[New to our exegesis of John’s Gospel? Try starting at The Beginning — John 1:1-2].

The World Hates Jesus

In our last two blogs on this passage, we noted Johannine themes of chronos and kairos time, and the echo of the Temptations of Christ in John’s Gospel reminiscent of the accounts of such in Matthew and Luke. Today we see the growing hostility to Jesus in response to his radical teachings and miracles. He is bucking the system and he’s in trouble! But it’s more than that: the presence of the Light pierces the darkness and exposes that which deceives humankind. The plot thickens with growing tension and intrigue.

In verse one, we find οὐ γὰρ ἤθελε (translated above as did not wish to go): the Imperfect active of θελω, however, gives the attitude of refusal to go into Judea. One could translate this: he dared not go! “The Jews” wanted to kill him. Once again — and this is so important to mention again — “The Jews” are the religious authorities who oppose Jesus and not the Jewish people. This is self-evident throughout John’s Gospel since these crowds were nearly entirely Jewish, as Jesus was! “The Jews” are religious authorities who have lost their way and can refer to such authorities in any racial group, church, religious establishment, and even government and business. These are simply forces that oppose the Truth. (I have at times realized I was one of “The Jews” in this sense in low points of my ministry). Jesus dared not go publically to Judea because in that region “The Jews” had a lot of power and their intent to kill him was a real threat.

These pages of the Gospel of John radiate a growing hostility between the powerful and this itinerant rabbi. A related kind of hostility is that of “the world” (κόσμος) toward Jesus, for the world hates Jesus. This Greek word for world is sometimes used as the spiritual enemy of God, and also used as the object of God’s affection (John 3:16).

Then, in verse 12, we find our familiar word (γογγυσμὸς) used to describe the murmuring or complaining of some in the crowd against Jesus. As we’ve noted, this is a loaded word that ties back to the Exodus (in the LXX) when the wandering Hebrews murmured against — opposed — the Plan of God.

Lastly, it is interesting to note in vv. 12-13, that some in the crowd accused Jesus of deceiving the people — in fact the opposite was true. He was telling the Truth and the religious authorities were deceiving the people to preserve their own power. And those who might publically defend Jesus were afraid of the authorities who wielded great power, though some had the courage to speak up and call Jesus “a good man.”

There are many ways we could sum up this section: here is one. Those in power have the force of intimidation and even the tools to deprive one of livelihood and sometimes life itself. Jesus confronted powerful structures and people with Truth and Light, revealing these tangled systems that hurt and destroy people.

And so they will hurt him!

It was true about the prophets. It was true about Jesus. And, if we find ourselves confronting evil systems, it will likely be true about us.

But that’s not the end of the Story!

[New to our exegesis of John’s Gospel? Try starting at The Beginning — John 1:1-2].

Devilicious!

I mentioned last time that John chapter seven is one of my favorite parts of the Bible. Since these exegetical blogs are very short, I’m going to use four blogs on the first 13 verses alone. Last time, we noted Johannine themes of chronos and kairos time. Today, the echo of the Temptations of Christ in John’s Gospel reminiscent of the accounts of such in Matthew and Luke.

First, we travel back to John 6:15. Jesus performed an amazing miracle of multiplying bread and fish that awed the crowds who then wanted to make him king. To avoid them, Jesus withdrew to a lonely place. We remember in the temptations of Christ, Satan offered Jesus the kingdoms of the world.

Then, in John 6:25f, the people want more bread from Jesus who scolds them for not wanting what it represents: the Bread who is Jesus. Here we have an echo of the temptation of Jesus by Satan to turn stones into bread.

Now, in John 7:3 – 8, Jesus’ brothers, who are identified here as unbelievers, urge Jesus to go to Jerusalem and do signs to prove he is who he says he is. This is an echo of Satan’s temptation for Jesus to throw himself down from the pinnacle of the Temple and so display his power for all to see in Jerusalem.

Common also to the temptations of Christ and John chapter 7 is the topic of timing we partly addressed in our last blog. Jesus would make miracle bread, he would ascend as King of kings, and resurrection power would be exhibited through him — but not according to the timetable of the devil, the “world,” or unbelievers (his brothers) — but according to God’s Plan. Jesus acts according to a timing of events that shows he is in control and, even when arrested, he freely gives up his life for us — it is not taken from him.

Sometimes we’re tempted to think of temptations as swerving off the road and behaving in a way contrary to our normal lives. But here Jesus is tempted to do or be the very things he would do anyway, but for the wrong reason and at the wrong time.

That’s far more conniving on the part of our ancient enemy!

[New to our exegesis of John’s Gospel? Try starting at The Beginning — John 1:1-2].

What Time Is It?

John chapter seven is one of my favorite parts of the Bible. It is packed full of meaning. Even the lead-off 13 verses are jammed with goodies. Since these exegetical blogs are very short, I’m going to use four blogs on the 13 verses alone. First, we’ll look at John’s sense of time, then a remarkable echo of Matthew and Luke’s Temptation narratives, then a look at the hostility of the “world” to Jesus, and finally a quick understanding of John’s chronology of Jesus’ life compared with that of the Synoptic Gospels.

On the surface, this passage may seem odd and even deceptive. Jesus’ brothers — not yet believers — say he should go to the Jerusalem Feast of Tabernacles to show himself to the world through the demonstration of miracles. In verse 6 Jesus says,  “My time (kairos) has not yet come.” He goes on to say in verse 8, “Go to the festival yourselves. I am not going (anabeino — going up) to this festival, for my time (kairos) has not yet fully come (pleroo — been fulfilled or completed).”

His brothers are simply urging him. to go and prove to the world who he is at one of the most popular annual feasts in the capital city. But Jesus’ words are filled with double meanings. He isn’t going to go up (anabeino) to Jerusalem because his time (kairos) has not been fulfilled (pleroo). The word for “going up” is the same word used for Jesus’ ascension (Jn. 6:62, 20:17). The word for time (kairos) is often used differently than another Greek word for time: chronos. Chronos normally refers to chronological time. Kairos often refers to a deeper qualitative kind of time — as in, My time of life. And “fulfilled” (pleroo) is a word packed with meaning, used eschatologically in the context of the fulfillment of all things, the completion of history, and the fulfillment of all hopes and dreams.

Put all of this together, and Jesus appears to be saying: I’m not going up to Jerusalem because it is not time for those events (death, resurrection, ascension) that result in the completion of what has been promised. So, instead, he goes in secret. He’s there but not yet there because when he will really will be there, all hell will break loose and the redemptive work of God goes into high gear.

At a recent Bible study, a gentleman wondered if he ever had a “Road to Damascus” experience. He experiences God in the ongoing events of his life (chronos), but wondered if he would ever be granted an extraordinary event such that a moment of his life was suddenly infused with kairos! I don’t think kairos needs to be so dramatic. Perhaps it is more like sinking into the Presence of God in such a way that you lose all sense of chronos. You simply are. With the Lord.

What a wonderful time that is!

[New to our exegesis of John’s Gospel? Try starting at The Beginning — John 1:1-2].

Rejection!

I have to say, this chapter feels like it will never end. Last time, we went over one of the most difficult sections of the New Testament: Jesus told a crowd they must eat his flesh and drink his blood prior to any eucharistic context. Today we wrap up the chapter with verses that likely began right after verse 50, with verses 51-59 added to give context to Jesus as the Bread of Life, yet containing eucharistic motifs that would have been baffling to the crowd in chapter 6. IF we assume that is true, that verses 60-71actually follow verse 50 with verses 51-29 dropped in, THEN verses in the latter part of John 6 make sense.

For example, Jesus said in verses 56 and 57 of this chapter: ⁵⁶ Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me and I in them. ⁵⁷ Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me. And then, as the text is now, Jesus said six verses later: ⁶³ It is the spirit that gives life; the flesh is useless. That is simply odd.

However, verses 60-71 continue with the themes that had been developed through verses 1-50, and it makes things must clearer. Even though Jesus tries to make the argument that his presence as the Bread of Life given from Heaven is life-giving, his followers find this “scandalous” (v. 61 literally in Greek. “Highly offensive.”). This crowd of followers gathered around him because he gave them free miracle bread earlier, but now the teaching gets hard (v. 60, “hard, harsh”). They murmur (one of our favorite Greek words — here the form is γογγύζουσιν — used in the Greek Old Testament to translate from Hebrew the murmuring of the Hebrews wandering in the desert).

The result of Jesus’ difficult sermon is that many of his disciples literally “break off” (v. 66). And then a rather sentimental scene evolves. Jesus turns to his inner core of followers — The Twelve — and asks, “Do you also wish to go away?” Peter answers, “Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.” These verses echo the Synoptic Gospels when Jesus asked, “Who do people say the Son of Man is?” Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God” (Matt. 16:16). Notice Jesus’ reference to the Son of Man here in John 6:62.

So, what can we make of all this? Sometimes, the teaching gets hard. We may not comprehend it. It may challenge our deeply held beliefs. It may feel too scandalous to believe; too radical; too much of an upheaval of our lives! But I love Peter’s response to Jesus: where else will we go? We believe in YOU! We trust in YOU! The words may not make sense…yet…but we TRUST you!

Yep. LOTS of times in life I had no clue what was going on…I just trusted. It isn’t a philosophy, a theology, a tactical set of tools, or a self-help guru — it’s the Person of Christ I’ve grown to love and trust even when I don’t understand.

And therein lies PEACE and HOPE. To God be the glory!

[New to our exegesis of John’s Gospel? Try starting at The Beginning — John 1:1-2].

I Have to Drink…WHAT?

Our passage for today highlights the way New Testament exegesis sheds light on the development of the Scriptures. It also gives the bare outline of the beginnings of Christian worship.

Verses 51-59 are clearly “Johannine” or written by John and/or his followers. The syntax, grammar, and word usage such as “Truly, truly,” “eternal life,” “to feed,” and “to remain” match John’s composition. So, you could say there is literary evidence that this section is authentic and part of the Gospel.

But what about historical evidence? There is a break between what comes before — John 6:41-50 — and this section, vv. 51-59. Where before it can be argued that Jesus’ comments made sense against an Old Testament background, and he is trying to lead his biblically astute listeners to see how their tradition lends itself to the “coming down” of the “Son of Man,” in this section we find concepts that would not at all make sense to his listeners.

I once thought Jesus was simply saying things here that made no sense but would one day make sense and, when remembered, would produce an “Ohhhhhh, so that’s what he meant!!” In addition, this was an example of a hard teaching of Jesus that sent people away confused, and sometimes the hard teachings of Jesus also anger us and leave us distraught. And maybe that’s the right way to view these verses.

Another way is to consider the possibility that these verses for today were actually part of the Last Supper narrative in the Gospel of John which is surprisingly missing. The other Gospels have a Last Supper narrative, and there are hints and clues to it throughout John, but nowhere is it more clear than right here.

Soooo, some argue that the Johannine Last Supper narrative was moved here to interpret the section that came before it. There is no antecedent in the Old Testament to eating flesh and drinking blood except in derogatory ways. It would be like talking about FaceBook and Twitter in 1995 — it just wouldn’t make sense.

Why then would someone move a Last Supper narrative here? Because it is a way to further interpret Jesus’ comments in vv. 41-50 and give them more depth against the backdrop of the eucharist which Christians were practicing at the time John was written.

In vv. 51-59, it is not enough to believe in Jesus: we must also eat his flesh and drink his blood. In Aramaic, there is no word for “body” other than “flesh” but in Greek, “body” and “flesh” are two different words. The Synoptics understood Jesus (speaking Aramaic) to mean, “This is my body given for you,” but John translated the Aramaic to Greek as, “the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”

So, either the religious leaders were thoroughly confounded by Jesus’ strange words of eating his flesh and drinking his blood and later understood what he meant; or, this section was moved here to give clarification to Jesus’ discourse on Bread of Life.

In any event, he took bread, blessed it, broke it, and gave it to us saying, “This is my body (flesh) given for you”; and he took the cup, blessed it, and said, “This is the blood of the New Covenant shed for the forgiveness of sins” — and as we eat this bread, and drink this cup, WE become Body of Christ, taken, blessed, and given to the world as God’s redemptive community.

Thanks be to God!

[New to our exegesis of John’s Gospel? Try starting at The Beginning — John 1:1-2].

HEY! I Am Ordained!

Was Jesus anti-Jewish and anti-Moses? Some passages like this one could give that impression. For example, “the Jews” were complaining in verse 41 and elsewhere in this Gospel “the Jews” oppose Jesus. But then, they were all Jews! John’s reference to “the Jews” must refer to those Jewish leaders who resisted Jesus. Some Christians over the centuries have done great harm by thinking John meant these things in racial terms which is just plain ridiculous and doesn’t make sense.

But what about appearing “anti-Moses”? Jesus’ radical interpretation of the Hebrew Scriptures seems to be really irking these leaders. He argues (see our exegesis of John 6:25f) that Moses did not give them the miracle manna bread from heaven but God did. Furthermore, God is now sending from heaven a new Bread of Life that, when eaten, one never dies. This Bread comes down from heaven as manna did, but is Jesus himself (and his teaching).

Connecting even further to the Moses narrative in Exodus, we see again this fun verb Ἐγόγγυζον that leads off verse 41 showing emphasis. This verb is the same one used in the LXX (Septuagint Greek OT translation used at Jesus’ time) describing the murmuring of the Hebrews in the wilderness. They murmured against what God was doing. Throughout this section, Jesus draws upon language from Exodus to indicate God is doing a new Exodus with another kind of Bread of Heaven. Perhaps not so much an anti-Moses thing, but a Moses-was-cool-but-Something-and-Someone-Greater-Is-Now Happening thing.

So, now the religious leaders are getting really fed up with him because he is clearly a heretic for saying such crazy things, re-interpreting the Scriptures as if he had the authority to do that, and claiming he was a greater Bread of heaven no matter who dropped it from Above!

You want to know what really gets us religious leaders hot under the collar (pun intended)? Challenging our authority and making fun of our robes! We are, for heaven’s sake, ordained — a big party was thrown in honor of us afterward. We are degreed — so don’t argue with us. And we are commissioned by the Elders — with a 403B and health benefits.

So there! Stay in your place!

Er…Jesus didn’t.

[New to our exegesis of John’s Gospel? Try starting at The Beginning — John 1:1-2].

I chose you; no, wait, you chose me!

Jesus is the Life-giver. He is bread of life who satisfies our deepest hunger and provides the living water that quenches our greatest thirst. On the one hand, we can understand this divine bread to mean his teaching — we’ll see more on this in our next blog. But it is also his very presence who, like manna, came down from Heaven.

While it seems as though Jesus could forsake God’s will (v. 40) — think of the Garden of Gethsemane and his prayer to take the cup of suffering away — instead, Jesus puts God’s will first. “Not my will but yours be done.” We find echoes of that here.

And what is the will of God for Jesus: that all who see Jesus — gaze upon him — and believe, belong to Jesus, have Life everlasting, and will be raised on the Last Day.

Jesus refers to “everything the Father gives me” in verse 37 and that Jesus should lose nothing of “all that he has given me” in verse 39. These verses appear to refer to the people who believe and belong to Jesus — they have been given to him. Presbyterians and Reformed believers love this section because it would indicate these people are given to Jesus, or destined to believe.

But on the other hand, there are many verses in John that emphasize the need to make a choice. For example, in John 12:36 Jesus says: “While you have the light, believe in the light, so that you may become children of light.”

So which is it? There have been countless debates regarding predestination and free will. Some scholars think we are reading 16th-century arguments into John’s Gospel when both claims would seem ridiculous to the people of Jesus’ time. To say one came to the state of believing in Jesus as the Son independent of God’s sovereign will would seem absurd, and to say that one is supernaturally handed over to Jesus regardless of their free will seems oppressive. The two belong together.

I just don’t know how. Did I choose God or did God choose me? Am I blessed with Life because I was smart enough to “see” him and believe? Or because God graciously extended this gift to me even though I am so foolish? The first would swell my head. The second takes away my freedom to choose.

Somehow, I guess I don’t need to know the answer to this dilemma. I enjoy the Life the Lord bestows however that came about!

Have you fully given your life to the One who has fully given Life to you?

[New to our exegesis of John’s Gospel? Try starting at The Beginning — John 1:1-2].

Wonder Bread

In my last blog, we looked at the wordplay in this section regarding the “work” of God and that of the followers of God. In today’s blog based on the same passage, we draw out Jesus’ interesting formulaic response to the crowd surrounding him indicating his familiarity with biblical interpretation of his day. Jesus comes across here as something of a Bible scholar. It reminds me of the Road to Emmaus episode in Luke 24 where Jesus does Bible study with two disciples to give them hope.

This all centers around what we noted before: the giving of manna — divine food from above — to the wandering Hebrews under Moses was considered among the greatest miracles during Moses’ leadership. The crowd cites in verse 31, “The Scriptures say, ‘Moses gave them bread from heaven to eat.’” However, nowhere in the Bible does it say this. There are passages, however, that say God provides bread from heaven.

Jesus responds to the crowd, “Moses did not give [past tense in Greek] you the bread from heaven, but my father gives [present tense] the true bread from heaven.” The NLT English flows better for modern readers, but my translation here is more literal which is important only because it reveals a rabbinic midrash-type response — a method people were familiar with in Jesus’ time. Jesus appears to be saying basically, “when Scripture says ‘he’ gave you bread from heaven, the ‘he’ is not Moses, it is my father. Furthermore, my father is present now giving the true bread from heaven, which is the Son.”

Jesus not only gave original teaching but also re-interpreted the Hebrew Scriptures in an effort to show God was at work in him in a new way providing the true miracle bread.

And the people responded, “Lord, always give us this bread.”

Indeed! Because He feeds the deepest hunger within.

[New to our exegesis of John’s Gospel? Try starting at The Beginning — John 1:1-2].

The Lord Reigns (and Rains!)

This passage has so much loaded into it that I find it difficult to decide where to begin!

The first thing to note is the question asked by the disciples in verse 25. The New Living Translation above translates it as, “Rabbi, when did you get here?” The NLT rightly translates the meaning of the Greek. However, it misses the nuance and ambiguity of the question. Literally, in Greek, this verse can be translated as, “Rabbi, when did you come here?” Why the slight difference in English?

In the Gospel of John, simple things like water, bread, and road have deeper meanings. While the question asked may have been simply, “Hey, when did you get here?”, John sees a much deeper meaning. Jumping down to verse 33 we see a clue, “The true bread of God is the one who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”

The Jews believed the greatest miracle of Moses’ desert wandering was the raining down of loaves from heaven (Ex. 16:4) and its memory in Psalm 78:24, “He rained on them manna to eat.” The play on words between “come” in verse 25 and “come down” in verse 33 should be retained to keep with John’s possibly intended double meaning.

We see something similar regarding the Greek word “work” and its various forms (verb and noun). The NLT translates verse 27 as, “But don’t be so concerned about perishable things,” which is accurate to the meaning of the Greek but misses the play on the Greek word for work throughout these verses. In Greek, this verse can literally be translated as, “You should not be working [striving for] for perishable food.”

Again, the NLT’s translation of verse 28 is accurate to the meaning of the Greek (“We want to perform God’s works”), but the reader misses John’s play on words.” Verse 28 is literally in Greek, “What must we do, then, to work the ‘works’ of God?” Jesus replies to the question, “This is the only work God wants from you,” — here, the NLT uses “work” in English, but in verse 30, in order to keep the English in better form (What can you do?), misses the wordplay that is literally, in Greek: “What is the work you do?”

The NLT isn’t wrong. The authors worked at making the English readable and flow well. But any translation of a book from another language can miss both poetic quality and double meanings intended in the original form.

But what do all these “work” verses mean anyway?

God’s work is to demonstrate there is something bigger than Moses going on in Jesus. This work of God is providing a manna that leads to eternal life: a food that satisfies our deepest hungery.

The disciple’s work (yours and mine) is to believe in the One who has come down for us and our salvation. And, to believe, in Greek means to trust your weight to it. This is not mere intellectual assent. To believe means to trust your full self to what you believe in!

It means, every day, trusting in the One who came down for you!

[New to our exegesis of John’s Gospel? Try starting at The Beginning — John 1:1-2].

The Food and the Sea

Well, we have a curious situation here! The feeding of the five thousand is followed by Jesus walking on the sea in Matthew and Mark, and that’s true here as well, but the way John describes the incident is different. On the one hand, they use a lot of the same language which would indicate they were working off a common source. But John’s account is simpler and has a different focus.

Matthew and Mark seem to emphasize the miracle of Jesus walking on water and calming the storm. But John’s account — which scholars consider more “primitive” — seems to indicate that he viewed the incident as continuing the theme of Jesus as a kind of uber-Moses: a redeemer and victor. However, Jesus is reluctant to be declared that.

At the end of the last scene, the crowd wanted to make Jesus a king but Jesus escaped from them. In this scene, Jesus indicates that he is far greater than simply a political redeemer — he is God!

In verse 20, Jesus says Ἐγώ εἰμι (I Am): the phrase used often in John as the divine name. The sea incident for John is not so much a nautical miracle as an occasion for Jesus to identify himself as God who is doing this provision of divine food. It confirms that, in Jesus, God is present just as the Lord was present during the Mossaic Exodus, only a bigger Exodus is going on here.

There are several Old Testament scriptures that seem relevant to this interpretation Here are some related verses from Psalm 107:

O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good,
    for his steadfast love endures forever.
² Let the redeemed of the Lord say so,
    those he redeemed from trouble…

⁴ Some wandered in desert wastes,
    finding no way to an inhabited town;
⁵ hungry and thirsty,
    their soul fainted within them.
⁶ Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble,
    and he delivered them from their distress…
⁹ For he satisfies the thirsty,
    and the hungry he fills with good things.

²³ Some went down to the sea in ships,
    doing business on the mighty waters;
²⁴ they saw the deeds of the Lord,
    his wondrous works in the deep.
²⁵ For he commanded and raised the stormy wind,
    which lifted up the waves of the sea.
²⁶ They mounted up to heaven; they went down to the depths;
    their courage melted away in their calamity;
²⁷ they reeled and staggered like drunkards
    and were at their wits’ end.
²⁸ Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble,
    and he brought them out from their distress;
²⁹ he made the storm be still,
    and the waves of the sea were hushed.

Food (v. 9) and the stormy sea (v. 29) are linked together. Jesus is God, the I AM, who is the same One who provided the bread of the Exodus and who calms the seas, and is present now to do even more.

At Passover, the angel of death passed over the houses of those marked with the blood of the lamb and spared them. But in Jesus, there is Someone greater. Those marked with the blood of this Lamb receive eternal Life!

And he is present now to satisfy your deepest hunger, and calm the raging seas in your life!