The four Gospels together form a complete biography of our Lord Jesus from different angles. The New Testament Recovery Version provides the subject of every book. Here are the subjects of the four Gospels:. The emphasis of the Gospel of John is life. Spiritual realities are profound; they can be hard to understand.
So John uses pictures, or signs, throughout his Gospel to help us grasp these realities. Without a lot of explanation, the picture, or sign, of a lamb immediately impresses us with the meekness, gentleness, and sinlessness of the Lord who sacrificed Himself for us. John uses other pictures throughout his gospel, such as the heavenly ladder, the brass serpent on a pole, and the vine with the branches. These signs help communicate deep spiritual realities to us.
Note 1 on blood and water in John in the New Testament Recovery Version is tremendously helpful. The first section says:. Blood is for redemption , to deal with sins ; Heb. Water is for imparting life , to deal with death ; for the producing of the church Eph. Hence, it has two aspects: the redemptive aspect and the life-imparting aspect. The redemptive aspect is for the life-imparting aspect.
Because Jesus shed His blood to accomplish a marvelous redemption for us, we can be forgiven and cleansed of all our sins. There is great need for the "water. To be bathed all over as were the priests at the start means that, being made possessors of a new life, we abhor and forsake the old life, seeing that Christ's death was necessary to put away all that we were.
His death was ours. Moreover, that daily cleansing of which the laver speaks. Do we not need it in this defiling world? Is there not much about us personally that needs removing, to say nothing of the subtle influences of this world which often insensibly affect us? Every Christian with a sensitive conscience will surely agree that there is. Is it not scriptural, then, to speak of being repeatedly washed in the blood for daily cleansing? It says "cleanses" in 1 John Nowhere in Scripture do we find the idea of daily recurrence for cleansing to the blood of Christ.
The argument inferred from the use of the word "cleanses" in 1 John is not admissible. True, the word is in the present tense, but it is used simply to point out the inherent property of the precious blood. We so use the present tense in ordinary conversation.
For instance, the other day a man brought a sack of quicklime into my yard and deposited it in a quiet corner out of harm's way, remarking, "It will be all right there, the rain will soon settle it. Water slakes lime, you know. What did he mean? Not that the water was going to slake that lime repeatedly, almost every day, for lime can be slaked but once; he just referred to the well-known property of water in regard to lime, a property that holds good at all times and everywhere.
But Scripture does speak, as we have seen, of our repeatedly being washed in the water; and to insist on this clear distinction is not mere theological accuracy of a technical sort. To teach that we must have repeated recurrence to the blood for fresh applications thereof does great harm in a twofold way. First it dishonours the blood of Christ, almost putting it back on to the level of the blood of Jewish sacrifices offered under the Law; and second, it repeatedly puts back the saint into the place of the sinner to go through the cleansing and justifying process over and over again.
The truth is that "by one offering He has perfected for ever them that are sanctified" Heb. Let us hold fast to that. By the Word. The water and the Word are clearly connected in such a passage as "That He might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the Word" Eph. The Word of God it is which brings home to our souls the death of Christ in its power and wealth of spiritual meaning.
Sin in its true hideousness stands revealed, and our affections are cleansed thereby. We often overlook this cleansing effect of God's Word, while eager, it may be, for a better textual acquaintance with it. A believer once lamented to an old saint of ripe experience the difficulty she had in remembering the points of Christian teaching to which she listened. He bade her go with the sieve she held in her hand to the pump hard by and bring him a sieve full of water. She thought it a strange request, but complied, and by the time she reached him every drop was lost.
He bade her do it again, again, and yet again. Let us dwell much upon the Word of God. We may never become deeply versed in scriptural lore — that is a secondary consideration — our lives and ways will at all events be cleansed thereby.
In John 3 we read of being born of water; is there a connection between that and what we are speaking of, or does it refer to baptism? It links itself with that of which we are speaking. By the water of the Word applied in the power of the Holy Spirit of God we are born again — made to possess a new life and nature which carries with it the condemnation of the old. It is typified by the bathing of the priests from head to foot see Ex.
It does not refer to baptism. A quiet consideration of the passage makes this manifest. Notice 1 the Lord only speaks of one new birth. Then instead of breaking His legs, one of the soldiers pierced His side with a spear. Some teachers have claimed that, medically speaking, the separation of blood and water here signified death. Perhaps this understanding is correct medically. Our concern, however, is with the real significance of this blood and water.
The blood signifies that Christ accomplished our redemption by dying for our sins. The water signifies that the divine life flowed out of Him who died for us.
We have pointed out that blood is for redemption and for the purchase of the church and that the water is for life-imparting and for the producing of the church. We were fallen away from God, but through the blood of Jesus we have been brought back.
Moreover, in addition to being fallen, we were dead.
0コメント