By This All Men Will Know

John 13:12-17, 35

When he had washed their feet and put on his outer garments and resumed his place, he said to them, “Do you understand what I have done to you?  You call me Teacher and Lord, and you are right, for so I am.  If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet.  For I have given you an example, that you also should do just as I have done to you.  Truly, truly, I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him.  If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them. 

By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

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There has truly been no greater teacher. Having walked a hard road and now facing the hardest trial of his life, Jesus spent a last night together with his closest friends. Knowing he would be betrayed by one of these friends, he bends down to wash their feet. And, as if this tangible act of love was not enough, he explains what he is doing in some of the clearest words imaginable.

"Do you understand?" He cares not only that his words and deeds are true, but also that we are getting it. He is going to any lengths to get the message across. I love you. Now go and share my love.

"I have given you an example." A truly great teacher will give examples. Not just catchy illustrations, but personal testimony of how God's truth and grace are active in their life. A great teacher shows you. But the implication is that the learner is willing to watch, willing to get close enough to the teacher to be led firsthand. We must know him closely in order to live like he did.

There is also an implication here that we should be actively pursuing mentoring relationships with fellow believers. By seeing how an older brother or sister has applied their faith to real life situations, and hearing their specific advice for our own situations, we will drink deeply of the most potent source of strength available. Don't hesitate - find a mentor!

"If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them." Zing! It hurts to realize when your knowledge of truth far outweighs the examples in your life where you are living it out. But Jesus didn't just guilt us into walking in fear of our own hypocrisy! He promised we would be more blessed (happy) if we put our knowledge of his love into practice regularly, rather than sit on it and let it fester unused. Hide it under a bushel? NO!

"By this all people will know." True knowledge occurs in both the heart and the mind. We hear propositional truth and give mental assent. But we must also know the One who is the Truth and let his love touch and shape our hearts. And other people will see the truth only when both realities are present. If they only get preached at, that is a half truth. If they only get physical care, that is also a half truth. Jesus displayed both and people will know we follow him by doing likewise.

I pray that we can take active steps to seek wise mentors, that we seek the personal guidance of the great Teacher himself, and then take active steps to love one another today. Grab the towel. Wash someone's feet today. Pursue what Schaeffer called the "final apologetic":

“Yet, without true Christians loving one another, Christ says the world cannot be expected to listen, even when we give proper answers. Let us be careful, indeed, to spend a lifetime studying to give honest answers. For years the orthodox, evangelical church has done this very poorly. So it is well to spend time learning to answer the questions of men who are about us. But after we have done our best to communicate to a lost world, still we must never forget that the final apologetic which Jesus gives is the observable love of true Christians for true Christians.”

Francis Schaffer, The Great Evangelical Disaster, pgs. 164-165

The Well That Satisfies

John 4:13-15

Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again,  but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”  The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.”

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Time for some honesty.

There are many times and many days when I do not see Jesus as very satisfying. I may hear someone talking about the Bible or Christian life and it sounds like religious jargon. All talk. All abstract concepts and theological acrobatics. On these days I am tempted to find my comfort and satisfaction in whatever my eyes and ears crave. I know that the source of all pleasure is God, but I prefer his creation over the creator. I scan the internet for whatever is new and shiny. I get lost in a new song or film or game or tech gadget. These things appear more tangible, more immediate, and more fulfilling than going to God via prayer or scripture reading. Seeking him seems less like a priceless privilege and more like a tedious effort.

In John 4, a Samaritan woman just wants some water. A simple basic human need.

Jesus sees more.

He sees before him a human being made in His image. He sees her birth, childhood, adulthood. He sees her broken past and hopeless present. He sees that she has been thirsting for more than water.

That woman was not unlike myself. She had 5 husbands, probably in a tireless effort to quench that deep deep longing for companionship that cannot be met by anything in this life. She thought the "next thing" would finally meet that need. The grass was always greener on the other side, and she did not hesitate to jump the fence and put her hopes in the next best thing. But, what she really needed, more than anything else she was thirsting for, more than another husband or another drink from the well, was to be fully known, fully understood, and to connect with the One who knows her true self.

You see that as the chapter progresses. When Jesus tells her about the adultery he sees in her life, that is the point where she is taken aback. She may have been surprised by his willingness to talk with her, but his prophetic omniscience was unbelievable. That was the thing that she went on to tell the whole neighborhood about, and it's what convinced the whole town that Jesus was the Savior of the world:

So the woman left her water jar and went away into town and said to the people, “Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?” They went out of the town and were coming to him....Many Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me all that I ever did.” So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them, and he stayed there two days. And many more believed because of his word. They said to the woman, “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is indeed the Savior of the world.” (John 4:28-30, 39-42)

Being fully known and understood is what we really thirst for, even if that reveals our deepest fears and sins. That is what can satisfy and cause us to believe. And that is what Jesus offers. Not only that, but he approaches us and initiates that relationship, seeking us out even while we cling to earthly wells. He knows all about that and still wants to claim us as his own.

And we must respond to his initiation with worship. As Jesus answered this poor woman's questions, he called her to worship God in spirit and in truth. This transcends the trivialities of which temple site (or music style) is right or wrong. Jesus was calling her to connect with him personally, not just religiously. He was the omnicient God almighty right there in the flesh. He knew the real truth about her. And that's how we need to see him and approach him. As real people, with real struggles and temptations, seeking a real savior who really wants to know us and welcome us into his family.

That is a deep well that truly satisfies.

From Doubt to Certainty

Luke 24:11, 52-53

But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them...

And they worshiped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy, and were continually in the temple blessing God.

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We have reached the end of Luke's gospel account, and in many ways we are seeing the culmination of his opening thesis:

Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things that have been accomplished among us, just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word have delivered them to us, it seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, that you may have certainty concerning the things you have been taught.  (1:1-4)

Luke promised certainty, and he aimed to use eyewitness accounts and structured writing in order to achieve that end. Now after 24 chapters, we have traced the life, work, trials, and death of Jesus with incredible degrees of detail and order. Luke has delivered as promised, but this final chapter reveals that doubts are persistent things, even for those who were closest to Jesus. We already saw how his followers and enemies alike abandoned him in his hour of greatest need. In chapter 24, they will need some final evidence to take them from doubt to certainty.

The evidence needed for true faith is a balance of both reason and experience, with the foundation of both being God's Word. In other words, faith starts with the God who is there and is not silent, and we take hold of this faith by reason and experience. In this chapter, the experience is seeing, hearing, and even touching the risen body of Jesus, which displays his deity and power as well as his closeness and love.

And he said to them, “Why are you troubled, and why do doubts arise in your hearts?  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.” (24:38-39)

In the same chapter, we see Jesus explaining his death and resurrection to the two disciples on the road to Emmaus.

And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself. (24:27)

Now, both the reasoning and the sensory experience were grounded in God's Word, without which we would have no basis to trust our senses or our rationality. In other words, to think and to feel and come to truth about reality, there must be an infinite personal God from whom these human capacities derive. We are made in his image, and he designed us to both think and feel to understand the world around us. But only in the context of his personal involvement in our lives, through His Spirit and by his written word.

In my life, I have swung back and forth between these two ways to know truth. I became a Christian at age 16, coming out of typical teenage angst and being introduced to God's love in a very emotional way, via Pentecostal worship. All I knew at that point was that God was real, present, and the only source of unconditional love. But I couldn't prove anything about him besides the feeling I had.

Years later, I arrived at Seminary searching for more solid answers. Previously, I had approached the Bible as a mystic source book, reading to find hidden meanings in the obscure details. Now, I learned about systematic theology, where the whole bible is broken into exhaustive categories and put in logical order. I read Romans for the first time, learning that my peace with God was not merely a peaceful feeling, but really a peace treaty, signed in the blood that was shed at the cross, in real space and time (Rom. 5:1). God's love for me was objective and as unchanging as the historically documented cross and empty tomb.

But as the pendulum swung, I began to lose my urgency in prayer. The dynamic relational aspect of my walk with God had been downplayed as I became more interested in philosphical arguments and proofs. I was forgetting that, while Truth is propositional, Truth is also a Person.

The disciples were still struggling with doubt when Jesus showed up in his resurrected glory. By the end of the chapter they were worshiping with joy and blessing God in the temple! What changed them was a Savior who explained the Truth and embodied the Truth, engaging both their hearts and their minds.

I pray that I continue to grow on this journey to love my Savior with both my mind and heart. He is worth explaining and defending intellectually. And he is worth seeking personally as a friend and father. Luke's gospel account leaves us with both challenges. Will we heed the historical claims of Jesus' deity and atoning death? And will we respond to the Truth with worship and joy in the context of a dynamic relationship?

Luke the Historian

Luke 3:23, 24

Jesus, when he began his ministry, was about thirty years of age, being the son (as was supposed) of Joseph, the son of Heli, the son of Matthat, the son of Levi, the son of Melchi, the son of Jannai, the son of Joseph...

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Chapter 3 is another introduction of sorts - an intro to the adult life and ministry of Jesus. There are several verses here which fit the theme verse we discussed in chapter one - that Luke is writing for the purpose of instilling certainty in his readers. This chapter fulfills this purpose in at least two ways:

1. Historical Markers. Verses 1-3 provide incredible detail about the specific time in which these events took place, making Luke's narrative a clear example of historical biography rather than dramatic fiction. The naming of specific rulers and leaders would have been the most accurate way to date events, and scholars today have relied on these markers in dating the events and when they were recorded. Luke's extensive genealogy in this chapter presents yet another common time marker from this era - the family tree. This would have been included by Luke mainly to place Jesus in space-time history, as opposed to promoting a sense of legend or myth.

2. Journalistic Style. Continuing the tone of an essentially journalistic account from chapters 1 and 2, Luke describes the early events of John the Baptist in a matter-of-fact literal manner. The events are recorded with concrete imagery and verbatim dialogue, apparently collected in eyewitness accounts and organized by Luke in a straightforward chronological fashion. C. S. Lewis commented likewise that the writing style of the Gospels in no way resemble typical first century legend writings:

"I have been reading poems, romances, vision-literature, legends, myths all my life. I know what they are like. I know that not one of them is like this. Of this text there are only two possible views. Either this is reportage -- Or else, some unknown writer without known predecessors or successors, suddenly anticipated the whole technique of modern, novelistic, realistic narrative. If it is untrue, it must be narrative of that kind. The reader who doesn't see this has simply not learned to read." (from Christian Reflections)

What is the purpose of these markers, genealogies, and literal stylings? Why does it matter that we have certainty about the times, places, and historical reality of these events? Why not just believe what you choose to believe? Well, contrary to popular notions today, the primitive world of the ancient Near-East had a firm grip on the difference between reality and fantasy. In fact, one could argue that the modern world's acceptance of pure subjective truth and individualized "blind faith" is quite a step backward from the simple statement of facts found in the Gospel narrative. What brings hope - real grounded hope - is the certainty that my Creator actually showed up in human history and intervened on my behalf, bearing the death that I deserved, and rising bodily from the dead to demonstrate his love and the promise of resurrection for all who trust in Him. This is good news indeed.