January 21, 2006

• Round in a circle

  Just some thoughts on some scriptures:

  
  

  I used to hear sermons all the time (many years ago) about how a person had to be ‘called’ of God to come to salvation, that no amount of preaching could open someone’s mind unless God took the scales off their eyes, as it were.  This verse would be quoted: “No man can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up at the last day.” (John 6:44)  Later in the same chapter, Jesus repeats it in verse 65, after explaining that what Jesus taught was spiritual knowledge: ”This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless the Father has enabled him.”  (all scriptures are NIV)

  
  

  But I was surprised recently to read this verse in John 14:6:  “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.  If you really knew me, you would know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.”

  
  

  Later Jesus tells the disciples that He will send the Holy Spirit that would lead them into all truth. (John 16:13).

  
  

  You see, I am a member of a church who used to believe  many errors (we were a cult), but repented and came out of legalism into grace, and into the truth that Jesus is the center of salvation and that the true gospel is about what was done for us on the cross.  It’s a long story which I won’t go into here.   Let’s just say I have an extreme thankfulness and appreciation for grace and the gift of salvation and freedom from the bondage of the law.  What I believed before compared with understanding of the truth is like night and day.  I was baptized when I was 17 and attended a bible college.  I know a lot, but yet I still have things to learn, UNlearn and learn anew!

  
  

  So reading John 14:3 after having memorized John 6:44 is amazing.  At first it seems impossible.  You can’t come to Jesus without the Father drawing you, but then you can’t come to the Father except through Jesus! 

  
  

  On the surface these two verses sound contradictory or like an impossible circle.  If you have to come through Jesus to the Father but can’t come to Jesus without the Father, how DO you get saved? 

  
  

  The apostles didn’t understand it, either.  In John 14 after saying what is in verse 3, Philip asked Jesus to “show us the Father”, to which Jesus answered that “I am in the Father and the Father is in me.” (v. 11)

  
  

  Before that, he told the Pharisees (after telling them they are not His sheep), he said in John 10:30, “I and my Father are one.”

  
  

  When He was on earth, Jesus deferred to the Father. He told the Pharisees that He did the miracles in the Father’s name. He said He said he came to reveal the Father to us. He said He was going to the Father. But then after his death and resurrection we are told that Jesus’ name is center, that to Him every knee will bow.  He now sits at the right hand of the Father, interceeding for us and defending us against the “accuser of the brethren.”

  
  

  We are told in Acts 4:12 that we can’t be saved by any other name but Jesus.

  
  

  Summed up, it sounds like Jesus and the Father together do the “process” of calling us, opening our minds and hearts and then we accept Jesus as our savior and are saved.  Jesus said whatever we ask the Father in His name will be done. 

  
  

  In His last night on earth, Jesus asked the Father to “protect them by the power of your name — the name you gave me — so that they may be one as we are one.” (John 17:11, NIV).

  
  

  I would suppoe that it’s almost simultaneous that the Father draws us to Jesus and then Jesus becomes the way to the Father.  We then receive the Holy Spirit that guides us into truth. We are to have Christ’s mind in us (Phil. 4:5).

  
  

  And we are all of us, the children of light, brethren of Jesus, to be one as Jesus and the Father and the Holy Spirit are one.    Wow.   Just think, if every person on earth was in the Lord….one mind… peace on earth. 

  
  

   

  • 12:32 am
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