Life With God 3e – I AM The Way and the Truth and the Life

Thomas said to him, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?”

Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life.”    John 14:5-6

Nearly every Christian will have interacted with this passage on some level by the time this is written. What more can be said about this most definitive statement? The complete theology of the book of John is summarized in 14:6 where it serves also to challenge the modern feel-good canard of ‘many paths to God.’ Less discussed is the context of the farewell discourse and, in particular here, the continued lack of understanding that the disciples displayed. These were the men closest to Him, to whom Jesus had shared the greatest intimacy and still they failed to comprehend the trajectory of the Savior’s life as it hurtled toward the cross.

In many ways, our spiritual formation is challenged in the same fashion. We know Jesus intellectually and have the benefit of knowing the full story and yet, it can sometimes be said that we don’t know Him. As we meditate deeply on the details of Jesus, we are seeing the Truth, the ultimate revelation of God, in a form which we can relate to. Transformation comes in challenging our own flawed character to the Truth that we encounter. Christians are privileged in having the indwelling Spirit to leads us in the Life but we must encounter Him beyond the intellectual level. Perhaps the first step is to admit ‘we don’t know where you’re going’ and then follow Him anyway despite our urge to do the opposite.

Life With God 3d – I AM The Gate

I am the gate for the sheep…I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved. He will come in and go out, and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full. John 7, 9-10

imageAs we meditate on the Shepherd who will lay down his life for His sheep, these leading verses take on a new emphasis. Describing himself as the gate for the sheep would have painted a much more vivid picture to the first century hearers. A sheepfold might be built without a door or gate, requiring some manner of obstacle placed across the opening to protect the sheep within, both from enemies coming in from the outside and from the tendency of the sheep to wander out from the inside. The shepherd willingly lay across that opening in the dark to protect the sheep within, whether they appreciate it or not.

Are we like the sheep, unappreciative of the sacrifice The Gate? Do we see His presence blocking our path as a hindrance? As we think about how positively we view his willingness as the shepherd to lay down his life for us, we should also view his willingness to ‘pen’ us in when necessary so that we are protected from things that we are unable to see. In the presence of the Good Shepherd, we truly can ‘let not our hearts be troubled.’

Life With God 3a – I AM The Bread of Life

image The ‘I Am’ passages in the book of John are good immersion points on which to meditate in seeking spiritual transformation. In these statements Jesus declares himself to us, encouraging and deepening our faith and our enhancing our ability to trust Him on a more mature basis. We become what we immerse ourselves in. The first is found in John 6:35;

“I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty.”

When we meditate on this verse in a non-theological sense, we hear the Lord speak and the Spirit move. We question the things that we pursue in life that sate only temporarily. We find nothing in our pursuit of food, sex, material things, feelings or challenges that results in anything but a momentary satisfaction that is soon followed by a desire to pursue more. Spiritual fulfillment replaces or subdues these fleeting desires with a permanent fulfillment. For sure, we will want more in the sense of going deeper but we will never hunger to fill the void in our souls that can only be filled by the Holy Spirit. 

Stott and Ervin on Spirit Baptism Part One

In 1964, immediately prior to the latest movement of Charismatic Renewal, respected theologian John Stott wrote a short book entitled Baptism and Fullness offering an exposition of the biblical description of the ministry of the Holy Spirit. Four years later, in 1968, Dr. Howard Ervin wrote a scholarly treatise on the narrower ministry of baptism in the spirit titled These Are Not Drunken, As Ye Suppose (now Spirit Baptism).  Since they are both respectful and irenic in their presentation, it is instructive to examine the positions of both side by side in order to further expand our views on the doctrine of Spirit Baptism.

Stott’s approach is fundamentally this: the Baptism in the Spirit coincides with the moment of conversion. Upon his surrender to Christ, the believer receives the indwelling of the Holy Spirit who immediately sets to work in the ongoing process of sanctification.  He uses the question “Is it that God makes us his sons and daughters and then gives us His spirit, or that he gives us his ‘Spirit of Sonship’ who makes us his sons and daughters?” to frame his discussion of the indwelling. Helpfully, Stott points out that Paul answers both ways in the Scriptures: in one instance he wrote “because you are sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts.” (Gal 4:6) and in another wrote “…those who are led by the Spirit of God, are sons of God. For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship.” (Rom 8:14-15). In other words, the Christian is in every moment of his or her new life seen as having the Spirit within.

Ervin finds in the scriptures evidence that the Baptism in the Spirit is a second event in the life of the Christian, subsequent to the crisis event of conversion. As he lays out his case for viewing Pentecost (and the familiar passages in Acts) as representative of a normative experience for all Christians, he makes five propositions intended to guide the topic’s exploration. The points are intended to buffet the non-Charismatic’s argument rooted in Romans 8:9b “And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ” intimating at the difficulty of separating conversion and a subsequent indwelling event. First, John the Baptist’s baptism set the type for the Spirit Baptism, placing the convert in water in preparation for the second baptism of the Spirit (Acts 1:5). Second, Jesus administers the Spirit baptism (John 1:33, et. al). Third, Ervin states without reservation that “baptism in the Holy Spirit is not synonymous with conversion and the new birth from above.” Fourth, there will be evidence of the indwelling of the Spirit, specifically glossolalia. Finally, the fifth point of structure is that the baptism in the Holy Spirit in Lukan theology is synonymous with being filled with the Spirit, contrary to the notion of repeated or progressive fillings of the Spirit’s power.

Neither of these men approaches the discussion in an emotional manner. Instead they lay out the evidence as they interpret it scholastically and theologically giving students of the topic an opportunity to weigh their work, examine the scriptures prayerfully on their own, and arrive at the conclusion that the Lord means for them to have. We will engage Ervin and Stott further in the days to come.