Category: Band

Jude focuses his letter on this difficult reality, that there are people within the church who pervert the grace that Christ has given us so that they live in any way that they would like, regardless of what God has said or who he has called us to be:

For certain individuals whose condemnation was written about long ago have secretly slipped in among you. They are ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God into a license for immorality and deny Jesus Christ our only Sovereign and Lord.

Jude 1:4

Jude’s original desire was to send a letter about the salvation that they had received. It was intended to be a celebration, a letter full of joy. But instead, he found himself compelled to send a letter about the need to persevere and contend for their faith.

I hear this objection, both from Muslims but not only them… But it seems like you have allowed Jesus to pay for your sins and you can just continue to go on doing whatever you want, to live in whatever way you like.

And it is true. We do have many people like that. I could probably say that I was counted among them at one point.

Jude is clear about what these people are doing, though. They are perverting the grace of our God. They are mocking the death of Christ and turning it into a license, permission, to live in whatever way they would like to live. This is far from the way that God has intended us to live. Instead, Jesus has purchased us with his blood away from the kingdom of darkness to enter into the kingdom of God, not continue to live in darkness!

What is the justification for doing this, for living in whatever way they want while also saying that they believe in, and follow, Christ? It is their own dreams. Their own ideas. Their own desires:

In the very same way, on the strength of their dreams these ungodly people pollute their own bodies, reject authority and heap abuse on celestial beings.

Jude 1:8

They believe that their dreams, their ideas… in fact, we might say, their own truth, is what leads them to decide that this is right. They will refuse living with the authority of God over them, but will instead live in the way that they believe is right, that which is right in their own eyes, based on the strength of their own ideas, their own dreams.

In the end, these are people who will bring division amongst God’s people. They will insist that they know what is right, regardless of what can be clearly understood from the word of God.

And so, Jude calls us to persevere. He calls us to contend for the faith. He calls us to stand firm, being built up through prayer and by listening to the Holy Spirit, not to our own fleshly desires and thus perverting the faith.

Love isn’t necessarily easy to define. In fact, the Greeks have, depending on who you ask and how you are counting, as many as eight different words for love, each to try to define a type of love, or a way to love:

1. Eros – Romantic, passionate love
2. Philia – A friendship type of love
3. Agape – A selfless type of love, the unconditional love of God
4. Storge – The love of a family member
5. Mania – An obsession. Becomes stalking or co-dependency
6. Ludus – A playful or flirtatious type of love
7. Pragma – A long-term, enduring love based in commitment
8. Philautia – The love of oneself

Agape is the word that John uses when he speaks of how God revealed his love to us:

This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.

1 John 4:9-10

This is the definition of love, the love that God had for each of us. His love was to sacrifice himself so that we might live.

And he demonstrated this love without us loving him. We didn’t love him, but he loved us. He gave himself for us. What an incredible love that is!

Jesus came to be an atoning sacrifice. To atone means to make amends or to reparations. That is what Jesus did. His sacrifice is a sacrifice that was offered by God on our behalf so that, if we put our faith in him, we can live. Our relationship with God can be repaired. We can have amends made for us. Jesus bore the weight of the punishment on our behalf, an incredible expression of agape love.

This truly is the love of God for each of us.

John says that we are now called children of God:

See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.

1 John 3:1-2

I had a young Muslim man ask me a few years ago: What does that mean that we are called the children of God?

Here are a few thoughts in response to his question:

First, not just anyone is considered to be a child of God. John explains a little bit later in the chapter that we can know who is a child of God and who is a child of the devil, of Satan. Those that do not do what God says, or those who do not love their brother or sister in Christ are those that are children of the devil. But those that believe that Jesus is who he said he is, those who believe in his name and who love one another are among those that are God’s children.

In Hebrew, the name of Jesus is Yeshua, and it specifically means “The Lord is Salvation”. So if we believe in Jesus’s name, we believe that Jesus is Lord. He is king. He is the king in the kingdom of God. The Lord of the entire universe.

And we believe that he is our salvation. In him, we can be saved from destruction, from the righteousness of God that will one day come to judge and bring wrath upon those that he finds to be unrighteous. But in Jesus we can place our faith for salvation. We can look to him as our righteousness, replacing our unrighteousness as he has taken the punishment for our sins upon himself upon the cross.

So if we believe in the name of Jesus and placed our faith in him, we have taken the first step. A result of having believed is that we now desire to do what Jesus has commanded us to do. And what is his command? His most important command is the same most important command that God had given the Israelites: Love. Love God, most importantly. But John reminds us that the command that Jesus gave to his disciples is that they were to love one another.

So, do you want to be a child of God? Then the way to do that is to love your brother or sister in Christ. This is a command directly from Jesus that isn’t necessarily easy, but it is simple. This is our calling, that if we desire to live as children of God, we must believe in the name of Jesus Christ and we must love our brother and sister as Jesus commanded us to do.

Second, to be a child of God means that we have a whole new identity. Talking with my Muslim friend, I tried to help him understand that we are no longer called to be servants of God, as Islam defines Muslims to be. No, instead, we are called to be his children.

This is a significant difference. A servant is one who serves, but has no real position or status within the family of God. He has no inheritance. He has nothing that he receives from the Father except for work or compensation for the specific work that has been done.

A child, on the other hand, finds his identity within his family. He carries the name of his Father. That which the rest of the family enjoys, the child enjoys. Who the family is, the child is. The servant will not necessarily receive any inheritance, but the child is a natural heir. In this case, an heir to salvation that will give us eternal life. A life that will be lived forever. Not eternal punishment, but eternal life with the Father, with the Son, and with the Holy Spirit.

And third, speaking of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, what did they have to say about us as his children?

Looking back to the prophecies of Samuel, Paul says that God calls us his children:

I will be a Father to you, and you will be my sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty.

1 Corinthians 6:18

And Jesus calls us his brothers and sisters:

Both the one who makes people holy and those who are made holy are of the same family. So Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers and sisters. He says,

“I will declare your name to my brothers and sisters;
in the assembly I will sing your praises.”

Hebrews 2:11-12

And the Holy Spirit says that we are no longer slaves (or servants), but instead now children of God:

For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God. The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.” The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. Now if we are children, then we are heirs —heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.

Romans 8:14-17

So now, as my Muslim friend did, we have a choice. Do we want to be a child of God? Or do we prefer to remain a servant?

If you want to be his child, you can. If you want to enter into the family of God, you can. If you want to be called one of his own, you can. But there is one way. And only one way. By believing in the name of Jesus Christ and loving your brothers and sisters within the family that has now adopted you to become a part of it.

Jesus gave us a new commandment. His commandment is to love one another.

Simple. It follows directly on the heels of the first and second most important commandments:

Love the Lord your God with all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength.

And love your neighbor as yourself.

So Jesus gave his disciples a “new” commandment: Love one another.

Except it isn’t actually so new. It is old. It is the same as before, just restated.

And yet John continues to remind us of this same commandment, because he has seen the hate that can come from each of us and has recognized how different it is from Jesus’s command. John says:

Anyone who claims to be in the light but hates a brother or sister is still in the darkness. Anyone who loves their brother and sister lives in the light, and there is nothing in them to make them stumble. But anyone who hates a brother or sister is in the darkness and walks around in the darkness. They do not know where they are going, because the darkness has blinded them.

1 John 2:9-11

Do you have a Christian brother or sister whom you hate? A person you despise or can’t stand to be around? If so, you are walking in darkness. Simple as that.

Do you need to forgive them? Then it is time to do that.

Do you need to forgive them again? Then yes, it is time to do that again.

Let us not walk in the darkness because of discord or disagreements with one another. No, instead, let us walk in the light because of the love that we have shown for one another.

I can hear echos of Jesus’s words, as recorded in John’s Gospel. Jesus had explained to his disciples that there was an intimate relationship between he and his Father, God himself, and his disciples. He said:

On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you.

John 14:20

This intimacy that the disciples experienced with Jesus, and by extension with the Father, produced incredible difficulty but at the same time, incredible joy. Joy that could not be denied.

Their joy came because they knew Jesus. Their joy came because they laughed with him, cried with him, and ultimately worshiped him. He was God who lived there on the earth with them, and they knew him and their joy increased as they were in a fellowship relationship with him and with one another as a result of Jesus.

Later, now not just writing his account of his time with Jesus, but instead in explaining the life of a believer in Christ, John says that he wants other people to know that joy that they have experienced, and by them knowing that joy, their joy, that of John and the other disciples, will be complete:

The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us. We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. We write this to make our joy complete.

1 John 1:2-4

There is a type of selfish desire that is of God. In this case, John says that he is writing what he has seen and heard in Jesus so that their joy would be complete. John says that he has written so that they, the disciples who have seen and experienced this life and light, that of Jesus, would have a complete joy. This is his desire, that the others would know Jesus and would know the Father, and in this way their joy would be complete.

They would have complete joy because they would be together with others. In a similar way that Jesus said that he is in the Father and Father is in Jesus, and Jesus is in the disciples, now the disciples desire that others would have the same understanding and that Jesus would be in them, and by doing so, the disciples would experience immense joy.

The body of Christ would be built up.

The bride of Christ would become that which the bridegroom, Jesus himself, was wanting.

And in this way, the joy of the disciples would be complete.

At the end of John 20, John makes a simple statement about the reason for writing his book, for writing down some of the things that the disciples saw Jesus do:

Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.

John 20:30-31

Just a few quick observations.

First, John says that Jesus performed many other signs, in addition to what he wrote down. John wasn’t trying to write everything down. You don’t need a record of everything that Jesus did to believe in him. You need to know a few things, and that can change everything.

Second, what John wrote, he wrote so that we would believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God. He wrote it so that you would believe something specific. The Messiah is the one that was promised, the one that would could to gather a people for himself, the one that would save his people, the one that would conquer over all that which is evil.

And Jesus is the Son of God. He is God, who has come to earth in the form of a man. He came to reestablish God’s rule and reign here on the earth. Having been sent by the Father, he came to ransom his people away from the kingdom of darkness with his own blood into the kingdom of God. This is all found within what John is writing so that you would believe.

Third, there is something interesting within the context of this chapter that I think is worth noting. John wrote this so that we would believe all of this about Jesus, but even so, there were points along the way that John himself believed, even if he didn’t understand everything.

For example, just a few verses earlier, John says that he believed, even if he didn’t fully understand everything yet.

Finally the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed. (They still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.)

John 20:8-9

From the broader context, we can understand that this “other disciple” mentioned in the first verse is actually John himself. Peter had gone straight into Jesus’s tomb to look for him, but John had waited outside. But when he went in, he saw, and he believed.

But then he says that they didn’t understand from the Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.

My point here is that we can believe even if we don’t understand everything just yet.

I remember, for example, a time when we had some interns with us here in Catania. I received a call in the late evening that some of them were with a few young men in their room at one of the refugee camps where we had been visiting. They asked me to come because they had some questions.

When I arrived, in reality, they had one question: Is Jesus God? How can the Father be God and Jesus also be God?

I explained the idea that God is one, but that he also shows himself to us as three different persons. Distinct persons, but one being.

Was that all clear? Did they understand everything perfectly? Of course not. I cannot understand it perfectly because God is God and we are simply human beings. He is infinite and we are finite. How can we possibly understand something as foreign to us as the idea that God is one God yet presents himself as three persons?

They didn’t understand everything perfectly, but somehow the explanation satisfied them because they believed. And that belief, that faith, that God was who he said he was and that we would continue to understand more of him over time, allowed them to move forward. The next day, they were baptized, and we still celebrate their decision, even to this day.

So perfect knowledge is not the same thing as faith. Perfect understanding is not the same thing as belief. No, instead, we continue to seek to understand, and it is definitely possible to understand more and more, but that level of perfect understanding is not the reason that John nor any other writer is writing. No one is able to explain everything. Instead, these things are written so that we will believe.

Jesus was sent by the Father and we also are sent by Jesus:

Very truly I tell you, whoever accepts anyone I send accepts me; and whoever accepts me accepts the one who sent me.

John 13:20

If you want to know God, you need to know Jesus. Without knowing Jesus, you cannot know God. If you think you know God and you do not accept Jesus for who he says he is, you do not know God.

In addition, Jesus has sent people so that others may know him. Do you hope and desire that others would know Jesus? Good! If you are in Christ, He has sent you. You are the one that has been sent so that others will accept the message that Jesus has given you, so that they will know Jesus, so that they will know the Father.

So now go. You have already been sent. Give others the message that Jesus has given you. Then, when they hear the message from you, they will accept you and they will accept Jesus. And by accepting Jesus, they will accept the Father.

And they also will be sent.

Jesus had one primary, overriding concern: Glorifying God. He stood there with his disciples, looking into the face of death, knowing that he would very soon be going to the cross. Within days this would happen, and rightly so, Jesus’s soul was disturbed.

But he would not be deterred. Jesus would not be turned to the right or left. He would not be dissuaded from his mission, he would not take a detour away from his plan. No, there was only one way and that way was the cross.

“Now my soul is troubled, and what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour. Father, glorify your name!”

Then a voice came from heaven, “I have glorified it, and will glorify it again.”

John 12:27-28

Jesus was so interested in glorifying the name of God that he would endure death. He would endure separation from the Father. He would endure the punishment of a criminal.

And he would endure all of this pain and suffering because it would bring glory to God and his name.

But why? Why would God receive glory from Jesus going to the cross? Isn’t that just senseless killing? Useless death, like many of the other killings of the prophets by the Jews, or like many of the other killings of other dissidents by the Romans?

No, this death was much different. Jesus would take the punishment for many others so that they would be ransomed – purchased with his blood – away from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of God. The sins of people would be paid for by one who did not deserve to be punished. Jesus was the perfect sacrifice, the perfect “lamb” that would take away the sins of the world.

And because many would enter the kingdom of God, and because Jesus would open the kingdom to people all throughout the world, it would fulfill God’s mission and plan to have a people for himself, who would live to glorify him, all across the world. God’s image would finally be spread all across the face of the earth, and God’s glory would shine everywhere. Everywhere that there was a group of people, everywhere that there was a language, a nation, or a tribe, there would be those who truly represented God’s image as disciples of Christ.

This would truly bring glory to God. This would open the door such that God’s glory would fill the earth, just as the waters cover the sea, as Habakkuk said.

And as the Father replied, he has glorified his name, and he will do it again. And again. And again. God’s name was glorified through Christ and for each believer that lives for the glory of God and not for himself or herself, his name will be glorified once again.

Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, and if there was any doubt about whether Jesus would be known in all of Israel, or for that matter, across the world, all doubt was now removed. Everyone heard what had happened.

A man has been raised from the dead!

The Messiah has come!

Except now the Jewish leaders had a decision to make. Were they going to believe and rally behind Jesus? Or would they instead stand in opposition to him.

They were opposed to Jesus. Jesus didn’t fit the mold of the Messiah that they were looking for, what they thought he was supposed to be. He was supposed to be a political leader. Powerful. Forceful. Ready to take on the Romans and overthrow all oppression. Ready to take on any nation that would come against them.

But that wasn’t who Jesus was. He spoke forcefully to them, the Pharisees and the Jewish leaders, but he was most certainly not a political leader. He didn’t act like the archetypical Messiah that they had in their mind. Sure, he did miracles. Sure, he did things that only God could do. But he wasn’t on their side. He was against the ways of the priests. He was against the ways of the Jewish leaders. Plus, he was always talking about how he was equal with God, and he did miracles on the Sabbath. How could Jesus possibly be the Messiah?

So following Lazarus’s resurrection, they called a meeting, and they were afraid. The general consensus of the meeting was wrapped up in this one statement:

If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and then the Romans will come and take away both our temple and our nation.

John 11:48

You might be asking yourself: Why would the Romans come just because they believed in Jesus? Why would the Romans, as a result of people believing in Jesus, take away both their temple and their nation?

The Jews weren’t thinking of Jesus as just a “savior” or a “lord” in a far-off conceptual or metaphorical sense. They were thinking of him as a savior and a king in the here and now. Right now, in their physical world. He would be the king, and he would lead them to “salvation”, in the sense that they would no longer be ruled by the Romans. No, they would instead be ruled as they wanted, by their own countrymen, and they would once again be the nation of Israel.

In other words, in their minds, Jesus should be a political leader. It wouldn’t be that much different than what we see in political movements today. People have always rallied behind political leaders with great fervor, and that is exactly the way in which they were thinking about this at that time. The Jewish leaders were essentially saying:

If more people believe in Jesus, the Romans will come to destroy us because of the rebellion that he is leading.

And, of course, they weren’t wrong. That is exactly what the Romans would have done. They would have come and squashed the rebellion. They would have killed many people. They would have destroyed Jerusalem, tearing down the walls and destroying the temple.

How do we know that is true? Because that is exactly what happened in 70AD, approximately 36 years after Jesus was resurrected from the dead and ascended into heaven. The Jews had become restless for their freedom and had set up a provisional government against and independent from Rome, intending to throw off the Roman rule.

But the Romans wouldn’t have it. Rebellions must be put down. They must be destroyed. Insurrection cannot, and will not, be tollerated. And so the Jewish leaders were correct. Their city, their nation, and their temple would be destroyed.

So what would the leaders prefer? This man is doing works that only someone who comes from God can do. But the leaders, despite recognizing that Jesus has come from God, have preferred to put themselves as the arbiters of what should be. They believe they should be making the decisions, not the one who does what only God can do.

Don’t we often do the same? Don’t we often prefer to do it our way? Don’t we prefer to be the ones in charge, preferring the direction that we have in mind instead of the one who does what only God can do? Yes, of course we do. We do it all of the time. We choose our way instead of God’s way. We choose the way of man, the expedient way, the way that benefits me instead of that which glorifies God. Sometimes we even say, as the Jewish leaders would have no doubt said, we are glorifying God by disregarding the one who does what only God can do.

We fear that the Romans will come. We fear that, by doing it God’s way, we will make a decision that will put us in a bad light before others. We fear that, by doing it God’s way, we will make a decision that will remove our security, or make us poorer, or send us in a bad direction economically.

In the case of the Jewish leaders, they were afraid that they would lose power. The Romans would come and take their “nation” out from under them, take their temple out from under them. They were holding on to the little that they had so that they wouldn’t lose this shadow of who God made them to be. All for fear that the Romans would come…

The Pharisees were upset at Jesus because Jesus had just told them that they were spiritually blind. They couldn’t understand what was happening right in front of them because they were blind. They were unable, and for that matter, unwilling to see.

Jesus went on to try to explain it to them even further, essentially saying that they were not only blind, but they were unable to recognize the voice of the shepherd that they should have been looking for. Not deaf necessarily, but they didn’t recognize the voice of the very one from whom they said that they were wanting to hear. In short, they couldn’t understand because they weren’t his sheep:

The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep listen to his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes on ahead of them, and his sheep follow him because they know his voice. But they will never follow a stranger; in fact, they will run away from him because they do not recognize a stranger’s voice.” Jesus used this figure of speech, but the Pharisees did not understand what he was telling them.

John 10:3-6

The sheep know the shepherd’s voice. They have listened for it and sought it out. They will follow the shepherd, but another person, another stranger, they won’t follow because they don’t recognize the voice.

So, I see a couple of points here for each of us to consider:

First, it is extremely important that we hear the voice of the shepherd. Yes, we must specifically know the words that Jesus has used, but I think it is also as important, if not moreso, to understand the overall story that God has been telling us through the entirety of the story of the Bible. In this way, we can understand not only Jesus, but the context of his life, death, and resurrection.

Why did Jesus need to come to his people?

Why did Jesus specifically come into the world as a Jew?

What was he accomplishing? And for what purpose?

What needs yet to be done? Where is all of this going, and what is our part in all of this?

How can we do that? First, we need to read the scriptures, read the Bible, for understanding. We need to understand the theological and practial living principles, but we also – and I might argue primarily – need to understand the overarching story that God is telling through his word. Why? Because when we know the story that God is telling us, we can also quickly discern what is false and that which is different, that which men tell us as lies that come from Satan.

Second, we need to seek God for revelation of his word through the Holy Spirit. Through prayer, through meditation and reflection, and simply through asking the Lord what he wants to tell us, God will speak to us and help us to understand what he wants to say from his word.

In these ways, we can know the voice of the shepherd. We will recognize it and we will follow it instead of the voice of a stranger.

But look at how that paragraph ends. In verse 6, as John is recounting Jesus telling this story, he says that the Pharisees did not understand what he was telling them. There were other people in the crowd that were listening to Jesus speak to Pharisees and they began to not only understand but believe. But the Pharisees? They didn’t understand. They couldn’t understand. They didn’t belong to the shepherd. They didn’t belong to Christ, so the result was that they didn’t follow him. Others believed, but they did not because they did not understand.