Monday, July 1, 2019
659 - Who Asked You? Part 1
Spirituality Column #659
July 2, 2019
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary
Who Asked You? Part 1
By Bob Walters
“… I tell you the
truth, my father will give you whatever you ask in my name.” – Jesus to the
disciples, John 16:23
For quasi-Christians with a
stubborn, worldly cant who go to church only when convenient, study the Bible only
lightly, and think religion is “to get stuff,” John 16:23 appears to be the
ultimate good news: God will give you whatever you want.
Wow! A free
pass through the check-out lane of life!
Just pray and say “Jesus!”
It’s a fake-news
notion that’s launched a thousand sinking ships.
Our purpose
today is not to rant about the “prosperity” gospel, “name it-claim it”
doctrine, the “golden” gospel, or any other assorted false flags of me-directed
faith. Context in the Bible is
everything – I mean, Jesus is
everything, of course – but a “Playtex” interpretation of scripture where you “lift” a
verse or phrase you like and then “separate” it from its holy intent, dis-serves
the Spirit and darkens one's humanity.
It’s never
a good thing to replace a truth with a lie, not when God is watching.
And He’s
always watching.
We’ve been
studying this section of scripture – John 15-16-17 – in our Thursday morning
Mustard Seed Bible Study. It’s the
teaching of Jesus after the Last Supper and before the Garden of
Gethsemane. Last week’s column, pulled
from John’s earlier writing in chapter 3, focused on our “belief” in Jesus the Son of
God as the key to salvation.
As Jesus
spends these final couple of hours with His disciples before His arrest, trial,
humiliation, beating, flogging, crucifixion, and death, Jesus is decisively and
directly telling the disciples that He is one with the Father, that He came
from the Father, that He is going back to the Father, and that because they know
Him – Jesus – they – the disciples – also now know the Father. That is Jesus’s final teaching, and the
headline Jesus leaves with His disciples is: “You know God, because you know Me.”
That’s the
revealing and critical bit of the context to the line, “whatever you ask in my name.”
It’s a line Jesus repeats in verse 26, “…you will ask in my name.” Jesus says it twice – so it’s important – and
it is as shocking as it is true. But the focus here should not be the word “ask.” Instead, take full measure of the word “name.”
After
previous BC (or BCE) millennia of Jewish instruction never to say the name of
God, and that we will never see God,
Jesus is telling His disciples that they have encountered both the person and
the name of God … in the flesh … in Him.
“Name” here isn’t just a “Joe-Bob” or “Linda-Sue.” No, in this context “name” implies both knowledge
of and relationship with the person being “named.” Jesus is talking about not just His own
person but the very name of God; Jesus is saying, “That’s Who I Am.”
The
disciples of course don’t quite get it all; not yet. They know Jesus saw into their hearts,
revealed to them what they were thinking, and knows them personally. But what Jesus really
is giving to them and to all humanity is something for which they never would
have thought to ask: to know the heart of Almighty God; to know His Name.
That is our gift from Jesus, and it
can only be unwrapped by a believing heart.
Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) finds it fascinating that in this most profound and critical section
of scripture, neither sin nor forgiveness are mentioned, only belief.
More
next week.
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