Explained in his own words (part 1)
In John 16:28 Jesus summarized his existence this way: “I came from the Father and entered the world; now I’m leaving the world and going back to the Father.”
And that simple explanation seemed to satisfy his disciples because they replied in verse 29, “Now you’re speaking clearly.” Somehow it had got through to them that Jesus really had come from God. He wasn’t just a prophet, a teacher, or a healer who could work miracles; he was an extra terrestrial who’d landed on this planet “from above,” as Jesus phrased it in John 3:31.
He wasn’t “from the earth,” because, he said, anyone from the earth “belongs to the earth,” but “the one who comes from heaven is above all.” So in his own words he was above and beyond anything that could be seen, heard or experienced naturally on this planet.
But what proof did he offer that this was true? It was simple: everything he said and did was based purely on what he’d “seen and heard” in heaven, verse 32. And that he was utterly unique in his experience of heaven because “No one (else) has ever gone to heaven except the one who came from heaven” (verse 13).
It was an extraordinary claim, that this walking, talking human had come from heaven to speak of what he’d personally seen and heard in heaven, and also to act out heaven on the earth so that it could “be seen plainly,” verse 21, “that what he’d done was done through God.” Only God working in and through him could explain why Jesus was so different to anything seen or heard on earth.
And then Jesus said in verse 35, that God had “placed everything in his hands” – with God’s unlimited power backing him up too (verse 34) – to make the life of heaven real. And it was to his disciples this understanding would be given, because it would be through them believing it that the process of heaven becoming real on this planet would begin.
In what ways, then, would heaven become real through them?…(continues Wednesday)
Buck To Basics 