay adds a little bit later: “There was a Rabbinic saying which said that a disciple might do for his master anything that a servant did, except only to untie his sandals.” (pg 79)
“John’s function was to be only the preparer of the way. Any greatness he had came from the greatness of the one whose coming he foretold. He is the greatest example of the man prepared to obliterate himself in order that Jesus Christ may be seen. He was only, as he saw it, a finger-posting pointing to Christ. God give us grace to forget ourselves and to remember only Christ.
1: 29-31: titled: “Lamb of God”
“… What was in John’s mind when he used that title? There are at least four pictures which may well contribute something to it.
(i). It may well have been that John was thinking of the Passover Lamb. The old story of the Passover was that it was the blood of the slain lamb which protected the houses on the Israelites on the night when they left Egypt (Exodus 12: 11-13)…
(ii). John was the son of a priest. He would know all the ritual of the Temple and its sacrifices.
(iii) There are two great pictures of the lamb in the prophets. Jeremiah writes: ‘But I was like a gentle lamb led to the slaughter’ (Jeremiah 11:19). And Isaiah has the great picture of the one who was brought ‘like a lamb to the slaughter’ (Isaiah 53:7)…. It is certainly true that in later times the picture of Isaiah 53 became to the church one of most precious forecasts of Jesus in all of the Old Testament. It may be that that John the Baptist was the first to see it so.
(iv) There is a fourth picture which would be very familiar to the Jews, although very strange to us. Between the Old and New Testaments there were the days of great struggles of the Macabees. In those days the lamb, and especially the horned lamb, was the symbol of a conqueror. Judas Maccabaeus is so described, as are Samuel and David and Solomon. The lamb –strange as it may sound to us — stood for the conquering champion of God (*C)…
There is sheer wonder in this phrase, the Lamb of God. it haunted the writer of the Revelation. Twenty-nine times he used it. It becomes one of the most precious titles of Christ. In one word, it sums up the love, the sacrifice, the suffering and the triumph of Christ.”
(*C) – (Jimmy insert) – I would submit that the Messiah image of the “conquering champion” far outweighed the “suffering servant” of Psalm 22 & Isaiah 53. In actual fact, the later could have been close to the limit -0-.
1: 32,34 titled: “The Coming of the Spirit”
“The Jewish word for Spirit is reach, the word which means wind. To the Jew there were always three basic ideas of the Spirit. The Spirit was power, power like a mighty rushing wind; the Spirit was life, the very dynamic of the existence of life; the Spirit was God; the power and the life of the Spirit were beyond mere human achievement and attainment; the coming of the Spirit into a man’s life was the coming of God. Above all it was the Spirit who controlled and inspired the prophets..)”
(references: Micah 3:8 ; Isaiah 59:21; Isaiah 61:1; Ezekiel 36: 26, 27)…
“… Twice (verses 32,33) John goes out of his way to point out that the Spirit remained on Jesus. Here was no momentary inspiration. In Jesus the Spirit took up his permanent abode. That is still another way of saying that the mind and the power of God were uniquely in Jesus.”
Less than two pages in my Bible; but, talk about a panting deer drink from a fire hose! Chapter Two is tomorrow so let’s join together again! (March 18th reading)
Soli Deo Gloria!