Wednesday, October 16, 2013

WHAT IS THE CHURCH?--Week 19

John 3--about Nicodemus--is about an entrance. As we know Nicodemus comes at night, when the Sanhedrin to which he belongs is meeting. Did they wonder where he was?
Nicodemus says--Rabbi, we know that you have come from God...God is with you, John 3.2.

Jesus then gives Nicodemus two tests of the kingdom of God. Nicodemus is seeking God but he must be born again in order to see God's kingdom and to enter it. Jesus says Nicodemus must be born of water and Spirit. This is the baptism in the Jordan for repentance and the baptism in the Spirit which will come at Pentecost.
So Nicodemus asks how these things can happen--how can these things be, John 3.9.

First Jesus criticizes Nicodemus for not knowing this already. Then He tells Nicodemus that--the Son of Man (must) be lifted up, John 3.14. This might be a reference to Jesus on the cross, but for Nicodemus that night Jesus says 3 times--whoever believes in Him...whoever believes in Him...He who believes in Him, John 3.15,16,18. Evidently being lifted up is belief in the heart.

Up till now it seems that it is Nicodemus who must believe in Jesus to be born again, that belief is a work of man as if everything depended on it. To contradict that, Jesus ends the passage with Nicodemus by saying his--deeds may be manifested as having been wrought in God, John 3.21.

Jesus has brought Nicodemus from being born again to believing in Jesus to his deeds being wrought in God. What is being said here is that the Christian life is all of God and yet it is all of us. The NT writers cannot think of their own soul without thinking of the Spirit of God; they cannot think of the Spirit of God without thinking of their own soul. The spirit of man and the Spirit of God embrace continually.
God decided at the fall of man in Genesis 3 that man cannot live without Him; when Adam had a chance to deal with Satan upon the protection of God's Word--Gen. 2.15,16--he failed. When the Lord told Cain, Sin is crouching at the door and you must master it--Gen. 4.7--Cain failed. Man cannot live without God.

God decided at the cross that He will not live without man. He became a man.

There is a passage in the OT which dramatizes this moment when God decided He will not exist without us. It comes from Isaiah 59.16--
Now the Lord saw and it was displeasing in His sight
that there was not justice,
and He saw that there was no man,
and was astonished that there was no one to intercede;
then His own arm brought salvation to Him;
and His righteousness upheld Him.
And He put on righteousness like a breastplate,
and a helmet of salvation on His head;
and He put on garments of vengeance for clothing
and wrapped Himself with zeal as a mantle.


From that moment on, God was with man in His side. From that moment on man was with God in his soul. The idea that God is with us and that we are with God is the basis for the church. Heaven is the church glorified; the church is heaven dramatized with us.

So in Revelation 5, John saw an angel say what he wrote--
a strong angel proclaiming with a loud voice,
'Who is worthy to open the book and break its' seals?'
And no one in heaven or on the earth or under the earth was able to open the book or look into it. And I began to weep greatly because no one was found worthy to open the book or to look into it; and one of the elders said to me,
'Stop weeping, behold, the Lion that is from the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has overcome so as to open the book and its' seven seals..'
God is with us, we are with God. That is the church.

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