I AM COMING TO YOU”
John’s Witness to the Holy Spirit
Frank G. Carver
Beacon Hill Press of Kansas City Kansas City, Missouri
Copyright 1996 by Beacon Hill Press of Kansas City
ISBN 083-411-5700
Printed in the United States of America Cover Design: Mike Walsh Cover Photo: Westlight Cover Illustration: Mike Walsh
All Scripture quotations not otherwise designated are from the New American Standard Bible (NASB), © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. Permission to quote from other copyrighted versions of the Bible is acknowledged with appreciation: The New English Bible (NEB). Copyright © by the Delegates of the Oxford University Press and the Syndics of the Cambridge University Press, 1961, 1970. The Holy Bible, New International Version® (NIV®). Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House All rights reserved. The New Jerusalem Bible (NIB), copyright © 1985 by Darton, Longman & Todd, Ltd., and Doubleday, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc. Reprinted by permission. The New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) of the Bible, copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. All rights reserved. The New Testament in Modern English (PHILLIPS), Revised Student Edition, by J. B. Phillips, translator. Copyright 1958, 1960, 1972 by J. B. Phillips Reprinted with the permission of the Macmillan Publishing Company. Scripture quotations marked KJV are from the King James Version.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Carver, Frank G. When Jesus said good-bye: John's witness to the Holy Spirit / Frank G. Carver. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 0-8341-1570-0 (pbk.) Holy Spirit--Biblical teaching 2. Bible. N.T. John--Theology. 1. Title. BS2615.6.H62C37 1996 231 '.3--dc20 95-48371 C1P
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To Betty
My companion of a lifetime, Without whose loving encouragement this book would not have been completed.
Contents
Preface 5 Acknowledgments 6 1. "Peace I Leave with You" (14:26-27; 16:33; 20:21-22) 8 2. "He on Whom You See the Spirit Descend and Remain" (1:29-34) 24
3. "One Who Baptizes with the Holy Spirit" (1:33; 20:21-22) 36 4. “Another Advocate" (14:15-16) 46 5. "The Spirit of Truth" (14:17-18) 61 6. "Greater Works" (14:12) 71 7. "Ask in My Name" (14:13-14) 81 8. "Keep My Commandments" (14:15) 90 9. "He Will Bear Witness of Me" (15:26; 16:12-15) 100 10. "You Will Bear Witness Also" (15:27; 16:7-11) 108 11. "My Peace I Give to You" (14:26-27; 16:16-33; 20:19-23) 121 Works Cited 129 PREFACE
Many Johannine interpreters have appealed to the poetry of Robert Browning: Which were first guessed as points, I now knew stars, And named them in the Gospel I have writ. Browning’s lines characterize the Fourth Gospel as one not so much one of "points" as one of "stars." This Gospel appeals to us as much in what it evokes as in what it clearly states. Amos Wilder, then at Harvard University, described it as "a sacred oratorio in which the minute particulars of a one-time moment of history have been sublimated . . . into a world-volume in whose flying leaves the fates of heaven and earth are portrayed. In the words of the famous pioneer New Testament scholar, B. F. Westcott from the late 19th century, the Gospel of John is "a personal witness" by one who through the ministry of the Spirit experienced a profound personal fellowship with the living Christ. John’s initial faith in the Jesus he knew in the flesh was unfolding itself in his mind and heart within the post-Pentecost life of the Christian community. Taught by the Spirit the evangelist in his Gospel presents a transfigured understanding of the risen Jesus to the Church in his day. As the Gospel flows from his pen, John’s message is caught up into his unique use of the genre of gospel. The aim of the present study is to explore the Johannine witness to the Holy Spirit in the life of the Church of John’s day. At the same time the Gospel presents us with the writer's Spirit informed witness to "Jesus . . . the Messiah, the Son of God" (20:31). How does John's narrative communicate to us the person and work of the Holy Spirit in relation both to Jesus and to us today? The witness intended, however, is not only that of John the evangelist. More than forty years ago, while recruiting students or Pasadena College in Ridgecrest, California, I was asked on a Saturday night to teach all the adult Sunday School classes gathered together the next day. Searching my Bible early that Sunday morning in a desperate effort to find a lesson, the inspiration came to simply read aloud the Comforter or "Paraclete" passages in John chapters 14-16 with appropriate interpretive comments. It appeared to work! In the intervening years in Bible studies, sermons, and the college classroom, I have continued to give heart and mind to John's witness to the Spirit in the Church. Our study seeks to present a helpful understanding of the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, accurate to the Johannine witness to Jesus and the Spirit, and authentic to my own witness to life in the Spirit. May that witness continue to you the reader. In this process I felt the truth of Clement of Alexandria’s famous observation concerning the four gospels: “Finally John, recognizing that the ‘bodily facts’ had been treated in the (synoptic) gospels, . . . inspired by the Spirit, wrote a ‘spiritual’ gospel.” As a truly "spiritual gospel” John’s gospel is more than history, and even more than theology—and it surely is both. This Gospel’s witness deals profoundly with the spiritual life in an ever-deepening heart understanding and relationship with the Holy Spirit, “the Spirit of Truth” who “will guide you into all the truth (16:13). ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Rethink!
Without the encouragement and help of many, both named and unnamed, a literary work such as this could not have come to fruition. I wish to acknowledge a debt of gratitude to those who read the manuscript and offered valuable suggestions along the way. These include my wife, Betty J. Carver, and my daughter, Carol Denise Carver Gajus; my PLNC colleagues, Jerry W. McCant and Herbert L. Prince; my former administrative assistant, Bettina Powell; good friends Dorothy Lane and Stephen Rodeheaver; and Fredi Arreola, who was my interpreter for a bilingual Seminar in Biblical Studies based on an earlier form of this manuscript. Add Come and God Class. Totally redo?
??My sincere thanks goes also to the editorial, publication, and marketing staff at Beacon Hill Press of Kansas City; to Fran York, our department secretary, who has graciously done whatever I asked over these years; and to my present administrative assistant, Darlene Forward, whose help with the final prepublication tasks has been invaluable.
Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you; I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid. --John 14:27
O LORD, you will ordain peace for us, For indeed, all that we have done, you have done for u. --Isa. 26:12 1 "Peace I Leave with You"
John 14:26-27; 16.33; 20:21-22
"My 'peace' is my gift to you,' were the words of Jesus as he imparted the gift of the Holy Spirit to his disciples. As his death drew near he made them a promise: the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid (14:26-27).
Jesus' farewell gift to his disciples was his peace: "Peace I leave with you; my peace . . ." Jesus’ peace was and is a peace not as “the world” is able to give. An encouraging word described this peace to his waiting companions: “I have said this to you, so that in me you may have peace. In the world you face tribulation. But take courage; I have conquered the world” (16:33). Jesus’ parting word to his bereft disciples after his crucifixion and resurrection was "Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you." When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, "Receive the Holy Spirit" (20:21-22).
The Greek word for peace, eirene, reflects the Old Testament Hebrew shalom. Shalom is "well-being" in a comprehensive sense: physical health, material prosperity, and spiritual blessing--a holistic salvation, and all a gift from God! "Shalom" 0r "Peace" was used as both the normal greeting and farewell in Jesus' day. It is still the everyday "Hello" and "Good-bye" in modern Israel. Shalom to you! In the New Testament, “Peace" appears as either an initial greeting or a parting wish like the Hawaiian “A1oha.'' Worshipers in many churches across our land greet one another with this rich biblical blessing: "The peace of the Lord be always with you." When Jesus said, "Peace I leave with you," and "Peace be with you," he was saying his earthly "Good-bye" to his friends. His farewell was not like the Spanish Adios with no thought for tomorrow, but like its Hasta luego, the French Au revoir, and the German Auf Wiedersehen--"I will see you later"--and that hopefully soon! Jesus' farewell was neither flippant nor simply conventional. With it came a depth of meaning, a reality rich and concrete. It expressed the exhilarating and sure promise of a continuing relationship with the risen Jesus. When Jesus breathed on his disciples with the invitation, "Receive the Holy Spirit," his gift of peace reached back to the prophetic hope of God's final peace among humankind—a peace so desperately needed in our day. The blessings of the future kingdom of God, present in Jesus, were now knocking at the door of his hearer’s hearts. Far beyond its common use, the Hebrew shalom" is filled with a richness staggering human conception. And now, as George Beasley-Murray so powerfully phrased it, "never had that 'common word' been so filled with meaning as when Jesus uttered it on Easter evening.” Like Jesus’ “it is finished” (19:30) uttered on the cross, “the peace of reconciliation and life from God is now imparted.” Yet, this peace of Jesus, his good-bye to His disciples, presupposes a most difficult question for human minds, one that leads to an answer possible only to faith. The question of Jesus
13:31-38; 16:17-20
From the perspective of history, we ask about Jesus' departure from His disciples. This is the question at the heart of the farewell discourses in the Gospel (13:1--17:26) which partake of a common literary form in the Hellenistic world of Jesus’ day. In secular use leaders used them as their last opportunity to provide for the future needs of their followers. Here, Jesus’ farewell discourses interpret for the reader the narratives that follow, the events of Jesus’ passion and resurrection (18:1—20:29). When Judas had disappeared into the night after the Last Supper (13:30) and Jesus had announced his soon glorification (vv. 31-35), Peter asked anxiously, "Lord, where are you going?" Jesus replied, "Where I am going, you cannot follow me now; but you will follow afterward" (v. 36) and Peter responded, "Lord, why can I not follow you now? I will lay down my life for you" (v. 37). Later in the discourses we read that then some of His disciples said to one another, "What does he mean by saying to us, ‘A little while, and you will no longer see me; and again a little while, and you will see me’; and, ‘because I am going to the Father'?" (16:17).
Aware of their confusion, Jesus said to them:
”Are you discussing among yourselves what I meant, . . . “Very truly, I tell you, you will weep and mourn, but the world will rejoice; you will have pain, but your pain will turn in to joy” (16:19-20).
Jesus' disciples were deeply troubled; the very thought of his departure left them bewildered. His leaving them stirred up profound anxieties about what was coming; it left them wondering about their own situation as those who had left all to follow the man from Galilee. What vacuums in their lives, what problems would Jesus’ absence create for them? What hostilities would await them without his leadership and presence. The disciples' lives were torn apart by discouragement; the object of their hope was slipping out of their grasp--“We had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel" (Luke 24:21). A dark haunting sense of a thick dark cloud blotting out their sun enveloped them as they conversed with Jesus. Such days, such experiences, inevitably come to all disciples of Jesus along the way. As Mary Magdalene stood weeping at the empty tomb she presents a picture of the disciples' situation following the death of Jesus (20:11-18). Mary’s understanding was limited to her relationship to him as her earthly friend and teacher. When Jesus stood before her and called her by name she recognized him and sought to continue their physical relationship as before. She desired to cling to him, we would say, to hug him. Jesus, however, said to her, "Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God’" (v. 17). Mary could not follow Jesus in the old familiar ways. A new kind, a previously unknown, quality of relationship was being forged for her by his departure to the Father. Jesus’ death became crucial for his continuing relationship with her and all disciples, a consequence they were slow to perceive until after Jesus’ resurrection. Mary’s old relationships, even with the other disciples, are now relegated to history. With Mary and the first disciples, Christians today, you and I, face this question as well--a world without the physical presence of Jesus. This is the great question of the Christian faith! Biblical scholars in their research continue to question, and questing disciples are still concerned—whose scholarly research are we to trust? How do we follow in person one whom the finality of physical death has taken from us? Although we bring their names to lip and pen, disciples do not follow Martin Luther, Teresa of Avila, John Calvin, or even John Wesley as we would follow Jesus. We may remember them with admiration, we may confess their theologies, and we may even attempt to re-create their vision for the Church in our day—and in our own lives, but they are no longer with us as they once were. Jesus no longer walks among us to see or hear, to touch and hug. Go to Israel and look around. Many ornate shrines are erected where Jesus may have been. He is nowhere to be seen in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, divided inside as it is among rival Christian groups, or treading the streets of a Jerusalem apportioned into four sectors where hatred and violence crop up almost daily. With human eyes we no longer discover Jesus climbing the hills of Zion and the Mount of Olives, or sailing the Sea of Galilee as he once did. The question remains a valid one that confronts our faith: How do we of the 21st century, follow the Jesus who made his century the 1st century? As Christians we seek to follow him daily who in a flesh and blood like ours belongs to a time and to a place and to a culture far removed from our everyday routines. This question, the great question at the heart of Christian faith, the one above all others essential for its message and its life, has been debated in biblical and theological scholarship for over three centuries. This crucial question is as alive and as relevant as ever within the Church and its contemporary scholarship and among its thinking lay persons. We know it in part as labeled over a century ago in the two phrases “the Jesus of history” and “the Christ of faith.” How do we relate the Christ of faith to the Jesus of history—identical or different? Continuity or discontinuity? Who was Jesus? Who is Jesus? The Jesus of history was crucified and buried. We are prisoners of earth and time. The Jesus of history belongs to the past, and the Christ of faith is beyond human eyesight: "He has been raised; He is not here" (Mark 16:6). Apart from dying, you and I cannot ascend to the realm beyond death. The very nature of the Christian faith and what it means to be a disciple of Jesus are at stake.. The scholarly quest for the Jesus of the past who at the same time relates to our present lives of faith began with the great mind and unique spirit of Albert Schweizer (1875-1965) whose magnum opus was The Quest of the Historical Jesus. Schweitzer, a Nobel Prize recipient and famous as a medical missionary to Africa, “had a towering influence on New Testament scholarship.” The story Schweizer tells begins in the latter half of the eighteenth century with one Herman Samuel Reimarus (1694-1768) who "attempted to form a historical conception of the life of Jesus.” Reimarus’ work took the form of a 4,000 page magnum opus, an anonymous manuscript circulated only among his acquaintances. In 1774 Gotthold Lessing began to publish the most important portions of it and by 1778 had published seven fragments. The publication bears the title ‘Von dem Zwecke Jesus und seiner Jȕnger,’ Noch ein Fragment des Wolfenbȕttelschen Ungenannten (The Aims of Jesus and His Disciples. A further Installment of the Anonymous Wolfenbȕttel Fragments). The Fragments were a work of radical or skeptical historical criticism. Schweizer describes Reimarus’ writing: it rises to heights of passionate feeling, and then it is as though the fires of a volcano were painting lurid pictures upon dark clouds. Seldom has there been a hate so eloquent, a scorn so lofty; but then it is seldom that a work has been written in the just consciousness of so absolute a superiority to contemporary opinion.
Reimarus, a rationalist, in the Anonymous Wolfenbȕttel Fragments sought the total displacement of revelation by reason. Schweizer’s Quest unfolds the story of nineteenth century Gospel criticism with its views about Jesus beginning with Reimarus in 1778 and ending with William Wrede’s The Messianic Secret in 1901. Schweizer attempted to grasp and communicate the nature of the complex historical problem raised by the Synoptic Gospels’ account of Jesus. Students of differing persuasions, compelled by the work of Reimarus, had begun to write their own quests of the historical Jesus Schweizer did not include them all in his survey, there were too many. He selected those--pro, con, and mediating, that he deemed significant. . Our concern is to stress the past and present challenge of the question of “Who was Jesus? Who is Jesus?” Therefore we will not trace its complex history, only simply end with the famous final paragraph with which Schweizer concluded his book: He comes to us as one unknown, without a name, as of old, by the lakeside, he came to those men who did not know who he was. He says the same words, ‘Follow me!’, and sets us to those tasks which he must fulfil in our time. He commands. And to those who hearken o him, whether wise or unwise, he will reveal himself in the peace, the labours, the conflicts and the sufferings that they may experience in his fellowship, and as an effable mystery they will learn who he is . . .
Albert Schweizer’s influential work brought what is now designated the first quest to a temporary close and is considered “the highwater mark of the ‘old quest’ for the historical Jesus.” The 1950s and the 1960s brought a new or second quest; a third quest in the 1980s has revived interest the historical Jesus. We skip over a century of “quest” of scholarship and conclude with two contemporary New Testament scholars and good friends, Marcus J. Borg and N. T. Wright. The two scholars compared their visions at the close of the twentieth century as to how we of the 21st century, are to follow the Jesus of the 1st century? Marcus Borg, an American Lutheran, and N. T. Wright, an English Anglican, were both, as they phrased it, committed to the rigorous practice of the Christian faith and the rigorous study of its historical origins and to the belief, which we find constantly reinforced, that these two activities are not, as is often supposed, ultimately opposed to each other. Rather, we find them mutually informative and supportive. To put this another way: we both acknowledge Jesus of Nazareth as Lord, and we regard the no-holds-barred study of his actual history as a vital part of what we mean by that.
Their friendship began with a first meeting in 1984. In September 1997, Marcus visited Tom in Lichfield, England, and within the framework of morning and evening prayer at Lichfield Cathedral over five days they laid the plans for a book together, The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions (1999). The book cover describes its content as “The Leading Liberal and Conservative Jesus Scholars Present the Heart of the Historical Jesus Debate.” We do not attempt to describe their views. For that you need to read The Meaning of Jesus and others of their books. As with Schweizer, we close with a quotation from each that points us in the direction of their respective visions. We begin with Marcus J. Borg: The core Christian Christological affirmation is twofold: Jesus is, for us as Christians, the decisive revelation of what God is like and what a life full of God is like. Jesus is the revelation, disclosure, and epiphany of both. As both “true God” and “true human,” Jesus is the lens through which we see God and what a life full of God is like.
N. T. Wright on his part speaks of the integration “between the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith,” or “between the pre-Easter Jesus and the post-Easter Jesus” as Marcus Borg would phrase it. In particular, Wright sees “continuity between the things the church claimed about Jesus after Easter and the aims and beliefs of Jesus before Easter.” The church did not invent “a Jesus to suit its subsequent beliefs.” The above brief inconclusive survey as we continue to ask our all-important faith-question brings us back to its form. Our question is no better expressed than by the German Dietrich Bonhoeffer as he faced the Nazi menace to the Church during his ministry. From Tegel prison in Berlin, he sent a long letter to his closest friend Eberhard Bethge (April 30, 1944) desiring Bethge’s theological reactions to his reflections. In it he wrote, “What keeps gnawing at me is the question, what is Christianity, or who is Christ actually for us today?” We seek an answer in the Gospel of John to Bonhoeffer’s famous query, “Wer Christus heute fȕr uns eigentlich ist?” Out quest for the answer to Bonhoeffer’s and our query of “who is Christ actually for us today?” leads us to The Johannine answer 14:1-27; 16:20-22 We begin with John’s answer to the disciples' question as they asked it: the sending of another Advocate. The English word “Advocate” translates the Greek title paraklētos for the Holy Spirit. Rather than attempt an English translation biblical interpreters often use the transliterated form Paraclete for Jesus’ title for the Holy Spirit in the farewell discourses. Paraclete preserves the uniqueness of this title and does not limit the several functions of the Johannine Spirit. We will employ it frequently. "He will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever” (14:16) was Jesus' promise concerning the coming of the Holy Spirit to the disciples; the Spirit will come in a way and with a meaning they did not know before. Jesus' first words dealing with their fears about his departure began with "Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me" (v. 1) and closed with "Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid" (v. 27). Between these encouraging words come the first two sayings of Jesus about the Holy Spirit as the Advocate. The first contains in kernel form all that Jesus is saying in the discourses about the Holy Spirit. It is the basic Paraclete saying of which all the others may be viewed as an expanded exposition: And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, because he abides with you, and will be in you. I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you (vv. 16-18).
The other is the saying with which we opened our study of John's witness to the Holy Spirit: But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I said to you. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you.; I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid (14:26-27).
The words of Jesus in all of chapter 14 were directed to the hearts of disciples whose world was shattered by his impending departure from them. In fact, the whole of the farewell discourses, chapters 14 through 16, each containing another Paraclete promise (15:26-27; 16:5-11, 13-15), were spoken to the disciples to help them come to terms with the imminent death of Jesus and the absence of his physical presence from them. The Johannine evangelist recorded Jesus’ promises to provide the Church of his day with a convincing link between the revelation of God in the historical Jesus and their experience decades later of the vitality of that revelation in Jesus’ risen presence among them. He does this by seeing the abiding presence of the risen Lord within the framework of the history of the earthly Jesus. The Resurrection is for him as for Paul a part of the story of the Cross. The meaning of the Paraclete sayings is bound up with the person of Jesus, his life, his death and his resurrection; they are fully Christocentric: “the Spirit of truth . . . will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine” (16:13-15). Even all the petitions in Jesus' great prayer of chapter 17 were for them—and for us: “I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word” (17:20). As Jesus informed the disciples in the previous chapter, Very truly, I tell you, you will weep and mourn, but the world will rejoice; you will have pain, but your pain will turn into joy. When a woman is in labor she has pain, because her hour has come. But her child is born, she no longer remembers the anguish because of the joy of having brought a human being into the world. So you have pain now; but I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you (16:20-22).
With these words too, Jesus has in mind the coming of the Holy Spirit, the Advocate, to his disciples. Jesus' farewell words to His disciples were strangely similar to the words God spoke to Moses at the burning bush: I will be with you; and this shall be the sign for you that it is I who sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall worship God on this mountain (Exod. 3:12).
For Jesus had said to His disciples, "and now I have told you this before it occurs, so that when it does occur, you may believe" (14:29), and "in that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you" (v. 20). Understanding and certainty come with obedience. So with good reason we take the step of faith; John’s answer is our answer too. The coming of the Holy Spirit is our answer, the answer to the question left by the crucifixion of Jesus—his death. The Jesus who was crucified and resurrected in the 1st century is alive in our 21st-century world in the presence of the Holy Spirit. This is the Christian proclamation: “Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you”” (20:19). The Christian’s experience of the Spirit comes through the personality of Jesus. The Jesus who lived, lives! In the Gospel of John the Spirit bridges all separation between God and Jesus, for it is the Father himself, and not just a gift of the Father, who is encountered in Jesus. Just so the gift of the Spirit to the Church bridges the gap of the centuries between Jesus and the Christian believer. The gift of the Holy Spirit, concludes C. H. Dodd, is seen in John "not as if it were a separate outpouring of divine power, . . . but as the ultimate climax of the personal relationship between Jesus and His disciples.'' The words of Jesus in his farewell discourses are designed to tell us what life in the Holy Spirit is like for us. The activity of the Holy Spirit is precisely how we follow Jesus in our respective worlds of personal life and ministry. The key is obedient fellowship. The Holy Spirit is the Father's grace-gift of the very presence of his only Son, our Lord Jesus Christ! This is precisely what Jesus had in mind as he said good-bye to His disciples: Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid (14:27).
The lines of T. S. Eliot fit well Jesus’ intentions for us:
Not fare well, But fare forward, voyagers.
2 “He on Whom You See the Spirit Descend and Remain”
John 1:29-34
Jesus’ good-bye, his Hasta luego to his disciples, consisted simply yet profoundly of the gift of the Holy Spirit. The presence of the Holy Spirit in their lives is how Christian disciples, how you and I, are enabled to follow Jesus in our worlds after his crucifixion and resurrection have removed his physical presence from us. Vital for our faith in the risen Christ is our understanding of the relationship of the Holy Spirit to the person of the incarnate Jesus—a current and significant question for theologians and in the Church. The Holy Spirit relates us to both the past of Jesus’ ministry and to the future of his risen person in the world. John the Baptist lays the foundation for this perspective with his prophetic witness that proclaims the Holy Spirit as integral to both the earthly and the heavenly ministries of Jesus: I myself did not know him, but the one who sent me to baptize with water said to me, "He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit" (1:33).
Jesus as the one on whom the Spirit descends and remains the Johannine witness presents us with him both as one who is baptized with the Holy Spirit and as "the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit." Our concern is first with Jesus as one baptized with the Spirit. To sense the significance of this, we need a glimpse of the Spirit in the history of God's people prior to the New Testament. The Spirit of God and the Holy Spirit
A sketch of the meaning of "spirit" or ruach in Old Testament faith and hope enables us to appreciate the magnitude of this inaugurating moment in the earthly ministry of Jesus (1:29-34). The Old Testament writers uses the phrases "the Spirit of God" and "the Spirit of the LORD'' interchangeably to express the felt impact of the influence of a holy God in their history, in their personal experience as a people of God himself. For them to speak of the Spirit of God was to speak of God's known or felt presence. The psalmist repented with the plea, Do not cast me away from your presence, and do not take your holy spirit from me (51:11).
The Old Testament writers used the “Spirit of God” in two ways to speak of the presence of God in their history. They begin with God actively present in his world. Typical of the passages in which the “Spirit of God" refers to God as an active presence during the Old Testament period itself is the psalmist's question: Where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence? (139:7)
As Spirit, or ruach, God invaded every phase of the life of his people Israel. The prophet Isaiah reflected back over seven hundred years of their history and declared: But they rebelled and grieved his holy spirit; therefore, he became their enemy; he himself fought against them. Then they remembered the days of old, of Moses his servant. Where is the one who brought them up out of the sea with the shepherds of his flocks? Where is the one who put within them his holy spirit, who caused his glorious arm to march at the right hand of Moses, who divided the waters before them to make for himself an everlasting name, who led them through the depths? Like a horse in the desert, they did not stumble. Like cattle that go down into the valley, the spirit of the LORD gave them rest. Thus you led your people, to make for yourself a glorious name (63:10-14).
The Spirit as the divine presence in Israel's history manifested itself in many ways. The Spirit was active in early prophecy (1 Sam. 10:10), in the raising up of charismatic or specially gifted leaders in the period of the Judges (3:10; 6:34; 14:6), and in the anointing of their kings (1 Sam. 10:1, 6; 16:13; 2 Sam. 23:2-3). The great prophets of Israel ascribed the integrity and power of their words to the Spirit sent by the LORD of hosts (Zech. 7:12). Eighth-century Micah, in contrast to the seers in the land, proclaimed, But as for me, I am filled with power, with the spirit of the LORD, and with justice and might, to declare to Jacob his transgression and to Israel his sin (3:8).
The prophet Isaiah appears to agree: Draw near to me, hear this! From the beginning I have not spoken in secret, from the time it came to be I have been there. And now the LORD God has sent me and his spirit (48:16).
The Old Testament writers saw the Spirit or breath (ruach) of God as God personally present in creative power, active even at the creation of the world: By the word of the LORD the heavens were made, and all their host by the breath (ruach) of his mouth (Ps. 33:6).
Job, the righteous sufferer, declared that
The spirit of God has made me, and the breath of the Almighty gives me life (33:4).
Basic to the Old Testament view of all that exists, the very being and history of all humankind, was its constant dependence on the active presence of God as ruach, or Spirit, the Creator and Sustainer of all life: Thus says God the LORD, who created the heavens and stretched them out, who spread out the earth and what comes from it, who gives breath to the people on it, and spirit to those who walk in it (Isa. 42:5).
The Old Testament spoke in a second way of the presence of God in terms of the Spirit of God as a future dimension indicating the hope of a new presence. Isaiah wrote that troubled times and disastrous conditions would prevail "until a spirit from on high is poured out on us” (32:15). He was speaking of a day when the Spirit of God would be present with a meaning and power never before experienced in the life of the people of Israel (32:15-20). This presence was to begin with “a selected person.” Isaiah envisioned him first as a Messiah-King: A shoot shall come out from the stem of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots. The spirit of the LORD shall rest on him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the LORD (11:1-2).
As Isaiah's vision became clearer, this figure came into focus as the Servant-Messiah:
Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the nations (42:1).
In turn this future presence of the Spirit of God was to be on “a privileged people”--a messianic-servant people of an age or time yet to come. That day would fulfill the wish of Moses: "Would that all the LORD'S people were prophets, and that the LORD would put his spirit on them!" (Num. 11:29). The prophets joined with their exultant voices to proclaim the promise of God for a time when A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. I will put my spirit within you, and make you follow my statutes and be careful to observe My ordinances (Ezek. 36:26-27);
of a time when
For I will pour water on the thirsty land, and streams on the dry ground; I will pour my spirit upon your descendants, and my blessing on your offspring (Isa. 44:3);
and of a time when it will be "'Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit,' says the LORD of hosts" (Zech. 4:6); and of a time when Then afterward I will pour out my spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men will see visions. And even on the male and female slaves, in those days, I will pour out my spirit (Joel 2:28-29).
As the New Testament period drew near, even the Covenanters of the Qumran Community, a monastic-like Jewish sect located in the desert near the northwest corner of the Dead Sea, looked for such a time: Then God with his truth will purify all the acts of man, and will refine for himself human nature, destroying every spirit of perversity from within his flesh. He will cleanse him with the holy spirit from all evil deeds. He will sprinkle upon him the spirit of truth like waters for purification.
This future expectation of the Spirit was prominent in Jewish thinking at the beginning of the New Testament period contributes to our understanding of the relation of the Holy Spirit to the person and earthly career of Jesus. As the Messiah, he too belonged to the future hope of the people of God as the fulfillment of messianic expectations. From this viewpoint we can more clearly see the earthly ministry of Jesus. The Holy Spirit and Jesus the Christ
The portrayal of the life of Jesus in the Gospels begins with the birth of the Messiah. The Old Testament’s witness to the Spirit of God enables us to read the accounts of the birth of Jesus through the lens of inspired expectation. Matthew and Luke’s infancy narratives present us with the reality of the Spirit of God entering the human stream withj a new sense of fulfillment, first not at Pentecost, but in the very conception of Jesus. We see this typically in Luke 1:26-38 in which Mary, "a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph" (v. 27), is strangely greeted by the angel Gabriel (v. 28), who makes the startling announcement: Do not be afraid, Mary; for you have found favor with God. And now, you will conceive in your womb, and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give him the throne of his ancestor David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever; and of his kingdom there will be no end (vv. 30-33).
Mary's response is a puzzling question, "How can this be, since I am a virgin?" (v. 34). She is overwhelmed by an answer staggering in implication: The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God. . . . For nothing will be impossible with God (vv. 35, 37).
According to Matthew's narrative, “when his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit" (1:18). Understandably, Joseph wanted to divorce her (1:19), but his fears were allayed by angelic confirmation: Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins (1:20-21).
Matthew and Luke saw the birth of Jesus as a new creative act of the Spirit of God, fulfilling Old Testament promises and inaugurating a new age of God’s redemptive activity. They link Holy Spirit inseparably with Jesus as the long-expected Messiah, beginning even at his conception and birth. Jesus is preeminently the one "born of the Spirit" in the infancy narratives of Matthew and Luke. The Gospel of John differs in perspective. It reserves the "born of the Spirit" language for the believer in Jesus (3:1-16). No birth narrative introduces the career of Jesus. Yet, one wonders if 3:6, “What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit,” is not a hint of the birth of Jesus. John, however, with his own unique language, does bear interpretive witness to the same reality—God present fulfilling his future work in the person of Jesus: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. . . . And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. . . . No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known (1:1-4, 14, 18).
The prologue (1:18) to the Gospel, like an overture to an opera, is designed to tell the reader how the entire Gospel should be read. As George R. Beasley Murray expresses it, the writer describes Jesus "in terms that rivet the attention of his readers.” The prologue partakes of mystery, for only the person who knows the whole Gospel can even begin to comprehend its prologue. When John speaks, as does Matthew and Luke, of Jesus becoming authentically human, he does not present it as they did in terms of the Old Testament promises of the Spirit. He presents it with a concept new to the writing of a Gospel--Jesus as the pre-existent Word or logos. The concept of Word or logos reflects ideas buried deep in the ancient cultures of both East and West, Greek and Hebrew. Although John's precise use of logos stems primarily from Old Testament antecedents, the wording reflects also a rational principle in relation to the universe familiar in the Hellenistic world of the first century. But John speaks no longer of a conception due to the influence of the Holy Spirit or of rationality, but of an incarnation of the logos: “And the Word became flesh and lived among us (1:14). Is this "the Johannine 'immaculate conception," as Gary Burge has suggested? C. H. Dodd is reported to have said, "As Jesus gives life and is life, raises the dead and is the resurrection, gives bread and is bread, speaks truth and is truth, so he speaks the word and is the Word.” The witness of John in his prologue is in essence a theological statement that gives meaning to the story of Jesus before it is told. John stresses the divine sonship of Jesus as beginning, not with his coming to earth, but as belonging from eternity to his prior relationship with the Father: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God" (1:1). Out of his own profound reflection, the evangelist interprets the "Spirit" origin of Jesus as narrated in Matthew and Luke as logos. When John speaks of Jesus entering into our human sphere of life, he unites the Spirit and Jesus so completely that the words he speaks "are spirit and life" (6:63).Gary Burge states succinctly that “the Logos defines Jesus' Spirit origins and makes it intensely Christological”—it is all about Jesus! All this comes to awesome clarity in the light of the opening and closing assertions of the prologue: "The Word was God” and "God the only Son'' (1:1, 18). John identifies first the preexistent Word and then the incarnate Word as being of the nature of God. The Greek order of the sentence of "The Word was God” is "God was the Word," indicating that he was truly God without exhausting the being of God. Jesus as the Word is the authentic exposition of God--who God is. The perfection and the consummation of all previous revelatory and redemptive acts of God have now appeared in Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee: "From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. For the law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ" (vv. 16-17). Jesus as Word reveals who God is. John in his prologue interprets the "Spirit" to its biblical limit. Spirit reflects the glory of Easter, for revealed in the Spirit’s presence is the glory awaited from the future. The full meaning of the Johannine witness to Jesus Christ is thus present in the prologue. Although by name the Spirit "is a notable absentee,'' the very substance of John's presentation of the Spirit and spirit are powerfully present in the logos. As we move on to the event that thrust Jesus into public life, the Spirit is active in the baptism of Jesus to which John the Baptist gives witness in the Fourth Gospel (1:29-34). But John’s Gospel, unlike Matthew, Mark, and Luke, does not record the actual baptism of Jesus by the Baptist. All four accounts, however, present the Spirit of God in its new sense of fulfillment; the Spirit is the one who brings about God’s messianic mission in the world as well as being instrumental in Jesus' entry into the world. The incarnate Jesus, by the endowment with the prophetic Spirit for the conduct of his ministry, has passed from the days of expectation into the time of inauguration and fulfilment. All accounts report the anointing of Jesus by the Spirit, but the stress in the Gospel of John is exclusively on the Spirit. After announcing Jesus as "the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!" (1:29), the John Baptist bears witness to the preexistence of the Son already presented as the Word in verses 1-18: This is he of whom I said, "After me comes a man who ranks ahead of me because he was before me" (1: 30).
John the Baptist testifies directly to the new presence of God in the world. He refers to Jesus' baptism deals with how that presence takes place in the Incarnation, the Word now made flesh. Both the birth and the baptism of Jesus are caught up into the Johannine interpretive concept of the logos. In 1:32 the Baptist's witness, "I saw the Spirit descending from heaven as a dove, and it remained on him," indicates that the Spirit's descent on Jesus "marks him out as God's unique instrument, and in particular as the Messiah and Servant of the Lord.'' In 1:33 the word of God to the Baptist in his vision of the Spirit reveals a new permanence: "He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit." An enduring and intimate relationship of the Spirit with Jesus as the incarnate Son is established. In these verses "remained" and "remain" are significant terms. They stress that "the unity of Spirit and Son was as permanent and comprehensive as the unity between the Father and the Son (10:30)." Along with the phrase "who baptizes" these terms mean that to be in Jesus' presence even during his earthly ministry was to be in the Spirit's presence as surely as they are descriptive of the future ministry of the risen Christ. We already see in the Gospel of John the supreme characteristic of both the earthly and heavenly ministries of Jesus, a unique and permanent relationship between Jesus and the Spirit. Spirit is the "how" of Jesus as the Word in the world: "The efficacy of the Spirit is the first facet of the mystery of Jesus.'' And so, as the last prophet of the old order, John the Baptist adds, "And I myself have seen and have testified that this is the Son of God" (1:34). John the Baptist climaxes his witness with his proclamation of the promised new presence of God in the person of his only Son, who "became flesh and lived among us" (1:14). This same relation of the Spirit to Jesus appears again in the Gospel as the evangelist follows the last testimony of John the Baptist with his own reflections about Jesus as the Son of the Father in 3:31-36. George Ladd suggests that 1:34-35 constitute "the one saying in John that implies that it was by the power of the Spirit that Jesus carried out his ministry--a note that is prominent in the Synoptics.'' When verse 34, "He whom God has sent speaks the words of God, for he gives the Spirit without measure," is interpreted by verse 35, "The Father loves the Son and has placed all things in his hands," the "he" who "gives the Spirit" is the Father who has given the Son "the Spirit without measure." The New International Version translates this meaning clearly: "For the one whom God has sent speaks the words of God, for God gives the Spirit without limit (3:34). The Son is able to speak "the words of God" because of his unlimited anointing by the Spirit. To him the Spirit has not been measured out, but given "without measure." The gift of the Spirit enables Jesus to reveal the Father authentically through his earthly ministry--"the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life" (6:63). The link between the Spirit and words in Jesus issues in the revelation of the Father. All this is summed up in 6:27, which states that the Son of Man is the One on whom "God the Father, has set his seal." The Spirit was the seal the Father set on the Son at his baptism (1:32-34). In John 6 "the food that endures to eternal life is supplied by the Son of Man because he carries the seal/Spirit of the Father.'' Jesus is thus the One who above all others is baptized by the Holy Spirit. The traditional language is shattered as we see through Johannine eyes. To move on in John's presentation, the poetic lines of T. S. Eliot suggest a transition to us as the poet penetrates the heart with the contemporary impact of the "baptisms" of Jesus, first of him and then of us: The dove descending breaks the air With flame of incandescent terror Of which the tongues declare The one discharge from sin and error. The only hope, or else despair Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre-- To be redeemed from fire by fire.
Who then devised the torment? Love. Love is the unfamiliar Name Behind the hands that wove The intolerable shirt of flame Which human power cannot remove. We can only live, only suspire Consumed by either fire or fire. 3 “One Who Baptizes with the Holy Spirit”
John 1:33; 20:21-22
The prophetic word came to John the Baptist at Jesus’ baptism that Jesus is “the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit” (1:33). As John’s Gospel narrates it, the Baptist’s prophecy was fulfilled by Jesus in an appearance to his disciples behind locked doors after the Resurrection. “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit” (20:21-22).
With this description of Jesus as the “one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit” the evangelist is speaking not only of the heavenly but also of the earthly ministry of Jesus. Jesus’ word and action portrays his function as the Son of God in the world with his special use of the “spirit” language to characterize his ministry. A Ministry of “spirit” One who confronts mankind with the presence of God Jesus’ incarnate ministry as “spirit” was the “real presence of God,” adequate worship of whom requires the bringing of our “real selves” to him. We see this most vividly in Jesus’ dialogue with the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4:7-26. Before he concludes with the confession of himself as the Messiah, “I am he, the one who is speaking to you” (4:26), their conversation turns to the issue of false and true worship, and Jesus declares: the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth (4:23-24).
The word pair “spirit and truth” refer to God’s new sphere of saving activity, his entering into the world in Jesus. “Truth” in John “means the eternal reality as revealed to men.” “God is spirit” designates the reality, the “truth,” of his presence in the incarnate Son who reveals him fully. To speak of a trinity in John’s Gospel is to speak primarily of Father, Son, and Paraclete, with “spirit” being a qualitative term, denoting the new realm of God present in the person and ministry of Jesus. Like the parallel Johannine phrases “God is light” (1 John 1:5) and “God is love” (1 John 4:8), “God is spirit” is descriptive of God’s mode of action in the world. To here 9/4/16 Normally John uses the term “Holy Spirit” only when he is in touch with the early Christian tradition common to all the Gospels. The “spirit” as realm is its general used in the fourth Gospel, yet it usually assumes the presence of the Holy Spirit in its special relationship to Jesus and his ministry as seen in Jesus’ birth and baptism. Sometimes “Spirit” appears to designate the person of the Holy Spirit, with realm being a secondary but fully present connotation. The title “Holy Spirit” is found in 1:33; 14:26; and 20:22; apart from the Paraclete passages, “Spirit” in the personal sense is used in 1:32-33, possibly 3:6 and 8, 3:34, and 7:39. In the remainder of the uses of “spirit,” the primary, though not exclusive, reference is the more qualitative sense, with the exception of 3:8: “The wind [pneuma] blows where it wishes.” To “worship in spirit and truth” in its decisively new sense is worship focused on Jesus and empowered by the divine reality that he is as stressed by the Gospel’s use of the spirit/Spirit language. This presentation of the ministry of Jesus as a realm of “spirit,” as dimension of divine reality effected by “the” Spirit in the present, is essential to the Johannine understanding of Jesus as “the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit” (1:33). For in the Son and the totality of his incarnate ministry, believing mankind encounters God himself and enters His realm of “spirit.” The same perspective in terms of spirit/Spirit permeates the evangelist’s account of the ministry of Jesus, sometimes explicitly, sometimes implicitly. In 3:6 it is quite explicit: “What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what which is born of the Spirit is spirit.” Here “flesh” and “spirit” are obviously contrasting qualitative realms of spiritual existence. The first use of “Spirit” is possibly as the Holy Spirit, but in contrast to the first use of “flesh” as operative in human generation, it more likely refers to the “spirit” realm as operative in regeneration. The Holy Spirit is active in this, to be sure, but we are concerned with the primary point of John’s spirit/Spirit language. The use of the “born from above” (3:3) terminology supports this perspective. This language roots in the Jewish hope of a new creation. Late in his ministry, according to Matthew 19:28, Jesus used it in its traditionally future sense: Truly I tell you, at the renewal of all things, when the Son of Man is seated on the throne of his glory, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.
“The renewal of all things” or the “regeneration,” is here synonymous with “kingdom.” The new birth is a phrase descriptive of life in the kingdom of God. The concepts are practically identical: “no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above” (John 3:3, see v. 5). In John 4:13-14, early in his dialogue with the Samaritan woman, Jesus uses “water” as a metaphor for spirit”: Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.”
This metaphorical connection between water and spirit was established in 3:5 in which Jesus interprets to Nicodemus his “born from above” demand, “no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” The key words are “water and Spirit.” The terms “water” and “Spirit” in Johannine idiom are “pairs in tension,” with the second term explaining the first: “the role of water in rebirth is wholly and exclusively defined in terms of Spirit.” Carson concludes that “born of water and spirit (. . . the focus is on the impartation of God’s nature as ‘spirit’ [cf. 4:24], not on the Holy Spirit as such) signals a new beginning, . . . the eschatological cleansing and renewal promised by the Old Testament prophets.” Necessary to this “regeneration,” to this “life in the kingdom,” is participation in Jesus’ total ministry as “spirit,” including the lifting up of the Son of Man (3:13-15): Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you (6:53). Thus it is that it is the spirit that gives life; the flesh is useless. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life (6:63).
Jesus as the Word and “spirit” is himself the fulfillment of the Old Testament “Spirit” prophecy: And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. 15(John testified to him and cried out, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me ranks ahead of me because he was before me.’”)16From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. 17The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. 18No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known (1:14-18).
Jesus as the “one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit” (1:33) in John’s Gospel does this first through the ministry of “spirit.” This baptism by Jesus began with his incarnate life. As the Word made flesh, he confronted mankind with the real presence of God. But this does not exhaust John’s presentation of Jesus in the account of his active earthly ministry as “one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.” The Giver of “the Spirit One who gives to men the presence of God.
As already indicated, some have interpreted John 3:34 to refer to Jesus as the Giver of the Spirit. Raymond Brown translates it in that direction: “For the one whom God has sent speaks the words of God; truly boundless is his gift of the Spirit.” The Son being the Gift of the Son to the disciple is the natural understanding when verse 35 is interpreted as parallel to verse 34: the “gift of the Spirit” is given by “he whom God has sent.” Although it appears more plausible to use verse 35 as the key, with the Father as the Giver, it is also conceivable that this saying is a Johannine “both . . . and,” a double meaning with one idea extending the other. If so, the passage moves fascinatingly from Christology to sotreriology, from a stress on the person of Jesus as the Revealer to his salvation as imparted through the Sprit, one who’s words “are spirit and life” (6:63) As Rudolf Schnackenburg concludes, Taken in this way, the verses give us a deep insight into the Christological and “trinitarian” thought of the evangelist. That which unites the Father and the Son for the Son’s work of revelation and Salvation is the Spirit, whom the Father communicates fully to the Son, and whom the Son pours out in his words for the salvation of men—even through the Spirit is only given in fact after Jesus;’ glorification.
Another saying of Jesus relating to the Spirit that has been interpreted in two ways is John7:37-38: Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink. As the scripture has said, “Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water.”
This striking and powerful announcement was made by Jesus at the Feast of Tabernacles in connection with its repeated rite of water drawing, a ceremony associated with the past, present, and future salvation of God. The evangelist interprets Jesus’ reference to “rivers of living water” as relating to the future gifts of the Spirit: “Now he said this about the Spirit, which believers in him were to receive, for as yet there was no Spirit, because Jesus was not yet glorified” (7:39). But from whom does the Spirit flow? In verse 38, “believer’s heart” is better translated as “his innermost being.” (NASB) and so is ambiguous as to who is meant. Although the issues are many and complex, they focus on punctuation. The traditional or Eastern interpretation as punctuated above suggests that the post-resurrection believer, the Christian disciple, is the immediate source of the “rivers of living water.” The Western or Christological interpretation follows a punctuation that pictures the resurrected Jesus as the source of the “rivers of living water.” So Beasley-Murray translates: If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me, and let him drink who believes in me. As the Scripture said, “Rivers of living water will flow from his heart.”
Jesus as the source of living water in 4:10-14, as well as both the content and context of the passage, favor the Christological view, with the glorified Christ (7:39) as the Giver of the Spirit. From the risen Christ their flow to us “rivers of living wster.” With John of the Cross (1542-1591), I know well the spring that flows and runs, although it is night.
A possible us of “water” as a metaphor for the Spirit in John appears ironically in 19:28, in which Jesus asks for waster as he hung dying on the Cross, “I am thirsty.” This cry comes from the parched throat of the One who offered the Samaritan woman “living water” (4:10, 13-14) and call all who are thirsty to himself for water (7:37-38). Two more texts in the Passion narrative (18:1—30:310 are of interest in the light of the lifting up of Jesus on the Cross (12:32) as the supreme sign in the Fourth Gospel, the sign that gathers up into itself all others, the “sign which is also the thing signified.” John is concerned throughout his narrative to relate the story of the Cross in the light of its theological significance for the Christian community. First us 19:30, in which Jesus “bowed his head and gave up his spirit,” an obvious allusion or “symbolic reference to the giving of the Spirit,” linked again to the self-offering of Jesus on the Cross as we have seen in 7:39. Second is 19:34, in which John tells us that as Jesus hung on the Cross, “one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and at once blood and water came out.” Again in the light of the close connection of the Spirit with the death of Jesus, it is compelling to see water here as “a prophetic symbol of the release of the Spirit.” As the soldier’s speak joins the water with the blood of Jesus before it flows, so the release of the Spirit awaits the death of Jesus (20:22) and brings its benefit to humanity, just as blood precedes water. As Gary Burge concludes, “The living Spirit is none other than the life of its Lord.” John has made a symbolic allusion to Jesus after his death as the immediate source of the Spirit for the post-Resurrection disciples. Rev. 22:1 speaks of “the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb.” Moises Silva suggests that in John 19:34 the allusion to the rock at Massah and Meribah in Exodus 12:1-7 “is too clear to be missed.” There the long-suffering Lord, “abundant in grace and truth, was suffering for his peop0le, that they might receive the Spirit of salvation.” And so the hymn of Augustus M. Toplady, Rock of Ages, cleft for me, Let me hide myself in Thee. Let the water and the blood, From Thy wounded side which flowed, Be of sin the double cure, Save from wrath and make me pure.
And finally, Jesus as “the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit” is directly expressed in the farewell discourses, in the Paraclete sayings of chapters 14-16, to which we are preparing to give full attention. The pertinent sayings from each saying are as follows: And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever (14:16). But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you (14:26). When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who comes from the Father, he will testify on my behalf (15:26). Nevertheless I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you (16:7).
We now see more clearly and profoundly what was meant by the inspired prophetic announcement of John the Baptist in 1:33: I myself did not know him, but the one who sent me to baptize with water said to me, “He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.
As the Fourth Gospel moves toward it close, Jesus speaks to his disciples in as breathtaking climax fulfilling the revelation made to John the Baptist at his baptism: “When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit” (20:22). Symbolized by his breathing action, the resurrected Jesus invites his fearful disciples to “Receive the Holy Spirit,” the Spirit who recreates (3:6) and reveals. Contained in this action is the full meaning of Jesus’ relation to spirit/Spirit as witnessed to in the whole of the Gospel. The One baptized by the Spirit is now vividly the “one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.” All that is narrated between these descriptions presents the meaning of this “Pentecost” event. Our understanding of the giving of the Spirit is formed by the incarnate Jesus, glorified in his death and resurrection, the Word made flesh (1:14), and “God the only Son” (1:18). This Spirit, whose meaning as the Paraclete we will begin to explore, continues the life of this Jesus in the world. The relation between Jesus and the Spirit is both intimate and permanent, almost indefinable except by reverent reflection on the Johannine Gospel story itself. The relationship between Jesus and his disciples is now set forth in the completeness of its qualitative and theological significance. As we look ahead, the implications of our explorations to this point are aptly expressed in the language of Jurgen Moltmann—“The Spirit-history of Jesus Christ: the coming, the presence, and the efficacy of the Spirit in, through and with Jesus, is the hidden beginning of the new creation of the world.” This is so, he concludes, because Through its indwelling, the Spirit binds itself to Jesus’ destiny. The Spirit proceeds from the Father and rests on Jesus, so that it goes forth from Jesus and comes upon men and women. In this way God’s Spirit becomes the Spirit of Jesus Christ. It surrenders itself wholly to the person of Jesus in order to communicate itself through Jesus to other man and woman. So the reverse side of the history of Jesus Christ is the history of the Spirit. The history of God’s saving, creative, and prophetic Spirit is indivisibly bound up with the history of Jesus Christ. It is the one single history of the mutual relationship between the Spirit and Jesus, Jesus and the Spirit. This is what Jesus’ baptism means for the Holy Spirit. 4 “Another Advocate”
John 14:15-16
A cloud overshadowed the hearts of the disciples in the Upper Room as the little-understood death of Jesus loomed on their horizon. By his own words—“Where I am going, you cannot follow me now” (13:36)—they would soon be bereft of his company and deprived of his leadership. When the hour of his death comes, “because God is proximate to them—as to us all—only in Jesus, they will understand their loneliness as being God forsaken.” To enable them to face such an absence, Jesus assured them with his words “Do not let your hearts be troubled” (14:1) as he gave them the promise of the Paraclete: And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him because he abides with you, and he will be in you. I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you (14:16-18).
At the Last Supper, as Jesus began to inform his disciples of his soon departure, his very first words spoke at once of his leaving and of his promise: “Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him” (13:31). As we have seen, Jesus kept his promise to his disciples and is keeping it to us, because in his incarnation and in his glorification he is both the One who is baptized by the Holy Spirit and “the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit” (1:33). The nature of the relationship of Jesus to the Holy Spirit, evidenced in the Fourth Gospel’s witness to the Word made flesh, is that the life of Jesus himself defines what the Holy Spirit means. This is so because the Paraclete functions first to interpret the revelation of God in Jesus to the disciples, and second to provide for the personal appropriation of that revelation. The consequence is the thrilling and empowering fact that the Paraclete is the personal presence of Jesus in the Christian, continuing his ministry in the world while he remains with the Father. As we focus our attention on the verses that contain this kernel promise of Jesus’ return to his disciples, we begin to appreciate what the Holy Spirit means to us, in our moment of time and in our unique circumstances. The Paraclete—“with you forever”
The Holy Spirit as the presence of Jesus with us is now given shape by the scriptural promise of Jesus: “And I will ask the Father and he will give you another Advocate to be with you forever” (14:16). Jesus’ use of “another” “implies that he has already been a Paraclete with his disciples.” Everything Jesus was to them during his earthly ministry, the Holy Spirit—the Paraclete—would now also perform for them. Jesus is giving them the Holy Spirit as his presence when he is absent, one “in whose person he himself is coming to them.” Jesus’ promise is I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you. In a little while the world will no longer see me; because I live, you also will live. . . . You heard me say to you, “I am going away, and I am coming to you.” If you loved me, you would rejoice that I am going to the Father, because the Father is greater than I (14:18-19, 28)
As Jesus is to the Father, in similar ways the Paraclete is to Jesus. When we affirm the Holy Spirit as the presence of Jesus with us, “the whole point is that the Spirit performs the functions which Jesus has done in the flesh, so enabling the disciples to continue his mission.” The mission of Jesus continues with the presence of the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, through our common lives in the world. The sending of the Paraclete is how Jesus fulfils his paradoxical promise that his work on earth would carry on just because he is going to the Father. The Paraclete “does not only re-present Jesus, he succeeds him.” Grounded in the likeness of the Holy Spirit’s presence with Jesus (1:32), the Paraclete’s presence with the disciples was permanent: “to be with you forever” (14:16). The clause expresses purpose, indicating why the Spirit is given. The incarnate ministry of Jesus has come to an end, but the Holy Spirit would remain with them always. As Bultmann describes, a “new” history is under way, one that does not possess the character of world history, for Jesus’ life and work came to an end as an event in world history. But Jesus’ work in the Paraclete will never come to an end; it is eternal. It is indeed eternal life! As a permanent presence, the Holy Spirit is not geared to our emotional highs and lows. Lewis T. Corlett wrote many years ago in a groundbreaking book that “the Christian is not promised a life free from disappointment, sorrows, and depressions, and seeming defeats; but he is promised grace and the abiding presence of the Spirit to be with him at all times.” The Spirit relates to the whole person—a consistent and faithful presence. Reuben Welch assures us that “the Spirit is not a fleeting emotion, nor a tentative, skittish presence, deserting us in times of crisis.” He is “our covenant partner, . . . with us all the journey through.” The New Jerusalem Bible renders Jesus’ promise to all his disciples from his century to ours simply as “I will ask the Father and he will give you another Advocate” (14:16). Within the context of John’s broader use of “spirit,” Jesus uniquely designates the person of the Holy Spirit by the Greek paraklētos, a difficult term to translate adequately into English by one word. As John Ashton suggests, “the name ‘Paraclete.’ In spite of dozens of energetic attempts to elucidate it, remains imperspicuous.” Grammatically, paraklētos is an adjective that functions like a verb in a passive sense with the general meaning of “one called alongside to help.” It is derived from the verb parakaleō—literally, “to call to one’s side.” Phillips translates it as “Someone else to stand by you” (14:16). In addition to the Paraclete of the New Jerusalem Bible, four different renderings are found in the standard English versions: Conforter, Counselor, Advocate, and Helper. “Comforter” is the rendering of the King James Version, The American Standard Version, and The Living Bible; “Advocate is the rendering of the New English Bible, the Revised English Bible, and the New Revised Standard Version; and “Helpher is the rendering of the New Amereican Standard Bible, see note 13, p. 49. TO HERE 8/17/16 copying in changing to NRSV.
5 “The Spirit of Truth”
14:17-18
6 “Greater Works
14:12
7 “Ask in My Name”
John 14:13-14
In 14:1-11 the Gospel of John describes Jesus’ closeness to the Father. In verses 12-14 Jesus indicates how His disciples are to arrive at a similar closeness. We say in verse 12 the first specific promised based on the ministry of the Holy Spirit. The promised intimacy takes place in a life of ministry. Jesus’ next theme, likewise inseparable from the presence of the Paraclete, is His life in us as a life of prayer: And whatsovever you ask in My name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask me anything in My name, I will do it (14:13-14).
This is Jesus' promise for our praying—"in My name." How do I pray in Jesus' name? The answer is found in the Johannine setting of this promise. We have seen that the farewell discourses of chapters 13—17 interpret Jesus' approaching death (chaps. 18—20). As Jesus was telling His disciples what life would be like for them without His physical presence, He was also describing the life of the Church who would follow His death and resurrection. The Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, would be present to continue the mission of Jesus in the world (14:12). Therefore, the realm of all fully Christian prayers is the mission of Jesus in the world as carried out by the Holy Spirit in the life of the disciple, accomplishing His purposes in and through us. Prayer is always "Thy kingdom come." Can this mean that there is no such thing as unanswered prayer in Jesus' name? Two statements seen side by side lead me to suggest this. First, Jesus said, "If you ask Me anything in My name, I will do it" (v. 14). Second, 16th-century Protestant Reformer Martin Luther, concluding his exposition of Rom. 8:26, wrote: "It is not a bad sign, but a very good one, if things seem to turn out contrary to our requests. Just as it is not a good sign if everything turns out favorably for our requests." These two sentences appear to contradict each other—they exist in tension; together they constitute a paradox. But it is a paradox that Jesus transcends in His instruction as to "how" you and I are to pray—"in My name." We all know that to invoke Jesus' name in prayer is no surefire formula, no super spiritual mechanism. It is not a magical ritual by which we coerce God to give us what we want, like spoiled children skilled in the manipulation of our elders. The God of sovereign grace is not subject to manipulation. Biblical Christianity is not magic, a fact easily obscured in our present seemingly pagan American culture. A serious temptation, penetrating the life of the Church, is to turn our evangelical faith into a utility cult, like the Old Testament Baal cult, designed to produce health and wealth. Paganism remains ever the same, the essence of ancient Hellenism, which deified humanity, intruding upon our culture in the form of New Age perspectives. Even the Church is not immune to these different, yet similar, religious transformations in our therapeutic culture, when we translate the gospel message into the language of ego fulfillment. E. Brooks Holifield affords us an illustration of this in A History of Pastoral Care in America: From Salvation to Self-realization: The story proceeds from the ideal of self-denial to one of self-love, from self-love to self-culture, from self-culture to self-mastery, from self-mastery to self-realization within a trustworthy culture, and finally to a later form of self-realization counterpoised against cultural mores and social institutions.
To redirect our attention to biblical praying, Jesus taught us to pray "in His Name." "Name" represents the person in his or her essential nature. This meaning obtains both in our culture and especially in the world of the Bible. In John 1:12 "those who believe in His name" are those who put their faith in the person of Jesus. John 20:31 speaks of "believing you . . . have life in His name” and "life" is the gift of the crucified, risen Christ. So "to pray in the name of Jesus," writes Richard Foster, "means to pray in full assurance of the great work Christ accomplished— in his life, by his death, through his resurrection, and by means of his coming reign at the right hand of God the Father." To employ someone's name with integrity means that we represent the person faithfully, in a way consistent with his or her character and witness. To do otherwise is to use the individual, to violate his or her unique personhood. Name-dropping is therefore unchristian. To pray is a holy endeavor. "You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain" (Exod. 20:7). Jesus taught us to pray, "Father, hallowed [sanctified, holy] be Thy name" (Luke 11:2). When used of the Deity in the biblical Record, "name" indicates both the character and the presence of God in the world; of the Old Testament Temple God says, "In this house ... I will put My name forever" (2 Kings 21:7). "Character" and "presence" furnish us with the two essential qualifications for prayer to be "in Jesus' name." In tune with the character of God
First, to pray "in Jesus' name" is to pray within the stream of the mission of God in Jesus Christ in our world—its purposes, its character, and its methods, "that the Father may be glorified in the Son" (14:13). This is the sphere in which prayer is genuinely Christian prayer. Note again that the prayer promise of Jesus follows His statement of our mission in the world as the continuation of His:
Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go to the Father (v. 12).
If that is so, then at the heart of prayer is the Cross, for Jesus' mission in our world, as seen by human eyes, centers in His cross. In His supreme manifestation, Jesus' Shechinah presence in the world, God hid himself in the execution of a Jewish peasant on a Roman instrument of torture in an insignificant place and at an obscure moment in history's vast panorama of the course of nations. Thus, Jesus demands of the disciple, "Let him . . . take up his cross daily" (Luke 9:23), and the apostle Paul declared, "I have been crucified with Christ" (Gal. 2:20). God's purpose in the mission of the Cross is that we might be "conformed to the image of His Son" (Rom. 8:29), for "we know that, when He appears, we shall be like Him, because we shall see Him just as He is" (1 John 3:2). And even now "the one who says he abides in Him ought himself to walk in the same manner as He walked" (1 John 2:6). God's method in His mission in the Christ of the Cross is the working out of His will through contradiction, for death contradicts life; but life also contradicts death! It is resurrection out of crucifixion; it is life out of death, for "unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains by itself alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit" (12:24). This truth the apostle Paul experienced in his ministry: "For we who live are constantly being delivered over to death for Jesus' sake, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So death works in us, but life in you" (2 Cor. 4:11-12). Of the mission of God in His world I am certain, but what His particular means are—the detailed and concrete forms that His mission takes in my fallenness in a fallen society—encounters me often as a mystery, causing me to cry out with the psalmist, "My God, my God, why . . . ?" (22:1). But it is a mystery that by faith I can recognize as the mystery of His cross. So with Karen Sangren I believe "that the true abundant life ... allows us to cry out, 'My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?’” What are the implications of this "cross" perspective for my prayer quest? It is not "If you had only really had faith!" It is not "God sometimes says 'Yes' and other times says 'No.'" It is not even "The joy of answered prayer involves the risk of unanswered prayer," as I once heard it put. Even to talk about "the timing of our requests" may get us off target on this promise. There is one primary implication: unfulfilled wishes and wants one may have, but unanswered prayer? There is no such thing! Dee Freeborn affirms that "there is a big difference between unanswered prayer and ungranted results." His approach supplements the truth of John 14:12: A foundational principle is ... that, for God's children, ALL prayers are answered! . . . Prayer ... is dialogue with the Eternal God, the Creator of the Universe, who wants to have fellowship with me! ... It is He that I seek when I pray. . . . The objective of prayer is communion and conversation with the Lord.
Martin Luther, again on Rom. 8:26, continues to help us explore our theme as he expounds, "It is always the case that we understand our own work before it is done, but we do not understand the work of God until it has been done." In his exposition of Ps. 150, Luther explains that "we must wait for God's answer and not attach a 'name' to God's help. God proves himself to be the hidden God especially also in his answer to prayer, and hence we dare not prescribe measure or goal to his help." Why is there no such thing as unanswered prayer? It is because all truly Christian prayer is taken up into the "Cross" presence and the "Cross" purpose of God in our history. My praying must be ultimately for the vindication of God's goal—"conformed to the image of His Son" (Rom. 8:29). My prayer, in every situation and concern of my life, must be "that the Father may be glorified in the Son" (14:13). This is the "good" that "God causes all things to work together for ... to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose" (Rom. 8:28). I find this a great help when I pray for, among others, my children, my grandchildren, and my larger family, as well as for my friends, some of whom are dying. Carlo Carretto, isolated from family and friends in the North African desert, reminds us, "I am completely convinced that one never wastes one's time by praying; there is no more helpful way of helping those we love." In all these areas my part is the prayer of faith, a faith informed by the perspective of the Cross. All those things in my world I do not like—the things that are not going "right," the things I do not have the wisdom and strength to face, and the things that contradict the way I think things should be, yet somehow I cannot do anything about—I lay at the foot of the Cross. I surrender them all in faith to the Christ of the Cross, negating all fatalisms, experiencing no despair, and denying nothing but self. I embrace them all positively with "faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love" (1 Cor. 13:13). This is what I believe it means to pray "in Jesus' name," to pray in line with His character in the world unique to me. But the question comes: "How as a frail piece of humanity can I pray thus?" The answer is the other essential qualification for prayer if it is to be "in Jesus' name."
In reliance on the presence of God
Second, to pray "in Jesus' name" is to pray in dependence on His continued presence in the world through the Holy Spirit. Remember what Jesus said just before and after His prayer promise: And greater works than these shall he do; because I go to the Father. . . . And I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may be with you forever (14:12,16).
Prayer is motivated by His life in us; it is informed by the breath of the Spirit of truth who lives within. The apostle Paul makes this relationship between the Holy Spirit and our praying explicit: And in the same way the Spirit also helps our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words; and He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He intercedes for the saints according to the will of God (Rom. 8:26-27).
We pray in the life flow of Jesus in our world by the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is present to help us pray, to help us know for what to pray, to tune our praying into the dynamic process of the work of the Father on our planet. Ladislaus Boros sees in this presence of the Holy Spirit the basis of all our praying. As a result, "we are constantly praying in our innermost being," with "all explicit prayer" being "simply an articulation of that basic state of prayer." The sole effective ground of our praying is God and Him alone. Luther would say, "True prayer is always a prayer with empty hands. The true praying man has nothing but God, and him only by faith. A 'secure' man cannot pray." Ole Hallesby would add: "Helplessness is unquestionably the first and surest indication of a praying heart. As far as I can see, prayer has been ordained only for the helpless. . . . Only he who is helpless can truly pray." We enter the privileged life of the certainty of answered prayer because of the cross of Jesus. By virtue of Jesus' resurrection, the Cross has released into our lives the eternal purpose of God through the Holy Spirit. In Jesus' name I am set free to pray, trusting in the Spirit's presence, motivated by His life in my living, and informed by the breath of the indwelling Spirit of truth. Therefore, to pray "in Jesus' name" does limit our prayers, but with a limitation that shatters the very meaning of the word. "If you ask Me anything in My name, I will do it" (14:14) is the promise of Jesus that the mission of the Father will be accomplished through our lives just as surely as it was through His. Jesus' works were "always the result of prayer, which expresses the unity of his will with the Father's";17 in the same way, our continuation of Jesus' mission where we are placed depends on prayer, because it expresses the unity of our will with His. This is a truth we cannot avoid. Prayer is an inherent part of works that are His works. There is no other way! As John of the Cross admonished his 16th-century friends in ministry, Let those, then, who are singularly active, who think they can win the world with their preaching and exterior works, observe here that they would profit the Church and please God much more . . . were they to spend at least half of this time with God in prayer. . . . Without prayer they would do a great deal of hammering but accomplish little, and sometimes nothing, and even at times cause harm.
A twofold gift from the Father guarantees this amazing continuity of mission through prayer. First, as we have seen, is the Father's gift of the Holy Spirit to Jesus' disciples following our Lord's departure from them (14:16), a gift we also share this day. The second gift is the Father's gift to the Son: "The Father loves the Son, and has given all things into His hand" (3:35). So preceding and defining the Father's gift to us of the Holy Spirit at the request of Jesus is this gift of the Father to the Son of "all things." Constituted in this gift is the oneness of the Father and the Son (17:21-22). Thus, the integrity of all that Jesus has promised us is found in His relation to the Father. This means that the range of our praying is the "all things that the Father has" that Jesus said "are Mine" (16:15). The expanse of our prayer life in our union of wills with Him is as vast as the character of God; its limits are the presence and work of God in the world: "If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it shall be done for you" (15:7) I ask: is there a promise more valid than the integrity of a holy God in His own world? Can you conceive of a promise better than the presence of the Father in your life? Dare we imagine any challenge greater than the works of Jesus through our living? This is the life of prayer, the breakthrough to "the new level of intimacy with the Father” that Jesus has promised to us as His disciples: "Until now you have asked for nothing in My name; ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be made full" (16:24). Prayer is the joy that flows from the artesian well of God's eternity. Our joy can be made full as we seek, discover, and surrender to His presence every morning and in the whir of every situation in life, the contrary as well as the favorable. For "prayer is not a little garden of Paradise, where the one who is weary of the Word of the cross might take a little rest, but prayer is just the battleground where the sign of the cross has been raised." 8 “Keep My Commandments”
14:15 9. “He Will Bear Witness of Me”
15:26; 16:12-15
On the crucifixion of Jesus
This was the worst thing that had ever happened through the sin of men. Yet they came to believe that this was also the best thing that had every happened in the providence of God.
Relating “righteousness” in John 16:8-10: The most “right” thing that God ever did! 10 “You Will Bear Witness Also
15:27; 16:7-11 11
“My Peace I Give to you
14:26-27; 16:16-33; 20:19-23
Chapter titles for 2, 9, and 10quote the New American Standard Bible (NASB), © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977. Robert Browning, "A Death in a Desert," in Dramatis Personae (Boston Ticknor and Fields, 1864), 110. Amos N. Wilder, Early Christian Rhetoric: The Language of the Gospel, in New Testament Library (London: SCM Press, 1964), 128. B. F. Westcott, The Gospel According to St. John (London John Murray, 1882), xxiii. Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, VI, 14, 7. Eusebius’ dates were A. D. 150-215. Clement’s were A. D. 155-220. This translation of John 14:27a is that of Raymond E. Brown, The Gospel According to John, vols. 29 and 29A of The Anchor Bible (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday and Co., 1970), 649. Since the two volumes are paginated consecutively, the volumes will be cited by page numbers only. As a greeting see Luke 10:5; 24:36, KJV; John 20:19; Rom. 1:7. As a parting wish see Mark 5:34; John 14:27; 20:21. George R. Beasley-Murray, John, in Word Biblical Commentary (Waco, Texas: Word Book Publisher, 1987), 36:378-79. Subsequent citations will not list the volume number, only the page numbers numbers. These phrases were made famous by Martin Kähler’s The So-Called Historical Jesus and the Historical Biblical Christ, trans. Carl E. Braaten (Philadelphia Fortress Press, 1964).This book translates the first two essays in Kähler’s 1896 edition of Der sogennate historische Jesus und der geschictliche, biblische Christus. Albert Schweizer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus, trans. W. Montgomery, J. R. Coates, Susan Cupitt, and John Bowden (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001). This “First Complete Edition: is edited by John Bowden. Schweitzer’s work was first published in German in 1906 as Von Reimarus zu Wrede and later released as Geschicte der Leben-Jesus Forschung. A sixth edition was issued by Schweizer in 1950. From Marcus J. Borg’s “An Appreciation of Albert Schweizer” in Schweizer, The Quest, vii. Schweizer, The Quest, 14. Gottbhold Ephraim Lessing, ed., Von dem Zwecke Jesus und seiner Jȕnger,’ Noch ein Fragment des Wolfenbȕttelschen Ungenannten (Brunswick, 1778). Schweizer, The Quest, 16. William Wrede, Das Messiasgheimnis in den Evangelien. Zugleich ein Beitrag zum Vereständnis des Markusevangeliums (Gottingen, 1901), The English edition, The Messianic Secret, was published by Cambridge in 1971. Schweizer, The Quest, 487, These sentences reflect Marcus Borg’s “An Appreciation of Albert Schweizer,” ix. Marcus Borg, born March 11, 1942, passed away January 21, 2015. N. T. Wright was born December 1, 1948. Marcus J. Borg, N. T. Wright, The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions (New York: HarperOne, 1999), viii. Borg and Wright, The Meaning of Jesus, 241. Borg and Wright, The Meaning of Jesus, 225. Italics are mine. 402. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Volume 8, ed. John W. de Gruchy, trans, Isabel Best, Lisa Dahill, Reinhard Kraus, and Nancy Luiens (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2010 [German 1951/1970], ed. Christian Gremmels, Eberhard Bethge, and Renate Bethge, with Ilse Tӧdt), 362. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Widerstand und Ergebung: Briefe und Aufzeichnungen aus der Haft (Gȕtersloh, Deutschland: Gȕtersloher Verlagshaus, 1951 [21, Auflage 2013]), 140. John 14:26-27; 15:26-27; 16:5-11, 13-15. C. H. Dodd, The Interpretation of the Fourth Gospel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963), 227. T. S. Eliot “The Dry Salvages,” in Four Quartets (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1943), 42. See Gen. 2:7; 6:17; 7:15; Zech. 12:1 See also Isa. 59:21; Ezek. 37:14; Jer. 31:31-34. Manual of Discipline, in Theodor H. Gaster, The Dead Sea Scriptures (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday Anchor Books, Doubleday and Co., 1957), 45. The quotation is the author's translation. The community at Qumran was in existence as least for a century preceding the New Testament period and into New Testament times. The Spirit is also present in Luke's infancy narrative at 1:15, 35, 41, 67; 2:25, 26, 27. Beasley-Murray, John, 5. Burge, The Anointed Community, 112. Beasley-Murray, John, 10.
Burge, The Anointed Community, 133, Ashton, Understanding the Fourth Gospel, 421. Matt. 3:13-17; Mark 1:9-11; Luke 3:21-22. Brown, The Gospel According to John, 66. Burge, The Anointed Community, 55. Moltmann, The Way of Jesus Christ, Christology in Messianic Dimensions, trans. Margaret Kohl (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1990), 73. George Eldon Ladd, A Theology of the New Testament (Grand Rapids Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1974), 288. The Synoptic Gospels express the role of the Spirit in Jesus' ministry in in Matt. 4:1; 12:18, 28-32; Mark 1:12; 3:29; Luke 4:1, 14, 18; 10:21; 12:10.
Brown, The Gospel According to John, 161-162, suggests the possibility of Jesus here as the one who "gives the Spirit without measure" to His disciples. Burge, The Anointed Community, 85.
Eliot, "Little Gidding," in Four Quartets, 57.
I am indebted to Reuben Welch for this phrase in reference to John 4:23-24. Dodd, The Interpretation of the Fourth Gospel, 177. Dodd, The Interpretation of the Fourth Gospel, 226; see 222-27. Burge, The Anointed Community, 190-195. See note 8 on page 38. Not needed now? Burge, The Anointed Community, 167; see 166-169. Culpepper, Anatomy of the Fourth Gospel, 193, suggests that the emphasis of this phrase is not that baptism is necessary but that any baptism which does not involve cleansing by the Sprit is defective.” Carson, The Gospel According to John, 195. See Beasley-Murray, John, 48-49. John 12:32: “And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” In John this is identified with Jesus’ glorification(12:23; see 7:39, etc.) for “the Evangelist sees the death on the cross as itself participating in the glorification of Jesus.” Beasley-Murray, John, 54; see also 50. Brown, The Gospel According to John, 161-162. Rudolf Schnackenburg, The Gospel According to St. John, trans. Kevin Smyth et al, 3 vols. (New York: Crossroad, 1990), 113-114. Beasley-Murray, John, 113-114. See note 15, page 41. Beasley-Murray, John, 102; see 114-117. “Heart” is koilia, literally “body cavity; belly.” The Collected Works of John of the Cross, d. Kieran Kavanaugh and Otilio Rodriguez, rev. trans. Kieran Kavanaught and Otilio Rodriguez (Washington, D. C.: ICS Publications, Institute of Carmelite Studies, 1991), 58. Dodd, The Interpretation of the Fourth Gospel, 439. See 438-439. Brown, The Gospel According to John, 931, So Ashton, Understanding the Fourth Gospel, 424. See Burge, The Anointed Community, 133-135. Appeal is made to John’s use of paradidōmi (“to hand over” or “deliver”) As compared to the Matthean (27:50) apphiēmi (“to let go” or “release”) and the Lucan (23:46) paratithēmi (“to give over” or “entrust”). Burge, The Anointed Community, 95. See Brown, The Gospel According to John, 949- 950. “Thus for John the flowing of water is another proleptic symbol of the giving of the Spirit, carrying the theme of vs. 30: “He handed over the Spirit.” See 19:35. Burge, The Anointed Community, 95. That “blood” precedes “water” is significant symbolically, if not theologically, for the dependence of the gift of the Spirit on the death of Jesus. Moises Silva, “Approaching the Fourth Gospel,” Crfiswell Theological Review 3, No. 1 (fall 1988), 29. See note 23 in book, 44. See Brown, The Gospel According to John, 1038-1039, who holds that each of the two accounts of giving of the Spirit in John 20 and Acts 2 are functionally “describing the same event; the one gift of the Spirit to his followers by the risen and ascended Lord.” See note 25, p. 44. Moltmann, The Way of Jesus Christ, 73. Moltmann, The Way of Jesus Christ, 93-94. Ernst Haenchen, A Commentary on the Gospel of John: Hermeneia, trans. Robert W. Funk, ed. Robert W. Funk with Ulrich Busse, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984), 2:124. So Robert Kysar, The Fourth Evangelist and His Gospel: An Examination of Contemporary Scholarship (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1975), 239, summarizing the state of research on the “Functions of the Spirit-Paraclete.” Burge, The Anointed Community, 41, concludes “that the single most important feature of the Johannine Paraclete is its Christological concentration. Christ is the template within the Fourth Evangelist’s thinking that has given shape and meaning to the Spirit in the Farewell Discourses. Ladd, A Theology of the New Testament, 294. See 1 John 2:1, in which Jesus is directly designated a Paraclete, but with a somewhat different meaning than here. The Greek is allos, another of the same kind. J. N. Sanders and B. A. Mastin, A Commentary on the Gospel According to St. John (London: Adam and Charles Black, 1968), 326. Barnabas Lindars, The Gospel of John, New Century Bible (Greenwood, S.C.; Attic Press, 1972), 478. Ashton, Understanding the Fourth Gospel, 469. Bultmann, The Gospel of John, 616. Lewis T. Corlett, Holiness: the Harmonizing Experience (Kansas City: Beacon Hill Press, 1951), 71. See the rest of the note on p. 48. Reuben Welch, “The Holy Spirit,” Herald of Holiness (June 1990), 19, Ashton, Understanding the Fourth Gospel, 477. Brodie, The Gospel According to John, 463. Quoted from Walter von Loewenich, Luther's Theology of the Cross (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1976), 141. See Luther: Lectures on Romans, The Library of Christian Classics, trans, and ed. Wilhelm Pauck (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1961), 240. See Texe Marrs, Texe Mans' Book of New Age Cults and Religions (Austin, Tex.: Living Truth Publishers, 1990). See Robert N. Bellah et al, Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1985), particularly chapter 9, "Religion," 219-49. E. Brooks Holifield, A History of Pastoral Care in America: From Salvation to Self-realization (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1983), 12. See also Robert Roberts, "Psychobabble,” Christianity Today, May 16, 1994; chapters 5 and 6, by Paul C. Vitz and Os Guinness, in No God but God, 95-132; and Marsha G. Witten, All Is Forgiven: The Secular Message in American Protestantism (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1993), who, as a sociologist writing from a non-Christian perspective, examines 47 sermons on the prodigal son by pastors in Presbyterian and Southern Baptist churches. See Mouw, "Ending the Cold War Between Theologians and Laypeople," for a more positive analysis. Witten's and Holifield's books are reviewed by Gerard Reed in Reedings, No. 38 (June 1994). Richard J. Foster, Prayer: Finding the Heart's True Home (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1992), 194. See also Donald G. Bloesch, The Struggle of Prayer (San Francisco: Harper and Row Publishers, 1980), 36-37.
See Hans Bietenhard in TDNT 5:253-61, 274-79. Karen Sangren, chair of the Department of Art, Point Loma Nazarene College, in a devotional talk to pastors in a master of ministry class, April 1988. E. Dee Freeborn, "Living with Unanswered Prayer," Herald of Holiness, April 1991, 11. See his helpful book When You Pray: Going Everywhere with Jesus (Kansas City: Beacon Hill Press of Kansas City, 1992), 49-50. E. Dee Freeborn, "Facing Unanswered Prayer," Herald of Holiness, March 1991, W. See Freeborn, When You Pray, 43-53. Von Loewenich, Luther's Theology of the Cross, 141. See Pauck, Luther: Lectures on Romans, 243 Von Loewenich, Luther's Theology of the Cross, 141. Here von Loewenich paraphrases thoughts from several passages in Luther, which he documents. Carlo Carretto, Letters from the Desert (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1972), xx. At the age of 44, after a very active ministry, he experienced a call to the contemplative life in the North African desert. There he felt he must burn his address book: "But burning an address book is not the same thing as destroying a friendship, for that I never intended to do; on the contrary, I have never loved nor prayed so much for my old friends as in the solitude of the desert. . . . For me they had become a flock which would always belong to me and which I must lead daily to the fountains of prayer," xix-xx. Ladislaus Boros, Christian Prayer, trans. David Smith (New York: Seabury Press, 1976), 4. See Foster, Prayer, 136-38. Von Loewenich, Luther's Theology of the Cross, 140; again his paraphrase, with documentation in parentheses omitted. Ole Hallesby, Prayer (London: InterVarsity Press, 1948), 13. Quoted from Ogilvie, 71-72. The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross, 588, "The Spiritual Canticle,” 29, S3. Brodie, The Gospel According to John, 499. Von Loewenich, Luther's Theology of the Cross, 143.
D. M. Baillie, God Was in Christ: An Essay on Incarnation and Atonement (London: Faber and Faber Limited, 1948), 112.
4.4.1.1 DATE \@ "MM/dd/yy" 09/04/16 TIME \@ "h:mm AM/PM" 5:35 AM