Partakers Christian Podcasts

Gems in Revelation - Part 129

Gems in the book of Revelation

Part 129 - Revelation 2:17

Puzzles in Pergamum

 

The ‘gem’ is in the promise that ends the letter following the words ‘to the one who is victorious’. Here is the rest of the letter :
To the angel of the church in Pergamum write:
These are the words of him who has the sharp, double-edged sword. 13 I know where you live—where Satan has his throne. Yet you remain true to my name. You did not renounce your faith in me, not even in the days of Antipas, my faithful witness, who was put to death in your city—where Satan lives.
14 Nevertheless, I have a few things against you: There are some among you who hold to the teaching of Balaam, who taught Balak to entice the Israelites to sin so that they ate food sacrificed to idols and committed sexual immorality.15 Likewise, you also have those who hold to the teaching of the Nicolaitans.16 Repent therefore! Otherwise, I will soon come to you and will fight against them with the sword of my mouth.
17 Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To the one who is victorious, I will give some of the hidden manna. I will also give that person a white stone with a new name written on it, known only to the one who receives it.

This letter to Pergamum is full of puzzles. We do not know what the things said about the church actually refer to, nor do we know quite what the gifts for those who were victorious mean. However it would be a pity to do only 6 gems for the 7 churches - so here goes!

Pergamum was a considerable city with more than 120,000 inhabitants. It had a vigorous and prosperous life so there will have been a great many small firms giving an active but somewhat chaotic life to it. This seems to have been reflected in the church. We do not know exactly what the imitation of Balaam implied - he seems to be vilified in the New Testament for what he did when the Israelites were in the plains of Moab although the Old Testament account scarcely seems to merit such ill favour. What the Nicolaitans taught we do not know. We can conclude that the church was a bit of a mess with several factions teaching things that were quite wrong.

Yet, even so the church had remained faithful through persecution severe enough to lead to the martyrdom of at least one man, It is probable that the main problem the church members faced when not being actively persecuted would arise from the need for those involved in the main trades to belong to the appropriate guilds. There will have been a Baker’s guild, a Butcher’s guild, a Tent Maker’s guild etc. The problem these caused members of the church was that they would hold regular social meetings, which members would be obliged to attend, at which there would be much feasting, much eating of food offered up at the idol temples, much drinking and much revelry often of a sexual nature. The big and contentious question was how Christian were to cope with all that. They were the same sort of problems that caused so much trouble in the church in Corinth and indeed in the churches all round the Roman/Greek world but seem to have been particularly acute in Pergamum since it is said to be ‘where Satan has his throne’ (Revelation 2:13).

Jesus told the members of the church to repent else he would ‘fight against them with the sword of my mouth’ strongly suggesting that things were very wrong and it is words and argument that are needed to put things straight.

As a result of all their difficulties and struggles the promised gifts for the victorious are ‘hidden manna’ and ‘white stones with a new name written on it, known only to the one who receives it’. Both those are puzzling. The best guesses seem to be: first, that the hidden manna is a reference back to the journey of Israel through the wilderness when they ran out of food. The people of the church in Pergamum will receive something, still hidden, which will encourage and sustain them for their onward journeys of faith. Second, the white stones are an even greater mystery, particularly in the matter of whose name is on them. Pergamum was built on a very dark, almost black, rock and white stone tablets were used for inscriptions. Was the name the very special name of Jesus “ that no one knows but he himself” mentioned in Revelation 19:12 etc.?, It is possible. Or was it the new name that was to be given to every disciple to fulfil the prophecies of Isaiah 62:2 (“The nations will see your vindication, and all kings your glory; you will be called by a new name that the mouth of the LORD will bestow”). This latter would seem the most likely. They would be given a new name signifying a new start in life and a new relationship with the Lord.

The problem of fitting into the culture we are in and in which we have to live is very real for us all. The promises of new spiritual food and a new relationship with the Lord are wonderful promises for us all. So despite the puzzles of Pergamum there are good and rich things to be learnt here.

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Gems in Revelation - Part 128

Gems in the book of Revelation

Part 128 - Revelation 2:11

No second death.

 

The ‘gem’ is in the promise that ends the letter following the words ‘to the one who is victorious’. Here is the rest of the letter :

⁸ To the angel of the church in Smyrna write:
These are the words of him who is the First and the Last, who died and came to life again. ⁹ I know your afflictions and your poverty—yet you are rich! I know about the slander of those who say they are Jews and are not, but are a synagogue of Satan. ¹⁰ Do not be afraid of what you are about to suffer. I tell you, the devil will put some of you in prison to test you, and you will suffer persecution for ten days. Be faithful, even to the point of death, and I will give you life as your victor’s crown.
¹¹ Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches. The one who is victorious will not be hurt at all by the second death.

The church in Smyrna had its problems and was soon going to get more and greater ones! We don’t know how John knew enough to say this unless it was a prophecy. More serious persecution was coming their way. It wasn’t a rich church, as people normally counted richness, but they were rich in the way they lived their lives, particularly their spiritual lives. Jesus, through John, is promising them that he will be with them whatever may happen to them so they should be high in confidence, in courage and faithfulness. Then he makes a promise to them that is hard to understand: “you will not be hurt at all by the second death”. There are two problems here: what is the second death and why should they be at all concerned about it anyway.

Second death is a phrase that only appears in Revelation at 20:6 and 14, and 21:8. The first of these says that those who share the first resurrection (with Jesus) have nothing to fear from it, the other two are both about ‘the lake of fire’. This seems to be about the place of everlasting torment often mentioned in the New Testament, particularly by Jesus in places like the parable of the sheep and he goats where he says ‘depart from me, you who are cursed into the eternal fire’ (Matthew 25:41) and this is ‘eternal punishment’ (Matthew 25:46). These statements seem very much at odds with the other things Jesus said.

There are places in the world where such language would be deemed right and proper by the followers of other faiths in relation to the ‘infidels’ but for those of us in the Western world it strikes a strange note. It may simply be a different way of expressing things where only analogies can be used but it still seems very strange.

The best way round the problem is probably the word picture drawn by C. S. Lewis in his children’s book The Last Battle (one of his children’s books about Narnia but they are full of deeply spiritual insights!). At the end of the book and the world all the characters, human, animal and mythical, are forced to look into the eyes of Aslan, the lion, who is the image of Christ. ‘When some looked the expression of their faces changed terribly - it was fear and hatred …. And all who looked at Aslan in that way swerved to his left and disappeared into his huge black shadow …. The watching children never saw them again. I don’t know what became of them. But the others looked in at the face of Aslan and loved him though some of them were very frightened at the same time. And all these came in at the door, in on Aslan’s right. …’.
‘I don’t know what became of them’ is a very wise comment we should take for ourselves.

The faithful people of Smyrna did not have to worry about such things for they would not ‘be hurt at all by the second death’. The same goes for all those who are faithful in these days!

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Gems in Revelation - Part 126

Gems in the book of Revelation

Part 126 - Revelation 1:16

Words

 

The main theme behind much of this passage and right on into the next two chapters about the seven churches is words, summarized in the image of the sharp double-edged sword coming out of his mouth. John was on the island of Patmos ‘because of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus’, which probably means he had been banished there because the authorities did not like the effects of his preaching, his words, in his home area. Then the ‘voice like a trumpet’ tells him to write things down. That instruction is repeated in 1:19. All these are about words, conveying to people the message about Jesus and his kingdom.

All of which gives us some major problems in this 21st century. As never before including the time John was living, the emphasis of communication is switching from spoken and written words to pictures. Never before have people been able to produce pictures as easily as they can now in this age of computers, laptops, ipads and smart-phones. There used to be a saying that a picture was worth a thousand words but that is no longer true. Too many pictures are how too many people want to be entertained and informed. Pictures, moving pictures on these devices, suffer one great disadvantage - they are swiftly gone and cannot be easily recalled while a book can be read, referred to, looked back at and generally thought about before one moves on.

What would a truly modern day image of Jesus look like? He would not have a sword representing words coming out of his mouth; he might well be carrying a laptop shining with golden radiance all around it!

We must not avoid the implications of this remarkable change. In this country the original job of Sunday Schools was to teach the children of the poor to read so that they could read the Bible. What must we do to encourage people not used to reading to turn to the scriptures and read them, regularly consistently, in big chunks so that they get the sense of them properly, with true understanding so that their ideas are personally developed and not those implanted from some other authority?

 

Then there are the many millions round the world who cannot read anything in their own mother tongue because it does not yet exist or they are illiterate anyway. Do we support the agencies that are constantly working to try and remedy that situation?

The crucial part of the discipling that Jesus instructed us to do (Matthew 28: 19) is to lead people to understand something of the wonders of the Word that he has given us. That is easy for those of us who are written word oriented in much that we do. It is not so easy for the many more people who do not naturally turn to reading for their pleasure but prefer the many images of today. Our, your - the readers - task is to lead many more people to a proper understanding of the Word of God.

The seven stars and seven lampstands amongst which John stood, and was to work, were representative of all churches of all ages. Let us stand amongst them with something of the same sense of urgency and devotion that John did in his day and generation that we should teach those struggling with words.

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Gems in Revelation - Part 125

Gems in the book of Revelation
Part 125 - Revelation 1:9-20

A Portrait of Jesus

 

We do not know what Jesus looked like. Paintings, by Westerners, show him as a tall Nordic type, broad shouldered, blond and blue eyed. All of which is very unlikely. If we may guess what he looked like he was probably fairly small by modern standards, dark skinned, with black hair and dark brown eyes. It will have been his personality rather than his size that enabled him to walk through a crowd intent on lynching him (Luke 4: 30). I hope by now you are saying to yourself something like ‘so what, does it matter’. Of course, it doesn’t.

So when John wants to tell us what Jesus was like he says something quite different:

 

“and among the lampstands was someone like a son of man, dressed in a robe reaching down to his feet and with a golden sash around his chest. 14 The hair on his head was white like wool, as white as snow, and his eyes were like blazing fire.15 His feet were like bronze glowing in a furnace, and his voice was like the sound of rushing waters. 16 In his right hand he held seven stars, and coming out of his mouth was a sharp, double-edged sword. His face was like the sun shining in all its brilliance.” (Revelation 1:13-16).

 

It is an impossible picture if taken literally but it isn’t meant to be taken literally; it is a word picture. The different parts of the image are copies of Old Testament images. The ‘son of man’ is described in Daniel 7: 13 and is a figure of a human being but also stands for all the people of God. It was also the way that Jesus referred to himself. He did not say ’I’ or ‘myself’; he talked about himself as the ‘son of man’. The ‘robe and the golden sash’, the blazing eyes’ and the ‘glowing bronze feet’ are all reminiscent of the divine messenger in Daniel 10: 5, 6, who is described as a man but might be an angel or even Jesus or God himself. ‘White hair’ is like that of the God figure in the vision of Daniel in his 7: 9. The ‘sound of rushing waters‘ uses the image of the approach of God’s glory in Ezekiel 43: 2. His ‘face like the sun shining in all its brilliance’ resembles the ‘likeness of the glory of the Lord’ in Ezekiel 1: 27, 28. You will note that I have deliberately left out the image of the ‘sharp double edged sword’ reserving that as the next great gem for next week.

The whole picture is not a gem but more like a necklace of gems strung together to glorify our Lord. This is Jesus - beyond ordinary words to describe and therefore described with images drawn from Old Testament visions, with which it has much in common. Images like these have to be employed to try and give some impression of his glory.

The description goes on as he touches the worshipping John. He describes himself as the first and the last, which is the same as being Alpha and Omega (the first and last letters in the Greek alphabet, so the A and the Z in English), the resurrected one, who will be alive for ever and ever. Therefore he is of the same status as the ‘Alpha and the Omega, the Lord God, who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty’, all descriptions of God in the very recent verse 8. Thus we see something more than a hint of the Trinity in his self-description.

But in the end, it is no good me explaining the image or you reading about it - it is meant to be thought about and meditated upon. Do just that.

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Gems in Revelation - Part 124

Gems in the book of Revelation

Part 124 - Revelation 1:5-6

What Jesus did and does.

To complete his great statements of the worth of Jesus in these first few verses of his book John describes something of what Jesus has done and is still doing. He lists 4 things he does or did: he loves them, he gave his life blood to free them from their sins, he welcomed them into his kingdom and he established them as his priests.

He loves us. The word ‘love’ appears only 3 times in the whole of this book as something about his attitude towards us. But … if a mother does not tell her very young baby that she loves it but spends her whole day looking after it, feeding it, cleaning it, rocking it to sleep etc. would we say she did not love it? Of course not. Her actions speak of her love louder than words. So it is with the Lord Jesus towards us.
He gave his life blood that we might be freed from our sins just as the ancient Israelites were set free from Egypt that they might travel through the wilderness to the promised land. We call that redemption. We have been the subjects of redemption and have a journey to make and a wonderful destination to look forward to.

He has made the world’s most unlikely kingdom out of us! Yes, we, you and I, are citizens of the Lord’s own kingdom. We have(at least) 2 passports. One is that of the country in which we live; the other is a passport for heaven. We do not need a visa to go there; we cannot be refused entry for the king of the kingdom will vouch for us at the point of entry. Finally for his fourth attribute John says we are now priests. All of us - not just those that wear special coloured clothes and funny high hats. We have direct access to the Lord of all. We do not have to go through any intermediary, no one is a superior being with better access to Jesus and Father God than us.

To confirm his ability to confer these glorious things upon little you and me John describes him as the Cloud Rider (1:7). That was an Old Testament description of the Lord God himself. King David describes God that way in Psalm 18:6, 9 - 13. Isaiah describes the Lord as ‘riding on a swift cloud’ (19:1). In his prophetic vision of Jesus Daniel sees him that way in his 7:13. What a God we have in the person of Jesus - to him be glory and power for ever and ever! (1:6)

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Gems in Revelation - Part 123

Gems in the book of Revelation

Part 123 - Revelation 1:5

Who Jesus was and is

Unlike the other writers of New Testament epistles John does not have to direct the bulk of his writing to the problems in a church - with the exceptions of the seven letters to individual churches in his chapters 2 and 3. So he concentrates on Jesus tackling many things the other writers do not.

Here he is interested in describing the Messiah with 3 strong and powerful descriptive phrases: faithful witness, first born from the dead and ruler of the kings of the earth. Thus we have a great gem cut with 3 faces.

He is the faithful witness. ‘Witness’ translates a Greek word from which we get the English word ‘martyr’. The only other person who died for his faith named in this book is Antipas (2:13) and he also is called a ‘faithful witness’. He is uniquely identified with Jesus, having given the ultimate witness to the most important event of all that Jesus did here on earth.

What an accolade! There is nowhere in scripture the faintest suggestion that we should seek martyrdom. Yet if it becomes a strong possibility or a certainty for us we are not to do anything other than to welcome it. That is a tough statement to make. Our attitude towards it will depend very much on where we live and the implications of the culture and society we are in. some of us, living in a safe and secure environment, will never really have come to terms with the possibility - and why should we? Others, living in an unsafe environment will have been forced to confront the possibility and probably be shocked that there are those of us who never have! We can only live where we live and it is not sensible to try and do otherwise than face to problems of our place. If we are safe as can be, let us rejoice. If we live in a very unsafe part of the world and are unable to get out or have deliberately decided that we should not do so because of the work we are able to do for the kingdom and its Lord then let us live on, trusting in him, whatever the future may hold for us.

The second title John gives to Jesus is ‘firstborn from the dead’. This is a statement of both time precedence and status seniority. Isaac bought the birthright from his elder brother Esau and then tricked him out of their father’s blessing. Thus he secured a larger share of the estate when Isaac, their father, died. We do not know quite how it worked in those very early days. It was formalized later so that the senior son took a double share of the estate on the death of the father (Deuteronomy 21:15-17). Jesus has the time precedence. The Jews thought, on the basis of Ezekiel 37:11-14 and Daniel 12:1-2 that all the Lord’s people would eventually be resurrected. What they did not expect was that one person would be resurrected ahead of everyone else, thus demonstrating that it would happen when the end of the age came.

Jesus was the first born from the dead. We shall eventually be resurrected as he was at some unknown date in the future. WOW! The third title John gives to Jesus is ‘ruler of the kings of the earth’ which clearly means he will one day rule all this earth of ours and all who live on it. This is very much in line with the things that the other New Testament writers say. For instance Paul says, “that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” (Philippians 2:10-11).

John has taken the idea from Psalm 89:27 “I will appoint him to be my firstborn, the most exalted of the kings of the earth.” Such things seem to be strange things to say when only a tiny minority of the current kings, emperors and presidents of the nations of the earth would allow Jesus any place in their decisions. But this is no surprise. Ethan the Ezrahite, who wrote the psalm, complains that not all is going well for the king of David’s line that he is prophesying about. He says “You have exalted the right hand of his foes; you have made all his enemies rejoice. Indeed, you have turned back the edge of his sword and have not supported him in battle. You have put an end to his splendour and cast his throne to the ground. You have cut short the days of his youth; you have covered him with a mantle of shame. How long, LORD? Will you hide yourself forever? How long will your wrath burn like fire?” (Psalm 89:42-46).

We must remember 2 things: first that the sort of rule that Jesus founded and rejoiced in was never a rule of power and might and domination but one of modesty, humility and love. That sort of power is slowly making its way across the world even in these days. Second that one day this world will come to an end. When it does Jesus will come to the fore and then he will be the king of all the world. Oh, for that day!

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Gems in the Letter of 3 John - Part 120

 

Gems in the Letter of 3 John

Part 120 - 3 John
More steps in the truth.

3 John is the shortest writing in the New Testament, which doesn’t help when trying to pick out a ‘gem’. In fact in many ways there aren’t any so I will just list verse 1 as a gem because there are some important lessons to be learnt from the situation which clearly lies behind the letter, so it would be a pity to miss it out. 4 characters appear in the story behind the writing: the elder who wrote it, Gaius who received it, a good guy, Demetrius and a bad guy, Diotrephes.

It is impossible to be sure what the argument that the elder refers to was about but there is a good chance it was the old problem which is still around: should we keep the church tightly restricted to those whose loyalty to the faith we feel we can totally rely on; and those who think the church needs to be rather freer in its approach, even including those of whom it is not possible to be totally sure of their stickability in the faith. That is as much, or more, a twenty-first century problem as a first century one.

Dotrephes was entirely for the pure church. He may not have had Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians beside him but he would thoroughly have approved of Paul’s advice to the church in 5:4-8: “when you are assembled … hand this man over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh,[ so that his spirit may be saved on the day of the Lord. … Get rid of the old yeast … keep the Festival, not with the old bread leavened with malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.”

Demetrius on the other hand would have been anxious to obey the words of Jesus in Matthew 13:24-30: “The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field. But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away. When the wheat sprouted and formed heads, then the weeds also appeared. “The owner’s servants came to him and said, ‘Sir, didn’t you sow good seed in your field? Where then did the weeds come from?’ ‘An enemy did this,’ he replied. The servants asked him, ‘Do you want us to go and pull them up?’ ‘No,’ he answered, ‘because while you are pulling the weeds, you may uproot the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest. At that time I will tell the harvesters: First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles to be burned; then gather the wheat and bring it into my barn.’”

There is no clear way of resolving that dilemma. Each situation must be resolved ‘face to face’ as the elder clearly wants to do when he meets Gaius who would seem to have had some authority over the whole situation, though that authority may have been informal since there is no indication of any formal authority structure of bishops or deacons existing.

That is the first thing to be learnt from this short letter. The second is this: human nature being what it is it is all too likely that, particularly in an informal structure, those who gain power can all too easily become too conscious of it, too fond of it and too overbearing in their attempts to direct other people. And there are always people willing to be led for want of the strength of mind to understand what is happening and take appropriate action. They will often do that from a misguided feeling that it is Christian to accept the direction (or misdirection) of others.

It is a pity that we have to end these ‘gems’ on such a pair of negative notes, but that is the way it is. Note that besides these warning notes in this short letter there is much that the elder is prepared to rejoice in. He says many nice and gracious things to Gaius.

Take care. If you have been with me all, or most of the way, through this exploration of some of the lovely and encouraging things John has said - thank you. May the Lord bless you on your further journey of faith. He will be with you and bless you through thick and thin - and there will probably be both experiences on your onward journey.

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Gems in the Letter of 2 John - Part 119

Gems in the Letter of 2 John

Part 119 - 2 John 4
Walking in the truth

. This second epistle of John’s is seldom read but is rather lovely. It gives us a view into the very early church. We don’t know who the writer was - probably not the same John as the writer of the Gospel and the first letter since he calls himself the ‘elder’ and not the apostle as he surely would have done had he been one. It is also unclear who the ‘lady chosen by God’ was. Most probably it is a way of referring to a local church rather than a person.

We have this delightful phrase in verse 4, “walking in the truth“ as the commendation of the members of the church. All too often the various translators have in many places translated the word meaning ‘walking’ by ‘living’ because that is clearly what it is a picture of. But in doing so much is lost. One can ‘live’ sitting in a chair or lying in bed all day while walking strongly implies activity and progress.

We, my wife and I, made a conscious decision when we retired from active work that we would go for a walk every day to avoid slowly getting less and less fit. Of course, as the years have passed we have slowly got less and less fit anyway but we would have done so much quicker had we not determined to keep moving as long as possible.

What is true in the physical world is also true in the spiritual world. We need to keep moving, moving towards our ultimate goal of being with Jesus in the life of the ages. This we can do in many ways according to our abilities and gifts. You may become much more regular in the prayer meetings and other meetings of your church than you have ever been able to be as you were working fulltime (without intending to I have slipped into thinking about the situation of those entering retirement. You will need to translate what I say into a more appropriate language if you are much younger!). You may be able to help in the practical tasks involved in a church. You may be able to help with the outreach tasks as well, door to door work, visiting places with the gospel, perhaps - if you are fortunate like me with these short ‘gems’- doing something with a directly Bible teaching ministry.

An old wartime song exhorted people to ‘keep right on to the end of the road, keep right on to the end’. That is excellent advice for us all in a spiritual sense. And, of course, I don’t actually need to look for secular encouragements. 1 John 2: 6 would say “walk as he walked” if they hadn’t gone and translated the ‘walks’ as ‘liveds’ (see what I mean)!, or we can go to Isaiah 2: 3 where it says, “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the temple of the God of Jacob. He will teach us his ways, so that we may walk in his paths.”

John has said we are to walk in the way of truth. By ‘truth’ he means in the way set out by Jesus. Jesus did plenty of walking, backwards and forwards through Galilee and on frequent visits to Jerusalem.
Let us walk - easily the most enjoyable way of getting around either in the country or in the Kingdom of Jesus. The Pilgrim’s Progress (a famous old book written centuries ago) should never be restricted to one man’s story. It is to be the experience of all of us – you and me! Together – see you on the path.

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Gems in the Letter of 1 John - Part 118

Gems in the Letter of 1 John

Part 118 - 1 John 5:20
What We Should Know

What we should know. John wanted the people of his fellowship to ‘know’ 4 things.

They are:

• that they have eternal life (16);
• that those born of God do not continue to sin (18);
• that they are children of God but all the world marches to a quite different tune - that of the evil one (19);
• that by knowing Jesus they know the truth in a very special way (20);
• Then he summarizes it all by saying that they were ‘in’ Jesus.
  
  Their job was much easier than ours. In those days there were not too many things to know. Even those who could read would not have many things to read. We, on the other hand, are deluged with things to know. The TV and the radio and a million books take care of that. So it is hard for us to really concentrate on things like these and make sure they are really deeply imbedded in our thinking. But we must make the effort to get them there and hold them there.
  
  We have eternal life - the life of the ages. A whole new worldview opened up with the appearance of Jesus in the lanes and houses of Galilee. The Kingdom has come, with him as its Crown Prince. It is a kingdom that is unlike any other there has ever been. Not only is it a kingdom we can, and should, enjoy now but it is one that will take care of us after we have died out of this earthly life. We will be in heaven, briefly, before we are resurrected, as Jesus was, to partake in the new heaven and the new earth. What it will be like we do not know in any detail but we have his word for it and may rest in that with great confidence.
  
  He then gives us a sharp reminder that we must not live in sinfulness by his positive statement that we do not continue to sin. What happens if we do he does not say but the prospect would not be good. We do all sin, as he said in his first chapter, but we must not live with a fixed tendency to sin. That is idolatry. Beware.
  
  He then says that, presumably provided we do not disbar ourselves by idolatry, we are the children of God, members of the family of faith. That you will probably not fully understand until you are overseas, away from home, and have to rely on your brothers and sisters of the faith. Then you will realise what the power of a worldwide family is.
  
  In knowing your fellows of the faith you will have some slight idea of what it means to be ‘in Jesus’, part of the body of the Messiah.. You will come to understand that much of the world is quite antagonistic to you because of your faith. Some of you who read this will understand that very much better than I, in my comfortable Western country ever can, even although I lived for a few years in a country where Christians are not very welcome.
  
  In summary then, his 4 messages are:
  We have eternal life
  Continuing in sin is not possible for us
  We are in the family of the Messiah
  That all our thinking is to be centred on Jesus
  
  
  

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Gems in the Letter of 1 John - Part 117

Gems in the Letter of 1 John

Part 117 - 1 John 5:11
Testimony

. John says that amongst other things, “this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son.” I say ‘amongst other things’ because this verse is in the middle of a group of verses centering on ‘testimony’, a word which appears some 8 times in 6 verses. John is picking up again the idea he started his letter with when he talked about the things they – the apostles – had seen and heard and touched. Unfortunately this whole passage is somewhat confused. In particular it is not possible to be quite sure what he meant when he was referring to ‘water’ (the verse omitted from most Bibles is a translation of words that do not appear in any manuscript earlier than the 14th century). Water may refer to the believer’s baptism, to the baptism of Jesus, or the water that came from his side when he was hanging on the cross – the 3 most likely possibilities.

But the detail doesn’t matter. What he is telling us, loud and clear, is that what does matter is that we place our faith firmly and securely on the matter of testimony. Our faith is not founded on ideas but on facts. It all happened a long time ago but it did happen and so these things matter. That is what John is intent on convincing his people. Those who had left his fellowship were probably gnostics – people who placed their faith on gnosis = wisdom. They thought, as all too many people think these days, that you could achieve all you needed to achieve by thinking. You can’t. The Lord of all creation has made himself known to us – isn’t that amazing – and if we ignore that simple fact we end up in a cloud of our own ideas which have no validity beyond our own thought processes.

What we believe is not what someone, in one instance of time or even over a lifetime, thought. It is the result of more than a thousand years in which the peoples of one nation related to the Lord God. They wrestled and struggled with how they were to understand him. They sometimes worked hard to get to know him better. At other times they tried hard to forget about him and go their own way. Then finally they were challenged by his presence in human form and that became the critical point of their experience. It was still many more than one person’s experience of him. We have the four Gospels, a history of the first few years of the church and a collection of writings from those years. Everything they wrote down and that we still have constitute an enormous testimony to the ways of God, his provision for us and the ways we should respond to him. In the end it comes down to a simple statement, “Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.” (5:12).

Once again, as he has done before, John is drawing a very firm line between those who believe in Jesus, who have set out quite determinedly to follow him, and those who haven’t. Those who have have the promise of God of eternal life, the life of the age to come.

The obvious question each of us must ask ourselves is, ‘which side of the line am I on?’

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