Reflective Bible Study

In the opening statements to John’s gospel, He shares about Jesus’ forerunner in ministry, John the Baptist. While John the author-disciple does not share about Jesus’ baptism, He does share John the Baptist’s declaration about who Jesus was.

Immediately following Jesus’ baptism, the Holy Spirit led Jesus into the wilderness to be tempted. This really wasn’t the best time for John to point people towards Jesus’ significance – even though everyone present would have noticed the uniqueness of this baptism.

However, following the temptations, we read in John the disciple-author’s gospel that at some point later, probably a couple months later, or maybe even on Jesus’ return from the wilderness, Jesus swings by the river where John the Baptist is preaching. On seeing Jesus returning to see him, John the Baptist breaks away from what he is preaching about to declare, “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! This is He on behalf of whom I said, ‘After me comes a Man who has a higher rank than I, for He existed before me.’ I did not recognize Him, but so that He might be manifested to Israel, I came baptizing in water.” (v. 29-31)

If that wasn’t enough confirmation, John continues by saying, “I have seen the Spirit descending as a dove out of heaven, and He remained upon Him. I did not recognize Him, but He who sent me to baptize in water said to me, ‘He upon whom you see the Spirit descending and remaining upon Him, this is the One who baptizes in the Holy Spirit.’” (v. 32-33)

Then John concludes with his big key statement: “I myself have seen, and have testified that this is the Son of God.” (v. 34)

Aside from the angel visiting Joseph and Mary, and some elderly individuals in the temple when Jesus was dedicated, this is the first public declaration about who Jesus is. John the Baptist makes the very bold claim that Jesus “is the Son of God” and that this was entirely based on John’s call to ministry through baptism. It was in John’s ministry that he would learn who Jesus was.

While they were cousins, from what we read in this gospel, John does not weigh in on their relationship. The only thing he uses to base his claim on is what happened at Jesus’ baptism. This gives John the experience and boldness to say, “I myself have seen, and have testified that this is the Son of God.” (v. 34)

John the Baptist was one of the first people to point people to Jesus, but like John the Baptist (and John the author-disciple), each of us can be like these two Johns and point people to Jesus as the Son of God.

During the chaos surrounding Jesus’ arrest, one detail is included in Luke’s gospel that surprises me. While I appreciate Luke including this, I am amazed that none of the other gospel writers include it.

All four gospel writers include Jesus’ arrest in the garden, and this is one of the few places where each one of the gospel writers includes something that the other three don’t include. In Luke’s case, we see a detail immediately following something that all the writers share: “When the other disciples saw what was about to happen, they exclaimed, ‘Lord, should we fight? We brought the swords!’ And one of them struck at the high priest’s slave, slashing off his right ear.” (v. 49-50)

John tells us in his gospel that the one who drew his sword was Simon Peter, the famous, outspoken disciple in the group. All the gospel writers include this and most of the gospel writers include a response that Jesus gives to Peter, but only Luke shares the concluding detail of this harmful act:  “But Jesus said, ‘No more of this.’ And he touched the man’s ear and healed him.” (v. 51)

I am a little surprised that none of the other gospel writers include the detail that Jesus healed the slave’s ear, but in this detail that Luke includes, we see an amazing picture of God’s character. At the height of His ministry and in the middle of a key event leading to the cross, Jesus focuses in on an individual. When emotions were running wild, and Peter wants to defend their group with violence, Jesus is more focused on healing.

But what is really incredible is that Jesus chose to heal someone who came to cause Him harm. In this slave who Jesus healed, we see a picture of ourselves. All too often, we come after Jesus with evil intentions, and this is because we are all hurt in one way or another. Hurting people hurt people. But even when we come at Jesus with the intention of hurting Him, Jesus is more than willing to offer healing. When the ear of the slave is cut off, Jesus chooses to heal the hurting person, regardless of what the hurting person intended to do.

Jesus responded with love when all the mob brought Him was hate. This is an amazing picture of Jesus, and one that I am happy that Luke included in his gospel.

One thing I can count on Matthew’s gospel sharing is the various ways Jesus fulfilled prophecy. Whether Matthew was simply an informed Jew who knew the scriptures well (even though he was a tax collector by trade), or whether the Holy Spirit helped him collect and validate the Old Testament prophecies that Jesus fulfilled while writing his gospel, Matthew’s gospel is the one that shares the most about how Jesus was the Messiah that the Old Testament prophets promised.

In this event, Matthew draws our attention to another fulfilled prophecy. During the evening at Peter’s mother-in-law’s home, we read that “many who were demon-possessed were brought to him, and he drove out the spirits with a word and healed all the sick.” (v. 16)

However, while the other gospels that include this event don’t share anything about the significance of this evening’s activity, Matthew does. Matthew continues by sharing how what happened fulfilled what was spoken about in the prophet Isaiah’s writings, “He took up our infirmities and bore our diseases.”

This is something that we can see fulfilled in much of Jesus’ ministry as He moved towards the cross, but perhaps there was something special about this specific event that makes it stand out as a fulfillment of this prophecy. Perhaps this was one of the first times in Jesus’ ministry when there was a steady stream of people coming to be healed, or maybe this is more of a side-note Matthew includes as a summary about how Jesus’ ministry was fulfilling Isaiah’s words.

But the big thing that I can see in this passage and in Isaiah’s prophecy about Jesus’ ministry is that Jesus was willing to leave heaven in order to come be with us in person. And Jesus wasn’t willing to just come to be with the popular, famous, or elite in society, but He came specifically for those who were hurting, sick, and in need of a Savior.

Have you ever read a passage and had it change your perspective on the world?

Well today’s passage is a passage that has done this for me – specifically with a simple phrase that Luke included in his gospel that Matthew and Mark leave out: “. . . for to him all are alive” (v. 38b).

Most people feel/believe that there is life of some type after death. In this post, the Sadducees are challenging Jesus on this idea. Their question is one that they had used to disprove the idea of resurrection based on the writings of Moses.

The phrase Luke includes seems to support the idea of an immortal soul, but when we push past the surface, we find some interesting issues. If those who have “died” in this present life are conscious, and are either alive in heaven or alive in hell, then we have an interesting dilemma: Either God is in charge of both heaven and hell and Satan is trapped within time like the rest of us, or both God and Satan are outside of time and each have their respective “kingdoms”.

The fallacy in this argument is not in its logic, but in its assumptions – because it over-extends God’s perspective and superimposes our perspective onto it. We are assuming that because God sees everyone as “alive”, that everyone is “alive” throughout all points in history, or at the very least, for all points in history after they are born, and that they have simply transitioned “outside” of history’s timeline.

In our own storyline-movie example, would we think that someone dying in a movie means that they have died in real life or that if they are dead in real life, that watching a movie they acted in will bring them back to life? That would involve these actors shifting between two different timelines – and while it is easy for an actor to move into a movie timeline, a movie character cannot jump out of the movie and re-enter history at a later date.

However, if the creator of the character (i.e. the script-writer) wants to bring the character back in a sequel, they are perfectly capable of doing so.

What God promises to do is the same – to bring all of His people back into history in a “sequel” we call “the new heaven and the new earth”. God has promised a sequel for His followers – and what is great about this “perfect” sequel is that God has promised us that it will never end and that it will not have the negative points of the first history.

What happens between history and its sequel? Between two storylines, sometimes things happen, but if anything, the events between the present and the sequel are left to our imagination and are only uncovered when the sequel has begun. From our perspective, living in our chapter of history, we can only imagine what happens between the present and the sequel. This imagination is like a dream, which may be one reason why one of death’s parallel ideas in the Bible is “sleep”.

Have those who died left history and entered eternity? Perhaps, but when we dig into this passage, what might appear as a phrase that supports this thought really becomes a phrase that shifts our perspective – not a phrase that challenges the future resurrection that Jesus promised.

Is it possible for us to really understand God’s perspective? I don’t think so, but by paralleling God’s perspective alongside similar perspectives of our own, I do believe that we can have a better glimpse of how God sees life.