Listen or read the following transcript as D. A. Carson speaks on the Love of God in this address from The Gospel Coalition Sermon Library
Male: Don Carson is research professor of New Testament at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois. He studied chemistry at McGill University; took a degree at Central Baptist Seminary in Toronto; and then, finally, at the University of Cambridge in England. Don is married to Joy. They have two children and they live in Liberty, Illinois. His address tonight relates more or less to the issue of the supremacy of Christ and the love of however he interprets it.
I’ve brought with me these two books: Love in Hard Places and The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God, two of Don’s books that you might want to consider on what he is addressing tonight. Sold out already in the bookstore is The Gagging of God, and I want to quote from it to set the stage.
“Having elevated self to the place where God is no longer needed, self now proclaims that language is inadequate to talk about objective reality, God included. Having damned interpretation for being manipulative, God, if He were to speak, becomes the arch manipulator. The gagging of God is complete. From a Christian perspective, this is not simply misguided but lurks tragically at the heart of all that is evil.”
As with David Wells last night, and so with Don Carson tonight, it seems they perceive the God-silencing, self-exalting theories of knowing not so much as a unique postmodern error but as an ancient human rebellion. However you say it, the note is struck by each of our speakers. I think you’ve heard what’s going on in our world today, in and outside the church, is of tremendous importance.
Don has written in his book Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church that ultimate things are at stake. Even, for some, the forsaking of the gospel. I, for one, feel a very deep debt of gratitude to Don Carson for a whole range of scholarly as well as churchman-like endeavors to serve Christ in our day. My prayer, Don, is that God will give you many, many more years and much wisdom, strength, and courage to help us navigate these tumultuous days. Would you welcome Don Carson?
Don Carson: Please turn in your Bibles to John 17, and I shall begin by reading the entire chapter. Hear then what Holy Scripture says.
“After Jesus said this, he looked toward heaven and prayed: ‘Father, the time has come. Glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you. For you granted him authority over all people that he might give eternal life to all those you have given him. Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. I have brought you glory on earth by completing the work you gave me to do. And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began.
I have revealed you to those whom you gave me out of the world. They were yours; you gave them to me and they have obeyed your word. Now they know that everything you have given me comes from you. For I gave them the words you gave me and they accepted them. They knew with certainty that I came from you, and they believed that you sent me. I pray for them. I am not praying for the world, but for those you have given me, for they are yours.
All I have is yours, and all you have is mine. And glory has come to me through them. I will remain in the world no longer, but they are still in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them by the power of your name, the name you gave me, so that they may be one as we are one. While I was with them, I protected them and kept them safe by that name you gave me. None has been lost except the one doomed to destruction so that Scripture would be fulfilled.
I am coming to you now, but I say these things while I am still in the world, so that they may have the full measure of my joy within them. I have given them your word and the world has hated them, for they are not of the world any more than I am of the world. My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the Evil One. They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world. For them I sanctify myself, that they too may be truly sanctified.
My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one—I in them and you in me—may they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.
Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world. Righteous Father, though the world does not know you, I know you, and they know that you have sent me. I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them.’ ”
This is the Word of the Lord.
My generation was taught to sing, “What the world needs now is love, sweet love. It’s the only thing that there is just too little of.” Now apart from the effrontery of telling the Lord God Almighty that in creation and providence he got his ratios wrong, that song is remarkably vague even when it deals with love. Love for whom? Motivated by what?
It’s a lot less specific than Jesus’ insistence that the first commandment is to love God with heart and soul and mind and strength. Or his second commandment, that we are to love our neighbors as ourselves. And it fails to acknowledge other things we also seem to need, such as holiness, joy in the Lord, obedient hearts, and recognition of our creatureliness, which is, of course, the first responsibility of any sentient creature, to recognize his or her creatureliness.
The song has just enough truth that we can feel good about ourselves as we give advice to the Almighty but not enough to reflect much on what God says about love, and certainly not enough to be ethically serious. By contrast, in this prayer I have just read, Jesus utters five specific petitions for his followers, including one that deals with love and two or three others that are related to love.
These five specific petitions that Jesus offers to his heavenly Father on behalf of his followers are interwoven. They are awesomely grounded in God and the gospel, and as we shall see, they are grounded in God’s intra-Trinitarian love. That is, the love of the members of the Godhead for each other. It is a most remarkable prayer. The thought of Jesus here is not linear. It is not easy simply to track through in a straight line.
He circles around, circles around, circles around, adding layers and perspectives as he returns to his handful of petitions. He demonstrates again and again how although there are five principal petitions for his people, they are so tied together that if you pull out any one of them, they all come down. They’re all tied together. And they are profoundly bound up with the truth that God is love.
What I want to do in the next few minutes is to trace out these five petitions and here, you will need to follow your Bibles closely or you will get lost. I want to trace out these five petitions and in each case, I will note the petition itself, what Jesus is concretely asking for; second, the reason, or the ground, or the standard behind this petition; and then thirdly, the purpose of this petition … why he asks it, to what end.
Then after we’ve surveyed these five, then we’ll think theologically and pastorally about what they mean in the context of John’s gospel and in our lives. But first of all, note the petitions themselves. This can’t be more than a survey.
1. Jesus prays that God will keep his followers safe.
Verses 11 and 12: “I will remain in the world no longer, but they are still in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father …” Here’s the protection. “… protect them by the power of your name, the name you gave me, so that they may be one as we are one. While I was with them, I protected them and kept them safe by that name you gave me. None has been lost except the one doomed to destruction so that Scripture would be fulfilled.”
Then again, in verse 15: “My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the Evil One. They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.” The first petition, then, that Jesus prays for his followers is that God, his heavenly Father, would protect them while they live out their lives in this world. In particular, protect them from the Devil, from all of his wiles, from his vicious onslaught attacks, or from his subtle seduction, he prays for them.
And the reason, or the ground, or the standard? First, because Jesus is going away (verse 11), the understanding here, and earlier in the so-called Farewell Discourse on this darkest and brightest of nights when he was betrayed and went to the cross, was that all along, Jesus had protected them himself by the name that had been given him, by his own being as God. But he is about to go to the cross. Then he returns to the glory that he had with the Father before the world began. Who protects them then?
In the Farewell Discourse, that is assigned in part to the gift of the Holy Spirit, the Blessed Comforter, who will be given. Here, it is a generalized petition to the Father. “You keep them safe.” There is a sense in which Jesus hanging on the cross, his whole being consumed by what he is effecting there, he is then not, as it were, keeping his hands on there. He is suffering on the cross. There is another sense, as we’ll see, in which he is keeping them safe precisely by going to the cross.
Yet, in this moment of darkness and decay and the death that will follow, still his concern is for his own followers, not for himself. He begs his heavenly Father to keep them safe. Indeed, in verse 16, the further reason he advances is because they are not of the world. The world will trip them up. The world will compromise them. They need to be kept safe from the world in which they no longer belong. To what end? To what purpose?
Look at verse 11 again. It’s stunning. “I will remain in the world no longer, but they are still in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them by the power of your name, the name you gave me, so that they may be one as we are one.” Now here the petition is not for their oneness, the petition is that God would keep them powered with the purpose of the oneness.
In other words, the danger is they will hate each other. The danger is they will divide, they will devour each other. The danger is they will fall into schismatic array. And that, too, is part of the onslaught of the Evil One. So protect them heavenly Father, to this end, that they may be one as we are one. That’s the first petition, that God would keep them safe.
2. Jesus prays that his disciples may be one.
In other words, the purpose of the first petition actually itself becomes an independent petition elsewhere. That’s what I meant by saying these petitions eventually all get tangled up together. They’re all interwoven. The goal of one becomes an independent petition and then its goal can become one of the others. They get all tied together very tightly. The thought is not just linear. It’s a whole package that is devoured in one big gulp, as it were. You start pulling out one piece and none of it hangs together anymore.
Listen to the petitions explicitly. Verses 20 and 21: “My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.” Then, verse 23: “I in them and you in me—may they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me.”
We will come back to this petition in greater detail in a few moments. But let me put in a side note here. Sometimes we read this sort of passage and we immediately think in terms of what the philosophers called ontology, the very level of being. If we’ve been Christians for a while, we know there is some mystery bound up in the very notion of the Trinity, precisely in what sense is the Father God, the Son God, and Jesus God, and yet there is only one God? In what sense are they one, which is then transferred to us?
In other words, we are thinking immediately at the level of ontology, at the level of being. What I want you to see in a few moments is that that’s not quite what Jesus has in mind. We’ll just accept for the moment that he’s praying that they will be one as we are one without defining it any further and look then at the reason, or the ground, or the standard, and the reason, the ground, the standard here is Jesus himself. “Just as you are in me and I in you.”
Verse 22 is much along the same line. “I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one.” Here, the very purpose of Jesus revealing the glory of God, another thing that we’ll come back to in a moment, is that the people of God may be one as God is one. It is stunning language. It has us wondering what is going on. Then, the purpose here is “That the world will believe that you sent me.” (Verses 21 and 23.) It’s not just so they will be able to have a nice time together and sign statements of faith and belong to a great ecumenical church, it’s “So that the world will believe that you sent me.”
Now that, clearly, is at one level missiological. That is to say, if we really reflect something of the glory of God by who we are and how we love one another and our oneness, then we are gradually teaching the world a bit of what God is like. But the way it is worded is fascinating. The way it is worded shows that what Jesus is concerned about is the vindication of God. It’s the vindication of Christ. You see, it does not say so that the world will believe and thus be saved. That’s true. That’s genuine. But that’s not what it said.
Look at it again. Verse 21: “That all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.” It is so that Jesus, in his claims, is vindicated. So that the world actually believes the truth about Jesus. Now of course, that does save them.
I’m not saying that this is not concerned about the salvation of the world, but it is not the way it’s written. It’s written in order that Jesus, in his claims, in his coming, in his death, in his resurrection, is vindicated in the eyes of the world. That they may believe that you sent me. “I’m here because you sent me.” That’s what he wants the world to see. Christian unity of this sort is the end, the purpose, the goal of this prayer. That’s the second petition.
3. That God would sanctify Jesus’ followers.
Verse 17: “Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world. For them I sanctify myself, that they too may be truly sanctified.” Now then the reason or the ground or the standard by which they are sanctified is, in the first instance (verse 17), the truth. Sanctify them by the truth.
Do you have any idea how often that idea is taught in Scripture without using those words? Joshua takes over for Moses. “This book of the law shall not depart out of your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night. Then you shall make your way prosperous. Then you shall have good success.”
The opening psalm and the Psalter. What is a righteous person not like? “Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the ungodly, or stand in the path of sinners, or sit in the seat of scoffers!” What is he like? “His delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night.”
Or the closing verses of Deuteronomy, chapter 17. Moses envisages a day when there will be a king in Israel. What’s the first thing he’s supposed to do? Appoint a secretary of state? Audit the books of his predecessor? Make sure the military command is lined up appropriately? Nope. “Copy out longhand the words of this book.”
Whether this book is Deuteronomy or all the Pentateuch, I don’t know. But copy it out longhand. Not download it from your hard drive onto your CD without it going through your head. Copy it out in Hebrew, word by word, with such a clean copy that this becomes your reading copy all the days of your life. And then you’re supposed to read it every day, the text says, so that you will revere the words of the Lord your God, and not think too highly of yourself.
Isn’t that remarkable? If only those three verses had been obeyed, just those three, all of Old Testament history would have been different. And then you come to the New Testament and Paul prays for the Romans. He wants them not to be conformed to this world. He wants them to be transformed by the renewing of their minds.
When I first went to Trinity to teach, we had an old duffer there who was teaching. He was one of these chaps who was filled with one-liners, but they were one-liners steeped in about 60 years of experience. He used to say, “You’re not what you think you are; but what you think, you are.” That’s what Proverbs says, isn’t it? “As a man thinks in his heart, so is he.”
I mean, in terms of social interaction, we’re pretty nice people … reasonably disciplined, don’t blow up too often. But would you really like everybody in this room to see on the screen behind me a transcript of every thought you have thought today? Because you see, “As a man thinks in his heart, so is he.” If we are going to be sanctified, we need to be sanctified by the truth of God’s Word. “Sanctify them by the truth. Your Word is truth.”
It must transform what we think, or there’s no hope for us. That’s what Jesus prays for. But in the context of John’s gospel, this truth is not just Scripture generically. It’s the truth of Jesus’ message. It’s the truth of the gospel that we’ll look at a little more closely. Then, moreover, while Jesus prays that God would sanctify his believers, he offers a certain pattern, as Jesus himself has sanctified himself. Do you hear the connection between verse 17 and verse 19? “For them I sanctify myself, that they too may be truly sanctified.”
Now most of us brought up in the Reformed tradition make a neat distinction between justification and sanctification. Justification, we say, is that declarative act of God that says we are just. At a certain point, we have now been declared just by God himself on the basis of the death that Christ has offered on our behalf, bearing our sins in his own body on the tree. Our sin is his. His righteousness is ours. We are declared just. And then all the rest of our lives, we are progressively sanctified (made more holy). That’s the way our language has customarily run. Has it not?
The fact remains that the Reformers themselves recognized that sanctification language was a little more flexible than that. So they sometimes spoke of positional sanctification or definitional sanctification. What they meant by that was that sanctification can be seen not simply as a process by which you become more sanctified (more holy; that’s what the word group means) but it can be seen as a positional thing, so that you used to belong to the world and now you belong to God.
It’s positional. That doesn’t mean that you’re perfect but in principle, you’re God’s. So sanctification, in that sense, is as absolute as turning the corner as justification is. Justification works in the sphere of justice, of forensics. Sanctification works in the sphere of the religious. We’re no longer the world’s, but now God’s.
That’s why when Paul writes to the Corinthians, he writes to the believers there and he addresses them as “those who are sanctified in Christ Jesus.” Yes, well, read the rest of the book. They’re sanctified in Christ Jesus in the sense that they already belong to Jesus, but then he adds “called to be sanctified.” They are sanctified in Christ Jesus positionally and now they jolly well need to conform more and more to him.
For, in fact, the whole holiness word group in both the Old Testament and the New has this notion of belonging exclusively to God. So the shovel that takes out the ash from the altar is said to be sanctified. This is not because it is moral. It’s certainly not because it is growing in increasing morality. But rather, it is used exclusively for this one act and should not be used for anything else. It is used exclusively for God and his service, and thus, it is a sanctified shovel.
Now what does Christ mean when he says, “For them I have sanctified myself.”? Surely it does not mean that he has grown in increasing sanctification. I mean, he really did have a nasty temper and a whole lot of besetting sins, but he has pretty much grown up in the faith and now he’s sanctified. This is the Lord of whom it is said, “He knew no sin. No deceit or guile was found in his mouth.”
He was never sanctified in that progressive sense. But in the context of John’s gospel, as we’ll see, he so set himself to do God’s will, which takes him to the cross, that by sanctifying himself, he goes to the cross and effects our sanctification. So now Jesus prays, “Sanctify them by the truth [the truth of the gospel]; your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world, for them I sanctify myself that they too may be truly sanctified.”
“Merciful God, heavenly Father, they cannot possibly be sanctified apart from my work on the cross.” “For them I sanctify myself that they may be sanctified.” And this, again, moves toward the mission into the world. “My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message.”
4. That Jesus’ disciples would experience the full measure of Jesus’ joy.
Verse 13: “I am coming to you now, but I say these things while I am still in the world, so that they may have the full measure of my joy within them.” This, as Jesus is going to the cross. It is remarkable. The reason why he wants them to have this full measure of joy, he openly says, is because Jesus is going to the Father (verse 13) and they will no longer be able to see him, to watch him, to understand him.
He is going to be removed. But he wants them to understand that his joy was in doing the Father’s will. His joy, his delight, his pleasure, was doing the Father’s will, “And now I want my joy to be in them, the full measure of it.” The full measure means, thus, our willing, enthusiastic conformity to the will of God as Jesus wholly submits to his Father’s will. Jesus, moreover, is saying these things now so that after he has gone they’ll remember them and they’ll understand why he went to the cross, and their joy will be full.
5. Jesus prays that his followers will be with him forever.
Listen to the language of verse 24. “Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world.” He wants his followers to be with him forever.
This is part and parcel of a massive stream through the Bible. God sees himself as the One who dwells with his people. In the Sinai covenant, he dwells with his people by manifesting himself in the glory in the tabernacle, with three tribes in the north, three in the south, three in the east, three in the west. He dwells amongst his people. Ezekiel promises that with the coming of the new covenant he will dwell with his people. He will be their God. They will be his people in some renewed sense.
In the very last book of the Bible, as the new heaven and the new earth, the New Jerusalem, are described, what is the end of it all? “I will be their God, they will be my people.” “Now this intimacy is so complete that there can be no longer any tears or sorrow or death, for the old order of things has passed away.” The ultimate goal is for God to dwell with his people.
Indeed Jesus, earlier, in chapter 14, said he was going away to prepare a place for them. Now Jesus prays, “I want them to come and live with me, to dwell with me.” What is the ground, or the reason for this? Because, we are told, “You loved me before the foundation of the world.” We’re back to this intra-Trinitarian love of God. What’s the logic here? “Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am and see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world.”
Look at the purpose of it. The purpose is not simply go to heaven, visit your friends, and have parties. The purpose is to go and be with Jesus to see his glory. That’s the purpose. It’s so profoundly Jesus-centered. And when they are there, they discover all the more the reason Jesus’ glory is being displayed is because the Father has loved him before the creation of the world and determined that his glory would be displayed.
In that sense.… I don’t know how else to say it. It sounds slightly screwball. It sounds off the top. It’s not quite true because it’s only part of the truth and if you say only part of the truth about some things, it sounds as if you are denying a complementary part. But it is a big part. It is a part we overlook, we tend to ignore. We go to heaven not.… I’ll put it antithetically … to be saved, but to see Jesus’ glory. Because God has determined, because of his love for his Son from before the foundation of the world, that his Son’s glory would be displayed.
I know that’s bound up with our salvation. I understand that. I don’t want to put false antitheses here, but unless you see that this is not simply so that we will be saved but so that we will see Jesus’ glory, then even heaven itself has become slightly domesticated by some assumptions that we are at the center of everything when it’s Jesus who is at the center of everything, and that, because the Father has loved the Son even before the foundation of the world. Do you see what holy ground we’re treading on here?
Now this is the slimmest, the most inadequate of sketches of Jesus’ individual petitions for his followers in John 17. Now we must focus more closely on what is said about love, since that’s my brief. I just couldn’t see any way of doing it without setting the context of Jesus’ petitions. Here it will be helpful on occasion to trace out how some of this entire gospel, the gospel of John’s themes, work their way into John 17 and into this theme of love. Let me emphasize three things and we’re done.
1. The supremacy of Jesus Christ in the mediation of God’s love.
Now begin with verses 25 and 26. “Righteous Father, though the world does not know you, I know you, and they know that you have sent me. I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them.”
So all the purpose of this redemptive plan, of this coming to know God and being known by God, all of it, is bound up with the glorious prospect of knowing this love which Christ has already known. “In order that the love you have for me may be in them.” Then, this unity theme again, “That I myself may be in them.” This, at the end of the chapter, chapter 17, verses 25–26, actually harks back to the beginning of the chapter. These are the themes with which the chapter began, in slightly different words.
“Father, the time has come. Glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you. For you granted him authority over all people that he may give eternal life to all those you have given him. Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. I have brought you glory on earth by completing the work you gave me to do. And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory that I had with you before the world began.”
There is no way I’m going to unpack this without tracking out the theme of glory just a little bit in John’s gospel. Go back to John, chapter 1, verses 14–18. This is the end of John’s prologue. John 1:14–18. You know how some parts of the Bible quote earlier parts of the Bible? A phrase is dropped in and you call to mind the entire previous passage? These five verses, John 1:14–18, have six references back to Exodus 32, 33, and 34. Six of them. And one of them is glory.
By itself, glory wouldn’t be enough to prove anything, but there’s a reference to Moses here giving the Law. That takes place in Exodus 32–34. We read: “For the Word became flesh and tabernacled amongst us.” And the introduction of the tabernacle is when Moses goes up on the mountain and gets the Law in Exodus 32–34. In those chapters, likewise, Moses hides in a cleft of the rock. He is not permitted to see the face of God. “For no one can see my face and live.” That’s exactly what verse 18 says. No one has seen God at any time.
Then Moses is permitted to peep out and see something of the trailing edge of the afterglow of the glory of God, and God has gone by and intoned, “The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate God,” and so on, so on. Full of checed ‘emeth, grace and truth, love and faithfulness. The words can be rendered a number of ways. Two or three times Jesus picks up that same pair.
Yes, yes, yes, yes, the Law was given by Moses. Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ par excellence. Yes, the tabernacle was the place where God manifested himself in the Old Testament. That’s true. “But now the Word has become flesh and tabernacled amongst us.” That’s why, in the next chapter, John picks up the same theme.
Jesus tells us that the real temple is not the hunk of masonry in Jerusalem, even if it has been beautified by Herod. “Destroy this temple and in three days, I will raise it again.” The opponents didn’t have a clue. His disciples didn’t have a clue. But after he had been raised from the dead, we’re told, then the disciples remembered his words and believed the Scriptures.
In other words, the temple was the great meeting place between God and human beings, but in reality, Jesus is now the great meeting place between God and human beings. He is the ultimate tabernacle. He is the ultimate temple. He is the ultimate manifestation of grace and truth. He’s the ultimate demonstration of God. No one has seen God at any time but the unique one, himself God. He has disclosed him.
Now within that context, John writes, “The Word became flesh, he tabernacled among us, and we have seen his glory.” Now in those chapters, in the Old Testament, Moses saw something of the trailing edge of the glory of God, but it’s in an interesting context. In Exodus 33, Moses is still so discouraged. He’s lost his right-hand man, Aaron, who has been so compromised from the golden calf episode.
Moreover, he is discouraged. There has been such rampant idolatry, even though God has just, only a few months earlier, taken them out of Egypt. Now they’re swamped in compromise and sin, judgment has fallen, God is threatening still more judgment. Moses understands he doesn’t have a chance of being stable, of being wise, of getting things in perspective unless he sees more of God.
He cries, “Show me your glory.” And God says, “I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you. No one can see my face and live, but I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.” Understand, then, that this display of glory you seek triumphs in the display of goodness.
Now along comes John’s gospel. Transparently, these five verses hark back to those three chapters. John has read those three chapters. He has thought about them a great deal. So he begins to track out the glory theme in John’s gospel. After the prologue, the first time that glory shows up is in John 2:11. Jesus turned the water into wine. There we read that the servants who brought the water saw the miracle, but the disciples saw Jesus’ glory.
So again and again and again, the glory theme is bound up with Jesus’ display of who he is or his power, until you get to chapter 12, and then you read these remarkable verses, on which John 17 is built. John 12:23: “Jesus replied, ‘The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. The man who loves his life will lose it, while the man who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.’ ” In other words, he applies that little parable to himself first, to his own going to the cross, and only derivatively to us.
“Now my heart is troubled, and what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour. Father, glorify your name!” Then a voice came from heaven, ‘I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.’ ” Do you see this? Jesus is returning to the glory he had with the Father before the world began; that’s true. But he is returning by the ignominy and shame of the cross.
Just as he is lifted up to heaven, he is lifted up to the cross. In fact, he is lifted up to heaven by being lifted up to the cross. He is glorified to the right hand of the Father, returned to the glory that he had with the Father before the world began by being lifted up and glorified in the odium of the wretched, damnable cross. “Show me your glory.” “I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you.” Oh, John understood.
Now after praying, at the beginning of the prayer, with this background, “Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. I have brought you glory on earth …” He has displayed God’s glory and brought praise to him. “… by completing the work you gave me to do. And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began.”
Then all the prayers and petitions in between, until you come to these last two lines. Listen to them again. “Righteous Father, though the world does not know you, I know you, and they know that you have sent me. I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them.”
The very revelation of Jesus Christ is out of the matrix of the Father’s love for the Son, including this going to the cross. Including this returning to the glory that he had before the world began. This demonstration of glory not only in triumphant display but in the agony and ignominy and odium of the cross. Such that all of God’s love for us is precisely mediated by all of God’s love for his Son on the cross, the supremacy of Jesus Christ in the mediation of God’s love.
In very practical terms, when you think of the love of God, how would you go about demonstrating it? We’re a family of bird watchers. I know that’s not very macho, probably Mark Driscoll would not be impressed, but we always have half a dozen feeders out in the backyard because.… I mean, the hummingbirds are just in the closing successions, you know? In the spring we get the Baltimore orioles coming through, and we get some indigo buntings coming through. Then, of course, all during the year, any number of birds quietly feeding away in our feeders.
Shall we talk about the great design skill of God? Walking through the mountains, seeing rivers, dancing stars. We get three different species of woodpeckers. Seeing those stiff, stiff feathers pushing against the bottom of the trees at the front and going tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat. If you don’t have those feathers pushing at the back end, you don’t have any leverage at the top end. God designed that. Pretty good. The colors on these things are spectacular. And though no human being sees them, still they are beautiful. God sees them.
Is that how we’ll talk about the goodness of God? We can. I mean, read Psalm 8. Read Psalm 19. There is plenty to thank God for regarding his goodness in creation. But do you want to see the goodness of God par excellence? Do you want to see the glory of God par excellence? Then you come to a small hill outside Jerusalem. And the blood and the gore and the wretched curse that has the eternal Son crying, “My God, my god, why have you forsaken me?” For, you see, all of God’s love for us is mediated by God’s love for his son. You say, “How is this love?”
I first began to think about this John 1:14–18 passage a long time ago when I was a student at McGill. I was studying chemistry and mathematics, and about third year.… I can’t recall whether it was second or third year.… There was a chap in our dorm from Pakistan. He was married, had two children whom he had left behind in Pakistan while he came to McGill to do a PhD in Islamic Studies. McGill, even then, had one of the best Islamic institutes in the world.
He was clearly lonely. He left his family behind. I was young enough that I was slow to pick up these signals, but I befriended him, he befriended me, whatever it was. I got to know him a little bit. As I say, he was old enough to be my father. He had never been exposed to Christians before. We were a strange breed. He was clearly trying to convert me. It took me a while to figure that out. I wasn’t too theologically alert.
I mean, I knew the table of elements pretty well but some of these theological clues went zinging right by me. He came to church once or twice with me. He had never been in a Christian church. We walked down University Avenue to the bus on Pine Avenue to go to church one night and he said, “Don, you’re a mathematician.” I said, “Well, a minor, yes.” He said, “If you have one cup and you add another cup, how many cups do you have?”
Well, I was a mathematician. I said, “Two.” “If you have two cups and you add another cup, how many cups do you have?” I said, “Three.” By this time I was beginning to figure out where he was going, even if I wasn’t a theologian. “If you have three cups and you take away one cup, how many cups do you have left?” I said, “Two.”
“Well, you believe that the Father is God?”
“Yes.”
“You believe that Jesus is God?”
“Yes.”
“You believe that the Holy Spirit is God?”
“Yes.”
Now you must understand that street Muslims don’t think that. Street Muslims think the Christian doctrine of the Trinity is God copulated with Mary to produce Jesus, and the Trinity is Father, Mary, and Jesus. They think it grotesque, and so do I. But he was an educated Muslim so he didn’t think that. He got the doctrine basically right.
“You believe that the Father is God?”
“Yes.”
“Jesus is God?”
“Yes.”
“The Holy Spirit is God?”
“Yes.”
“So how many gods do you have?”
The periodic table was easier. It wasn’t a very good answer, but it was the best I could do. I said, “Well, if you’re going to choose mathematics, I’ll choose a branch of mathematics. Infinity plus infinity plus infinity equals how much?” For those of you who are mathematically challenged, the answer is infinity. Three infinities minus one infinity equals? Zero. Actually, there is a sub-branch of infinities where that’s not true, but I wasn’t going to tell him that.
So he laughed, and that was sort of the level of our theological conversation. It wasn’t very profound. It was the best I could do. It dawned on me about November.… I told you, I was really slow … that he had never had a Bible, so I bought him one. He said, “Where do I start to read it?” The Qur’an, of course, looks very different. It has a number of chapters in decreasing length and it’s not organized according to sequence of time at all. The surahs are dated at very different periods, and so on. It is put together very differently.
So, again, I was no theologian. I grew up in a Christian home. I explained the Old Testament and the New Testament, the Law and the Prophets, the Gospels, Acts, letters, and that sort of thing. He said, “Well, where do I start?” Well, I didn’t know any better. I said, “Well, maybe John.” So I showed him where it was and said that it was one of four gospels dealing with Jesus. So he started to read John in November.
Now you must understand, he didn’t read the way we do in the West. You know, where the idea is to cover as many pages as possible as quickly as possible and understand as little as possible so you can sign your reading report? The idea, rather, is to read slowly, think about it, and go back and reread it the next day, add a few more lines and think about it. So he read very differently. He was pretty close to what some of us call meditation.
At Christmas, he didn’t have anywhere to go. The dorms were shutting down. I said, “Come on home. Come on home with us.” My parents, at that time, lived in a French city not too far from the national capital. It so happened then that as he was staying with us, my father landed up in hospital. So back and forth to the hospital day and night, and my dear old friend was left largely on his own.
By the end of the holidays, however, it was pretty clear that Dad was going to be all right and we only had the one car, so I begged Mom for the car so I could show him a good time around Ottawa, the capital city, with lots of lovely tourist centers, in a day when there was much less security than now. We ended up at the Parliament buildings. Some of you may have been there. A pseudo-gothic structure, a rotunda at the back, the Senate chamber, the House of Commons, the rogues’ gallery of prime ministers from Sir John A. Macdonald on, and so on.
Finally, we get to the foyer.… Our group of about 30 people was being guided around by the tour guide. Other groups were just coming in, and so on. The guide pointed out these eight vast pillars holding up the foyer and said, “That fluted arch up there? That’s a symbol for Aristotle, because government must be based on wisdom, on knowledge. That’s Socrates, for government must be based on wisdom. That’s law, for government must be based on Moses …” All the way around.
End of the tour, “Any questions?” My friend piped up, “Where was Jesus Christ?” The guide didn’t have a clue where this one was coming from. So he did was guides do under those circumstances. He said, “Uh, um, I beg your pardon?” So he did what foreigners do under those circumstances, he assumed that he wasn’t understood because of his accent, so he said, more slowly and more loudly, “Where is Jesus Christ?”
So now you have three groups of 30 tourists being asked where Jesus is in the foyer of the Canadian Parliament by a Pakistani Muslim. I was trying to hide somewhere. I mean, I didn’t know where this was coming from. Finally, the guide sputtered and said, “Well, why should he be here?” My friend looked shocked. “I read in the Christian Bible that the Law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. Where is Jesus Christ?” I thought, “Preach it brother.”
You see, he was a Muslim. He understood law. He understood the terror of the Lord. He understood that God is a God to fear. He understood these things. He understood that law is a gracious gift. It is something that is good from God. And yet, how can it ever transform? He was already captured by Christ. The Law, no doubt, was given by Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.
Already, these themes are being picked up by John to say, in effect, that all of this came because of the Father’s love for the Son. How so? So we move from the first point, the supremacy of Jesus Christ and the mediation of God’s love, to the second.
2. The role of Jesus Christ in the Trinitarian experience of God’s love.
Here again, it will be helpful to paint on a broad canvas, to go back to an earlier passage in John’s gospel. I’m going to invite you to turn to John 5. In the beginning of the chapter, Jesus heals the man paralyzed for so many years. After he has healed him, he tells him to roll up his mat and take it home. But this takes place, we’re told, in verse 9, on the Sabbath, so the Jews said to the man who had been healed, “It is the Sabbath, the law forbids you to carry your mat.”
This then precipitates a whole discussion. Verse 16: “So, because Jesus was doing these things on the Sabbath, the Jewish persecuted him. Jesus said to them, ‘My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I too am working.’ For this reason the Jews tried all the harder to kill him; not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.” Now you must understand that passage before you understand what comes next, which is the part that we want to focus on.
A lot of rabbinic authorities in Jesus’ day had a debate going about whether or not God obeyed the law. Some said yes, some said no. Those who said no said, “God obeys, no doubt, much of the law, but how can he possibly obey the Sabbath law, because if he suspended his work on the Sabbath, the whole universe would collapse every Sabbath. He must continue his work of Providence, ordering all things, moving all things according to his purpose and pleasure. So God surely cannot keep the Sabbath law.”
And the other side said, “Oh yes, but he can. Don’t you see? Our rabbis have decided that you’re not breaking the Sabbath law if you move things around only within your own house and don’t move them to another domicile. And even if you move things around in your own house, you don’t lift things up to shoulder level. (Because that suggests it’s really heavy. You see?) Only light things, and don’t bring them above shoulder level.
Now if that’s what the Sabbath law is dealing with, then you must see that God has the entire universe as his domicile, so he never moves anything outside it. And God is so big that he doesn’t lift anything higher than his own shoulder level, so he never breaks the Sabbath.” That was part of the discussion at the time.
Now Jesus comes along and he does something that they think is wrong. He has told this man to take his mat home on the Sabbath. He probably rolled it all up and threw it on his shoulder, taking it to another domicile, for goodness’ sake. And he’s challenged. This is the Sabbath. He shouldn’t be doing that. He says, “Yeah, but the man who healed me, he told me to do it.” “Who is this man who told you to break the Sabbath?”
If Jesus had come along at this point and said, “Come on, guys. Your interpretation really is slightly screwball, you know? The Sabbath laws aren’t for people taking their mat home who just got healed after 38 years of paralysis. It’s not as if this guy is trying to earn a little bit of extra money on the side by being a mat carrier. You know? He’s not working in that sense. Your rules are just too narrowly constrained.” If Jesus had said that, then they would have had a nice theological conversation and that would have been the end of it. But instead, Jesus ups the ante.
Do you hear what he says in verse 17? “My Father is working and I’m working too.” That means, you see, that whatever justification works for God working on the Sabbath works for Jesus. It becomes a Christological claim of enormous significance. Now they want to bump him off, not only because in their view he’s abusing the Sabbath, but because he’s jolly close to calling God one with him, to making himself equal with God.
But of course, Jesus is not simply trying to make himself equal with God so that you have two gods, one god over here called God the Father and another god over here with Jesus. In that sense, what they were accusing him of did not understand what he was saying at all. He’s claiming to be one with God, but he’s not claiming to be equal and an alternate to God, another god. Everything that takes place in the following verses is Jesus’ explanation of the kind of relationship he has with his Father.
It’s very compelling. It is the most compelling discussion of the sonship of Jesus in the New Testament, and it is bound up with love. One more bit of background that is essential to understand this passage. For us, sonship is bound up with genes. We get somebody’s DNA and find out who is the father. Paternity suits are now possible based simply upon DNA. Is that not correct?
So in the first place, sonship, fatherhood, it’s all bound up in genetic descent, isn’t it? Then derivatively it’s bound up with adoption and things like that. But in the first century, indeed in the Old Testament, sonship had another set of associations with it. It’s not that all of that was denied, but it was bound up in another world where the overwhelming majority of sons ended up doing what their fathers were doing.
Let’s have a show of hands. Just the guys, first of all. How many of you guys are doing vocationally what your fathers did? Put up your hand. Look around. I doubt you got 5 percent. I doubt that you got 3 percent. Maybe only 2 percent. You women, how many of you are doing vocationally what your mothers did? I bet we don’t have 1 percent. But in the ancient world, if your father was a baker, you became a baker. If your father was a farmer, you became a farmer. You were identified with your father’s vocation.
So part of your education.… Even if you learned to read and write in the village school, you got your formation … what shapes you, what makes you … your instruction, your education, in that sense, from your father. If your father is a farmer, you learn how to put in fence posts, when you irrigate, what kind of fertilizer you use, what kind of seed you use, and when you harvest. You learn all the tricks of the trade.
If your father’s name is Stradivarius, you learn how to make violins. That’s the way it works, you see? In a handcraft agrarian society, that’s the way it works. Out of that, then, is the fact that Jesus is not only called the son of the carpenter, in one passage he’s called the carpenter. He’s identified with the family business.
Out of that come a whole lot of interesting metaphors, such as son of Belial, son of worthlessness. What does that mean? Your dad is worthless? Nah. It’s saying, “You’re obviously such a disgustingly worthless person that the only explanation is that you come from the worthless family. That’s what characterizes you, so you must be worthless.”
Or, positively, Jesus can say, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the sons of God.” In other words, God is the supreme peacemaker. So that if you start acting like God in this respect, then in that respect at least you’re a son of God. Or alternatively, in John 8 … back to John. The opponents in John 8 are disgusted that Jesus is claiming to know Abraham.
“Hey, you’re less than 50 years old. You claim to know Abraham. Oh, ‘Abraham rejoiced to see my day, he saw it and was glad.’ Oh, come on. We’re the real children of Abraham and you couldn’t possibly have known him.” “Oh no, you’re not the children of Abraham,” Jesus says. “He rejoiced to see my day and in fact, you want to kill me. I mean, that’s not something Abraham would do.”
“Well, actually,” they say, “we’re actually the sons of God.” “Not a chance,” Jesus says. “If you were the sons of God, you would recognize me, because I come from God. I really am his Son. The fact that you don’t recognize me means that you’re not sons of God. Let me tell you whose sons you are.”
He says, “You’re the sons of the Devil himself.” Because he was a murderer from the beginning, and you’re trying to bump me off. He was a liar from the beginning, and you’re telling untruths about me. You see, it’s a functional category. It doesn’t mean that he thinks that the Devil somehow slept with their mothers. It’s a functional category. Now behind the function is still some sort of ontology, but it’s a functional category. Do you see?
Now listen to this. Jesus has been accused of making himself equal with God, and now he says, in verse 19, “I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by himself …” Son language. “… he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does. For the Father loves the Son and shows him all he does.” Do you hear that?
Now some of us might get nervous by this language. “I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by himself.” Doesn’t that jeopardize Jesus’ deity? No gospel is more explicitly clear on affirming Jesus’ deity. “The Word was with God and the Word was God.” In John 8, “Before Abraham was, I am.” In John 20, verse 28, Thomas falls before him and says, “My Lord and my God!” But you know?
No gospel is stronger than this one also in showing Jesus’ functional dependence upon his Father. Listen again. “The Son can do nothing by himself.” Verse 30, in case you didn’t get it the first time, “By myself I can do nothing; I judge only as I hear, and my judgment is just, for I seek not to please myself but him who sent me.” Chapter 8, verse 29: “The one who sent me is with me; he has not left me alone, for I always do what pleases him.”
There is a remarkable subordination of the Son to the Father in John’s gospel. He only does what the Father gives him to do. He only says what the Father gives him to say. But, something more. Back to 5:19. “I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by himself. He can only do what he sees his Father doing.” That’s the very nature of their relationship. Because whatever the Father does, the Son also does. Whoa. Suddenly now the claim is huge again.
You see, if I make peace, I might be called a son of God. That’s what the Beatitudes say. But I am not son of God in every functional category. For a start, I haven’t made a universe recently. But this text says whatever the Father does the Son has done. In fact, isn’t that the way John’s gospel starts? “All things were made by him, without him was not any thing made that was made.” Here at the other end of things, all judgment is given to the Son and he judges exactly as the Father gives him to judge.
In other words, there is no pulling apart of what the Father wants and what the Son wants. The Father commands and the Son goes. The Father commissions; the Son obeys. The Father gives the Son something to say and the Son says it. The Father gives something.… Whatever the Father does, absolutely anything, the Son also does.
In other words, the Son perfectly reflects the Father. Perfectly. Why? Why is there such an exhaustive transfer? Because “The Father loves the Son and shows him all he does.” And in verse 23, “The Father has determined that all honor the Son, just as they honor the Father.” So while there’s a functional subordination, there is simultaneously an exhaustively coextensive action so that whatever the Father does, the Son also does. Why? Because the Father loves the Son.
Then how does the Son return the love? Some try to make this to be perfectly reciprocal, so the Father commands the Son and the Son does it; the Son commands the Father and the Father does it. It never works like that in John’s gospel. The Son may petition, but listen to what Jesus himself says about the way his love is demonstrated.
John, chapter 14, verse 29. “I have told you now before it happens, so that when it does happen you will believe. I will not speak with you much longer, for the prince of this world is coming. He has no hold on me, but the world must learn that I love the Father and I do exactly what my Father has commanded me.”
I know there are huge mysteries to the doctrine of the Trinity. I know that if we are to be biblically faithful, we must insist that the Father is God and the Son is God and Jesus is God. But in their relationships, the Father is presented as the one who Commands and gives something to do, gives words to say, and gives us to his Son.
But because he loves the Son, he gives absolutely everything to the Son, so that by the Son loving the Father and perfectly obeying him, he does all that the Father does. It’s a functional category of sonship, but behind that is some ontology that is so deep that in due course, Christians tried to explain it in what came later to be called the Trinity. This is the intra-Trinitarian love of God.
Before we start thinking of God’s love for us or Christ’s love for us on the cross, before we start thinking of that, we must starting thinking of the eternal Father’s love for his Son and the love of the Son for his Father so that all the Father does, the Son does, and the Son does perfectly exactly what the Father gives him to do, which also issues of course, in Gethsemane itself, “Not my will but yours be done.” That brings me to the last point. It lies at the very heart of John 17.
3. The exclusiveness of Jesus Christ in our experience of God’s love.
Do you see? If all of what I’ve described is true in John 5 and many other passages in John’s gospel, notice that certain things necessarily fall out of it, and they’re right through John’s gospel.
First, it is this that guarantees the perfection of the revelation of the Father and the Son. What guarantees the fact that Jesus reflects his Father so perfectly is that all the Father does, he has given to the Son to do, and the Son does all that the Father gives him to do. And this, because the Father loves the Son and the Son loves the Father. What guarantees the perfection of Jesus revealing God to us is the perfection of the intra-Trinitarian love of God. Do you see that?
Second, it also follows then that the ultimate purpose of Jesus going to the cross.… I don’t know how else to say this but make it too simple again … is to obey his Father. When Jesus is in Gethsemane, he doesn’t cry to his heavenly Father, “Oh God, I don’t want to do this but I love them so much, I’ll go anyway.” He says, “Not my will but yours be done.”
In this passage in John 5, we’re told that the reason why God has given everything to the Son to do, including all that he does in going to the cross, is because he loves the Son and is determined that all will honor the Son. Do you see? Before God loves us, he loves his Son.
There is something fundamental even in the very doctrine of salvation that brings it all about because the Father, out of love for his Son, is determined that all will honor the Son as they honor the Father. He is determined that the Son should go this route in perfect obedience to him to be ruler over all in this broken world. Yes, he does love us. I don’t want to minimize that.
Yet, the first thing that drives the Son to the cross is his love for his Father that drives him to the perfection of his obedience. Which is why, even in the doctrine of justification, when it’s well put, when it’s well defined, the first thing that is clear about the doctrine of justification is that God is vindicated. God is glorified. God’s ways are acknowledged as right. All of this coming out of the intra-Trinitarian love of God. And then you’re prepared to read John 3:16.
“For God so loved the world that he gave his Son.” The Son whom he had loved in eternity past. The Son to whom he had committed the endless ages. The Son whom he was determined that all should honor, even as they honor the Father. He gave the Son. That’s past finding out. That’s just past finding out.
The grounding, you see, of all the things that Jesus prays for in John 17, the guarding of the believers, that they might be one even as the Father is one.… What is the nature of the oneness right through this book? The nature of the oneness in John 5 is the perfection of the love of the Father for the Son and the love of the Son for the Father, such that the Father gives everything to the Son and the Son obeys perfectly. That’s the nature of their oneness, isn’t it?
That is the nature of their oneness. Oh, I know there’s an ontology beneath all of that that finally emerges as what we call the doctrine of the Trinity, but the perfection, first of all, is the perfection of love, which issues in certain conduct, including creation itself, the incarnation, and going to the cross. Now Jesus says, “I pray that they may be one as we are one,” which demands the perfection of similar love in us, so other-oriented.
Such that when we respond to the love of God, we respond as the eternal Son did in the perfection of obedience. That’s what’s called for. Not because the Father gives us everything to do that he gave the Son to do, but whatever he does give us to do, well, we must respond in the perfection of obedience to him, as the Son also did, that he might be in us as we are in him.
And we are to be one, loving each other, and perfectly at one, because we’re modeling our oneness on the oneness of the very triune God, not at some deep mystical level of ontology. That’s not even the issue. But the perfection of love of the Father for the Son is to be mirrored in the perfection of love of Christian for Christian. “That the world may know you have sent me,” Jesus says.
Do you know that there are many scholars who say that John’s gospel is unseemly and sectarian? I mention this not to take a cheap shot at a bunch of scholars who should know better, but because it illustrates clearly what this passage is about. What they say is in Matthew’s gospel Jesus tells us to love our enemies. In John’s gospel we’re told in John 13:34–35 that we’re to love one another as Christ has loved us.
So now Christians get together in a nice little holy huddle and love each other, and there is nothing said in John’s gospel about loving the enemies. So the nice primitive peasant, Jesus, he tells us to love our enemies in Matthew; that’s good. But when you get to John’s gospel, it’s all sectarian, and the most that John can tell them to do is to love each other in the nice little sect.
There’s a decline, we’re told, in the quality of Christian love as the New Testament goes on. The nice primitive Jesus, he had the turn the other cheek stuff, you know, and love your enemies. You get to John, written last, well by that time, it’s not much more than love in the sectarian community. Do you hear how utterly blasphemous that is? Because this love, within the Christian community, is to be a perfect reflection of the triune God’s love. Is sectarian the right word for intra-Trinitarian love?
This God, who perfectly loved. This love in the Godhead which has always been an other-oriented love, the Father loving the Son, the Son loving the Father, and yet, he loves his enemies so much that it is written, “God so loved the world.” In John’s gospel, the world is not just a big place, it’s a bad place.
When we read, “God so loved the world that he gave his Son,” we’re not supposed to think, “Oh, this world is a pretty big place. God’s love must be pretty big.” We’re supposed to think, “This world is an awful place. God’s love is wonderful if the very love he has for his Son is the measure of his love for us, the world.”
And now Christians here are so to love each other that they go and tell others in the world to reveal Christ and the perfection of his unity with the Father. Now there’s love for your enemies. Isn’t it? Exactly like the love of the Godhead for your enemies. It’s gospel love.
I suppose you might rightly say at this point, “Okay John, that’s an awful lot of biblical theology for one night. What’s this got to do with postmodernism?” The triumph, the supremacy of Christ and love in a postmodern world.… You know, there have recently been quite a number of books that have said that the essence of the gospel is in the first and second commandments. The essence of the gospel is, “Love God with heart and soul and mind and strength.” And the second command, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” That’s the essence of the gospel.
Not only so, but within that frame of reference, some of these books want to say, “So now let’s study the teaching of Jesus. Oh, we know there’s a cross there at the end. Yeah, we know there’s a cross and a resurrection, and that’s important, but we’re not going to look at that now. We’re going to look at the teaching of Jesus and find out what the gospel is. We’re going to look at the teaching of Jesus, all this business about loving God with heart and soul and mind and strength, and your neighbor as yourself, and the progress of the kingdom, and the teaching of Jesus, and we’ll then know what the gospel is.”
This is tragic beyond utterance. Do you know how we speak of the gospel of Matthew and the gospel of Luke, the gospel of Mark, the gospel of John? Nobody in the first century spoke of them that way. Not one person. They spoke of the gospel according to Matthew, the gospel according to Mark, the gospel according to Luke, the gospel according to John. What’s the difference?
Because, you see, when you start speaking of the gospel of Matthew, the gospel of Mark, the gospel of John, it sounds somehow as if it is their gospel, but in the first century, they only knew one gospel. It was the gospel, according to Matthew, or Mark, or Luke, or John. Yes, they brought their own perspectives to it. All of us bring our perspectives to anything.
In that sense, we’re all postmodernists. We’re all perspectivalists. There are only two kinds of perspectivalists, those who admit it and those who don’t. We’re finite. Of course we’re perspectivalists. So Matthew brings his perspective, Mark brings his perspective, Luke brings his perspective, and John brings his perspective, but there’s still only one gospel that they’re looking on. There’s only one gospel that they’re bearing witness to. Do you see?
It’s the gospel according to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. And in this the gospel, this one gospel, inevitably, in every case, it’s the narrative of what Jesus said and did and taught that ends in the cross and resurrection. There is no gospel, there is no good news, without the cross and resurrection. There isn’t any.
Which is why when we’re told that the Gospel of Thomas or the Gospel of Judas is an important source, quite frankly what you have to say is, “Oh, balderdash.” Because whatever those documents were, they’re not gospels. They’re called gospels at the end of the second century, beginning of the third century in heretical circles, but they don’t have anything about the death and resurrection of Jesus.
Do you know what the Gospel of Thomas is? It’s a collection of 114 sayings. Two tiny, tiny, tiny little snippets of historical narrative. No cross, no resurrection. It’s not a gospel. Not in any first-century sense. The gospel of Jesus Christ drives you to the cross and resurrection, which means if you’re going to study the teaching of Jesus or you’re going to study the significance of the commandments, you have to study it within the narrative of Jesus going to the cross and resurrection. That is the gospel. Do you see?
So if you start thinking that the gospel is the commandment to love God with heart and soul and mind and strength and all the social transformation that comes from it and don’t think it necessary in the same voice to talk about the cross and resurrection, you’ve just sold out the Gospels, the canonical gospels.
I strongly recommend you read, for example, a little book by Peter Bolt called The Cross From a Distance, where he simply reads through Mark’s gospel and shows how the cross is stamped on every page, the whole thing is running together, the whole narrative runs to the cross and resurrection. So also with John’s gospel.
Yes, it is important to understand that the fruit, the outcome of all of this gospel is that we love God with heart and soul and mind and strength, and that we love our neighbors as ourselves, but the good news itself is bound up with the revelation of God and Jesus Christ out of the perfection of God’s love for the Son, the perfection of his love for the Father in obedience that takes him to the cross and resurrection on our behalf.
Nor is this peculiarly a Johannine theme. Christians delighted to talk about the love of God in the first century. Paul, steeped in arguments about justification, can mention the death of Jesus in Galatians and then say “who loved me and gave himself for me.” He prays to the Ephesians, that they might have the power together with all the saints to grasp how long and wide and high and deep is the love of God in Christ Jesus. It’s the overflow of the Trinitarian love of God.
So John writes, in his first epistle, “Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God.” Not in the sense that he simply dispenses it, a chunk of love, but precisely in the sense in which he has expounded in his whole book. Through the cross, through the obedience of the Son.
“Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: he sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.”
I love you because you first loved me: your love
With irresistible enticement paid
In blood, has won my heart; and, unafraid
Of all but self, I’m driven now to love.
I love because you first loved me: your love
Has transformed all my calculations, made
A farce of love based on exchange, displayed
Extravagant self-giving from above.
I love because you first loved me: without
Regenerating power provided by
Your Son’s propitiating death, no doubt
My strongest love would be the mighty “I.”
Your self-originating love’s alone—
The motive, standard, power of my own.
