To Joy (part 10)

The first thing the Holy Spirit does to bring glory to Jesus is open the eyes of his disciples to the damage sin does and our utter helplessness as humans to stop it. 

Which leads naturally to the second thing the Holy Spirit does to bring glory to Jesus, as he opens our eyes to how Jesus goes about healing the damage and dealing with our helplessness.

Jesus himself explained the “how” in John 16:8. It’s having our eyes opened to “righteousness.” He explains what he meant by that in verse 10, that “in regard to righteousness I am going to the Father.”

There are two points to note here. First of all, that the solution to sin is righteousness. If righteousness – the qualities of God’s nature – existed all over the world, there’d be no sin and no damage by sin. The problem of sin and our utter helplessness to stop it, therefore, would be solved. 

But Jesus in his human state couldn’t solve it. Even by displaying God’s nature in all that he said and did only made the smallest dent in people’s lives. And dying on the cross didn’t stop the madness either. People kept on being people. The religious leaders were even glad he was dead. 

In Jesus’ short physical life, then, he had little impact on dealing with the damage of sin and bringing in righteousness to replace it. And it shocked his disciples, because they thought the Scriptures said the Messiah would come to conquer evil, not be killed by it. 

But the second point in verse 10 is that the Holy Spirit would open their eyes to Jesus’ statement: “I am going to the Father.” Then it would all become obvious. And of course it was obvious, because if Jesus was with his Father, in all the power and glory that office gave him, he could bring in righteousness any time to the whole world, and by any means he wished too.

But the joy of that for his disciples was Jesus’ choice of means by which he’d bring righteousness and the solution to sin to the whole world. It was them. It was instilling God’s nature, his righteousness, in his disciples. Wherever they went, then, they would be instruments of healing and hope – just like he was…(continues Wednesday)   

To Joy (part 9)

According to Jesus in John 16:7-9, the Holy Spirit was given to his disciples “in regard to sin” so that they – his disciples – would understand what sin is. Because if we understand what sin is, that’s the means by which the Spirit can help others understand what sin is.  

It’s an odd word, “sin,” and it’s open to all kinds of interpretations, but Jesus made it clear in verse 9 what sin is: it’s sin, he said, when “people do not believe in me.” And why that’s such a sin is what the Holy Spirit gets through to Jesus’ disciples, because it’s we who need to understand it first. 

The Spirit’s purpose – as Jesus himself said in verse 14 – is “to bring glory to me.” The Spirit would make Jesus glorious to us. And so believable and so real in his glory, that knowing him and being like him would be the driving force in our lives. The joy of it being, that we don’t have to conjure this up for ourselves; this is entirely in the Spirit’s job description. He does it, because that’s what the Father and Jesus sent the Holy Spirit to us for.    

The means by which the Spirit makes Jesus glorious to us is “by taking from what is mine and making it known to you,” verse 14. “What is mine” is quite the statement, because, as Jesus explained, “All that belongs to the Father is mine.” So everything that the Father is and has belongs to Jesus. And the importance of that statement is that the Holy Spirit is now “making this known to us.”  

And that, surely, would make believing in Jesus easy, knowing he has the same power and glory and everything else the Father is and has. But how on earth is the Holy Spirit going to get that through to us? 

He helps us see what not believing in Jesus does to people. We’re watching it, feeling it, and witnessing in brutal reality the enormous damage to people physically, mentally and spiritually. And what a shock to realize we’re living in a world that has no clue what to do about what’s ailing us. 

Understanding sin and the damage it does, therefore, is how the Holy Spirit opens our eyes to the glory of Jesus, because included in “What belongs to him” is the power to nail sin to the wall…(continues Monday)

To Joy (part 8) 

Going back to John 16:8, where Jesus talks of the Holy Spirit “convicting the world of guilt in regard to sin, etc.,” how exactly does the Holy Spirit convict people in the world?

Jesus gives the answer in verse 7: “Unless I go away, the Counselor (the Holy Spirit) will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you.” It’s to Jesus’ disciples that the Holy Spirit is sent, so it’s through his disciples, therefore, that “the world is convicted in regard to sin, etc.” 

The Spirit is not going directly to the world, because as Jesus pointed out earlier in John 14:17, “The world cannot receive the Holy Spirit because it does not know him.” What convicts people, then, is not by the Holy Spirit working directly in their minds, it’s by what the Holy Spirit is doing in our minds. 

It’s through us that the world is convicted in regard to sin, because of what the Holy Spirit has done in our minds regarding sin. We find ourselves hating sin, not only in what it’s done and doing to us personally, but also in what we see it’s done and doing to people all around us. Our conviction about the damage sin does is what stirs us deeply to want to open other people’s eyes to the damage it’s doing. And that’s how the Holy Spirit gets through to people about sin, by getting through to us about sin. 

“Sin” is the destructive force in our world that hides and wrecks the loving, joy filled beautiful beings God created us to be. And the Holy Spirit helps Jesus’ disciples to see that, and so clearly that it presses on our minds to live what God created us to be so people get to see it being lived in us. And if they hate us for it, or steel their minds against it, Jesus said people would hate us, but that too is how the Holy Spirit gets to people through us, by creating a reaction in people’s minds, where a reaction didn’t exist before. 

What a switch to joy it can be, then, realizing the Holy Spirit is doing things in us that will create a reaction. Good reaction or hate filled reaction doesn’t matter. What matters is that people see something different in us that hopefully shakes them awake a bit “in regard to sin” too…(continues Friday) 

To Joy (part 7) 

In John 16:24, Jesus told his disciples, “Until now you have not asked for anything in my name.” That’s because they didn’t need to; he was there in person with them, so they could simply go up to him and ask him anything they wanted and he would answer. 

And how wonderful would that be? Jesus on hand, in person, any time you needed something sorted out in your mind. But to Jesus something even better would be opened up to his disciples after he was no longer with them in person. There was a switch coming that would increase their joy even more.

The switch was in verse 23, when Jesus told them, “my Father will give you whatever you ask in my name.” And if they cottoned on to what Jesus meant by that the doors would swing open to verse 24: “Ask and you will receive, and your joy will be complete.”

It was all about joy. That’s what Jesus wanted his disciples focused on, not on the grief of him leaving them, but on the joy of discovering why he’d left them, which was to fling open the doors to what was going on in the God world. And by using a simple password they could enter that world any time and experience it. So this was quite a switch from the joy of him being with them in their world, to the joy of them being with him in his world. 

The password to that world was “in my name.” So they could knock on the door of the God world any time and say, “I come in Jesus’ name,” and in they could go. And so can we. But for what purpose? Well, to soak up his world, have it fill us so we bring it to our world – like chipmunks finding a food source and filling up their pouches to take as much as they can back to their den.

Because what Jesus is and taught is now our food source. It’s his joy, his love, his teaching that he’s given us access to that we can now bring to our world. All we need do is ask for those things in his name, in recognition that he is the source of them, and both he and the Father go to work through the Holy Spirit in and with us to make them happen, so people get to see God’s world in this world through us. It’s why we’re Jesus’ disciples. This is now our life’s work and joy, just as it was his…(continues Wednesday) 

To Joy (part 6) 

Jesus landed his disciples with an awkward situation. On the one hand, he told them “to go and bear fruit” and have a wonderful impact on people’s lives revealing God’s world of love and joy to them. On the other hand, however, he said people would hate them. So how on earth could they have any impact on people’s lives if people hated them and set their minds against responding to them?

Jesus had two answers to that. First of all, he said the same thing would happen to them that happened to him, which on the positive side meant that “If they obeyed my teaching, they will obey yours also,” John 15:20. So some people would respond, just as they did to Jesus.

But what about all those millions of others who don’t respond, who are so soaked in the ways of this world – and so love them dearly too – that what we say just bounces off them? Even knowing we’re Christians is enough to turn them off. The doors to their minds clamp shut with a clang, and that’s it, no connection at all. 

So now what? If we can’t even mention the name of Jesus, or get the tiniest bit of a toe in the door of their minds to explain who Jesus is and what he taught, what’s the point of being a disciple of Jesus at all? And where’s the joy in it too? 

Ah but, “When the Counsellor comes…” Jesus went on to say in verse 26. Aha. Now it’s a different ballgame. All the odds would be totally stacked against us if it was up to us alone to reach into people’s minds and open them up. But we’re not alone. When Jesus ascended to his Father he got the Father’s OK to send “the Spirit of truth.” And “When he comes,” John 16:8, a new era would begin in which minds would be opened to the three things we humans least want to hear about – sin, righteousness and judgment (verses 8-11).   

That’s the joy of being a disciple, then, because it means that at any time, anywhere, and totally out of the blue, a person might respond. And we have our own lives as proof of it. We responded. Our clamped shut minds were suddenly opened. So who knows what minds are being opened by the Holy Spirit through us now too?…(continues Monday)     

To Joy (part 5) 

The Father’s great plan is a loving, joy filled family. And the means by which he goes about it is through his Son who played his part to perfection in his human lifetime and now continues his perfect work through his disciples. 

His disciples, then, become the means by which the world gets to see what the loving, joy filled family of the Father looks like. And it’s based on one very simple point, summarized by Jesus in John 15:17, “This is my command: Love each other.”

And when his disciples do that they will “bear fruit,” as Jesus promised in verse 16. Bear fruit, that is, in other people’s lives. Because what people see is the key to God’s kingdom, that it’s all based on love. 

Which all sounds very nice and logical, but Jesus also based everything he did on love and he was hated, so he knew his disciples would be hated too (verses 18-19). They could set a magnificent example of love and joy in the hope of people responding, but people would deliberately steel their minds against responding, just as they did with Jesus. 

At our favourite coffee shop there’s a girl serving out the coffee and goodies who’s like that. We’ve tried to be nice to her, ask how busy she’s been and all the usual banter to warm up the relationship and get the girl to at least smile and respond, but she won’t respond at all. She races silently through what we ask for, and makes it very clear she isn’t interested in any kind of connection with us. I wondered why that is.  

To me, Jesus answers that in these verses, because in essence he’s saying (in my words) – “I’ve deliberately chosen you to love and work with difficult people, because if you become gracious, loving, patient, thoughtful and kind with them, you then have the absolute right to ask the Father for the needs of these people and he will begin to move in their lives as well. That’s how it works, my friends.” 

And that’s how we bear fruit that will last: we love and keep on loving, because the Father loves answering the prayers for those who do…(continues Friday) 

To Joy (part 4) 

According to Jesus, the key to joy is being able to love as God loves. And the reason he had disciples was for them to learn and live that love, and not just for the joy it would bring them, but also to bring joy to others. 

He made this clear to them in John 15:16, when he told them, “You did not choose me, I chose you to go and bear fruit.” To begin with, then, it was never the disciples’ initiative to follow him; it was his. And the reason he’d chosen them – or appointed them – was to enable them “to go and bear fruit that will last.” So the reason Jesus spent all night praying for who his disciples would be (Luke 6:12-16), was to have a group of people who would continue and expand his work of permanently impacting people’s lives in a wonderful way.  

And he’d appointed them to do that. This was now their life’s work, appointed by Jesus himself, to have a surefire – guaranteed to succeed – impact in other people’s lives. 

But through the likes of them? How? They weren’t anything special, they were just ordinary folk living very ordinary lives having little to no noticeable or permanent impact of any value on other people’s lives. But in verse 16 Jesus offered the solution to that, because “the Father will give you whatever you ask in my name.”

You mean, the Father God himself will provide whatever we need to have a wonderful lasting impact on other people’s lives? Well, yes, if it’s asked for in Jesus’ name. And in Jesus’ name was easy for his disciples to understand, because it was Jesus who’d appointed them, so it was in his name, or following his orders, that was their reason for seeking the Father’s help. And if that was their reason, to follow what Jesus had appointed them for, it was absolutely guaranteed the Father would answer. Whatever help they needed to impact people’s lives like Jesus did, was theirs for the asking. 

What a switch, then, from being ordinary folk just doing what ordinary folk do, to a new life in such close contact with God that he would personally give them whatever love and joy they needed to bring love and joy into other people’s lives too…(continued on Wednesday)  

To Joy (part 3) 

With Jesus’ death The Switch had begun, from humans being stuck in the ways of this world influenced so heavily by evil, to the world of love and joy the Father was setting up through his Son. But how on earth was Jesus going to make such a world real to his disciples? 

It was by a switch in their relationship. He’d just told them in John 15:13 that “the greatest love of all was giving up one’s life for one’s friends.” He then immediately goes on to say in verse 14, “You are my friends.” 

Well that was different, he’d never called them that before. He also goes on to say in verse 15, “I no longer call you servants.” And what Jesus meant by “servant” – as he goes on to explain – was someone who “doesn’t know his master’s business.” And if anyone knows what that’s like, it’s millions of people in this world today who work for a large company without ever meeting the boss or knowing what his thoughts and plans are, and if you met him in the elevator you’d be invisible to him. 

And for many people that’s becoming a horrible, joyless way to live, because in reality you’re just a cog in a machine, and when your profitable use to the company is over you’re put out to pasture like an old horse that can’t pull a cart anymore. 

And how many millions of people endure such an existence? And especially in countries where they have no choice, the work conditions are awful, and the rewards are few. You wonder what the point of such a life is – including the lives of Jesus’ own disciples too, who’d slogged their lives away as fishermen, paying exorbitant fees to the Romans for their fish just to prop up an empire they had no connection with.

But Jesus tells his disciples he’s not like that. Yes, he’d called them to follow him, go where he sent them, listen to his instructions like any good student of a Jewish rabbi should, but his purpose for all of it was to open up his Father’s world to them, “for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you,” verse 15.  

As his friends, Jesus wanted his disciples totally connected with his Father and his world of love and joy, a tremendous switch from just being cogs in a machine…(continued on Monday) 

To Joy (part 2) 

When Jesus told his disciples in John 15:11, “I told you this so that my joy may be in you,” in the very next verse he said, “My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.”    

Is loving each other the clue, then, as to how his joy is created in us? Well, why not, when in this life – even without belief in Jesus – good friends and a loving family are a great source of joy. So is Jesus talking about something similar – but – expanded to an even higher level in our experience? 

It would seem so, because the love he’s talking about is on a much higher level too. It’s based on how “I have loved you.” And what kind of love was that? Well, he’d just told his disciples back in verse 9, “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you,” so he loved them with the same love his Father had for him. This was an extraordinary love, then.  

So how amazing is it when Jesus tells his disciples, “You can love each other with that same love too”? Jesus is saying we can experience being able to love at the same level God loves. And when we can, and do, that’s how we experience his joy.   

Is it any surprise, then, that since God’s love is what paves the way to his joy, that Jesus goes on to explain in verse 13 what lies at the very heart of God’s love? And it’s this, that “There’s no greater love than laying down your life for your friends.” And if anyone knew the truth of that, Jesus did, because that’s exactly what he was about to do for his disciples whom he called his “friends” in verse 14. 

But how could there be joy in an agonizing death on a cross? Well, according to Hebrews 12:2, it was “for the joy set before him that he endured the cross.” Jesus knew what the ultimate expression of love, giving up your life for your friends, would create. It would create joy. Because this was how his Father had set things up, that his ultimate goal was a joy-filled family forever, the key to which was so obvious, that we humans love each other with the same love he has for us. 

Jesus did that and it brought him joy – and especially the joy of knowing his death would open up the door to us being able to love as he loves, and the joy for us too that would come with it…(continued on Friday)

To Joy (part 1) 

I grew up believing that the focus of obeying Scripture was to cement our place in God’s future kingdom forever.  

It gave off strong whiffs of “You’d better obey, or else,” making obedience a condition to be met to have any hope of a future. But didn’t Jesus himself say in John 15:10, that “If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love”? There’s a big “IF” in there, which could easily be taken to mean: “I’ll love you – but only IF you obey me.”  

And if Jesus had stopped at that point and said no more, it would be understandable if his disciples thought his love for them was conditioned on their obedience to him. And also understandable if I (and it seems many other Christians too) took it to mean we had to win God’s favour by our obedience to earn us a place in eternity.  

But Jesus didn’t stop there. He went on to say in verse 11, “I have told you this” – “this” referring back to “if you obey my commands you’ll remain in my love” –  I have told you this, “so that my JOY may be in you and that your joy may be complete.” Jesus’ focus for us sticking like glue to his teachings, therefore, was for the joy it would give us. Well, that’s a switch, isn’t it? 

And a really big switch for anyone wondering how on earth obedience and joy can go together, when obedience has such a negative tone to it in this world. But Jesus wasn’t talking about this world, he was talking about his world, where definitions and meanings have totally different connotations. Obedience wasn’t a threat, for instance, like it is in this world, where you’d better obey the laws, chum, or else. 

But in Jesus’ world obedience brings joy. It can be tough obeying him, yes, because many of his commands put the bar way above our ability to obey them, but that just proves he’s opening the windows to a totally different world, in which ‘impossible to obey’ commands are meant to bring joy. And there’s no explanation in this world for that, because joy in this world is based on human emotion, which is terribly short-lived when circumstances are tough.

But Jesus isn’t offering the world’s version of joy. He’s offering a switch to his joy in us. So how does it happen exactly, and how do we know we’re experiencing it too?…(continued on Wednesday)