Perichoresis

(This is the final post in the series, Our Savior, the Abider)
Previous two posts:
Frenemies
Who's Your Daddy?

'Perichoresis' by Derrick

Perichoresis - To "dwell," to "abide," to be "with God."  It is the flow of "resources" (John 8:44) from the Father which fund the truth-promises of Jesus Christ.  In a community, perichoresis is mutual-permeation of the Father's love, strategies and interests.  In the Gospel of John, Jesus displays His perichoretic relationship to God and then invites His disciples to widen their own flow of the Vine, through Himself.  It culminates in John 17:21,

...that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us...

In the first two posts we considered the faithfulness of Jesus Christ in contrast to Satan's betrayal. "Knowing God" was meant to be an eternal affair and Jesus called this affair, "eternal life" (John 17:3).  What we have not yet examined is how perichoresis is received by community.  Limiting this post, we will examine only the first stage of response, which has no capacity for hearing the truth. *

Those Without Ears to Hear

Joseph's brothers were all sons of the same man Jacob, but Jacob and Joseph had a special connection.  Joseph was determined to see righteousness be done.  Jacob called Joseph "my son" (Gen. 45:28).  It was the source of trouble in the family, feelings of disunity.  At first it seemed easy to blame Joseph as the disturber of the peace.  Even Jacob was troubled by his proud prophecies of greatness (Gen. 37:10).  But it was the brothers who left Joseph for dead, not the other way around.  They might argue that because Joseph held the righteousness card in the one hand, he couldn't have also held the unity card in the other hand.  He held both.  In fact Joseph even named his children to represent healing over his family (Gen. 41:51-52)!

 

This man channeled massive power from God through his servanthood.  (For more on Joseph, read the post titled, "The Ignore-Accuse Prison".)  Pharaoh plainly observed the value in making him second in command over all Egypt.  Pharaoh gave him the name Zaphenath-Paneah which means "one who reveals secret things with ease."

In another previous post, "Learning Life," we saw Mary drinking in deeply the presence of Jesus when everyone else saw it as a moment to be busy.  Martha's rebuke on Mary doesn't amount to suffering; nevertheless in a small form that is exactly what is going on.  In a later chapter we see Mary able to read "the signs of the times."  She pours on Him a year's wage of perfume for anointing His burial.  Exclusively she foresaw He was about to die.

"Son" in the Old Testament

Does perichoretic intimacy last?  "For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus" (Gal. 3:26).  Those who are familiar with the New Testament are accustomed to reading the phrase "son of God."  But "son of God" is so rarely used, in the Old Testament!  I wonder.  It may be because, excluding angels (Gen. 6:2), there were so few!  Isaiah 51:18-20,

There is no one to guide her among all the sons she has brought forth; nor is there any who takes her by the hand among all the sons she has brought up.  These two things have come to you; who will be sorry for you?— desolation and destruction, famine and sword— by whom will I comfort you?  Your sons have fainted, they lie at the head of all the streets, like an antelope in a net; they are full of the fury of the Lord, the rebuke of your God.

Early in the history of Israel, she was called "my son."  Exodus 4:22-23,

Then you shall say to Pharaoh, ‘Thus says the Lord: “Israel is My son, My firstborn.  So I say to you, let My son go that he may serve Me.

Matthew reviews the lineage of Jesus Christ calling Adam "the son of God."  Luke 3:38,

...the son of Enosh, the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God.

By the grace of God, God calls Adam and Israel and even born-again Christians "sons" before they have ever proven themselves to live up to the calling.  He gives us our identity anachronistically, before its time, to show His kindness to us, to show that perichoresis, the flow of God's grace, is the means by which our identity as sons becomes son-like in-deed.

Children graduate into sons through abiding belief in the promised Seed, Jesus Christ.  Galatians 4:1-7,

Now I say that the heir, as long as he is a child, does not differ at all from a slave, though he is master of all, but is under guardians and stewards until the time appointed by the father.  Even so we, when we were children, were in bondage under the elements of the world.  But when the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons.  And because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying out, “Abba, Father!”  Therefore you are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ.

Witnesses involuntarily witness whoever they have been spiritually intimate with.  A son characterizes his father.  The Hebrew word "son" and the Aramaic word "son" are not theologically vacant words.


"Son" in the New Testament

We have the same theological arrangement in the NT as well.  Romans 8 says every believer is already adopted in the Spirit in verse 15,

For you did not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption by whom we cry out, “Abba, Father.”

And then speaks of the adoption as not having happened yet, conditioned upon our perseverance in verses 23-25,

Not only that, but we also who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, eagerly waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our body.  For we were saved in this hope, but hope that is seen is not hope; for why does one still hope for what he sees?  But if we hope for what we do not see, we eagerly wait for it with perseverance.

We are sons by gracious design.  We are sons indeed if we appropriate it into how we live [1].

Prophecies of Greatness

Being a son was rare enough in the Old Testament that when they saw it, most loved their own lives more.  It's not as if there were not "sons" in the OT.  Moses, David, Abraham, Joseph....  Israel by and large does not understand that as much as they study these prototypes of the Messiah, these were all rejected in their day because of their close association "with God."

Wherever perichoresis becomes incarnate, it incarnates as the servant not the ruler.  Sonship is not just servanthood.  It is also rulership.  This is why God's servants are accompanied with divine appointments, power, signs, miracles....  "The one who rules is the one who serves."

Dreamers Die for Community

Sons don't care about earthly status quo, at all.  They only care about serving the will of the Father.  It is the impartial way they devote their whole life.  Some people think that this makes a Christian very careless toward God's people, but the secret is, the opposite is true.  Hebrews 1:1-3,

God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, 2 has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds; 3 who being the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person

His Son, is, the image of God.  Genesis 1:26, 27,

Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness.... So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.

Man, is, the image of God.  To be the image of God, is to be a son and to be a son is to be the image.  Do you see this?  Jesus is Adam as he ought to be, as we can be, and in a portion, how we will be.  How wide the divide -- between mankind and God?  Romans 8:29,

For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren.

Setting sonship aside - this is the divide - and it eternally wide: Jesus is in essence deity, a true son; the only begotten at that.  We are not essentially deity, of course; we are adopted.

Jesus lives as a Son, and He invites man to the same. The day man gains ears to hear, man will fulfill the oneness of John 17:21.

Perichoresis Has a Price

The Pharisees wanted to do the violence of divorce.  They still do to this day.  Malachi 2:10, 16

Have we not all one Father?  Has not one God created us?  Why do we deal treacherously with one another by profaning the covenant of the fathers?  ...  For the Lord God of Israel says that He hates divorce, for it covers one’s garment with violence....

They wanted to end their relationship with Him once for all. They wanted to kill perichoresis so badly, that they wanted to kill him.  Their belief system was religion without sonship.  Religion, without adoption. Religion without transformation.  They don't believe in it.  They don't believe a man could get that intimate with God, because they have tried to obey God and have violated their consciences beyond repair.  This is notwithstanding believers, who oftentimes lose their taste for deliverance from sin.  "Now I say that the heir, as long as he is a child, does not differ at all from a slave, though he is master of all" (Gal. 4:1).

The religious will use their religious rules, tragically interpreted from the mouth of God, to justify their departure.

God 'With Us' is the Testimony of John

The title "Son" is used 39 times in the Gospel of John, and it is the common way Jesus refers to Himself in reference to the Father.  It is the summary of His identity upon which he invites Nicodemus in chapter 3 to believe.  Nicodemus must be born literally "from above," just as the Scriptures teach in Galatians 4:6,

but the Jerusalem above is free, which is the mother of us all.

It is what He meant when He spoke the most famous passage in the bible: "For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved" (John 3:17).  It is why He invites the blind man to believe in "the Son of God" in John 9.  It is why Jesus taught, "Therefore if the Son sets you free, you shall be free indeed" in John 8.  It is why Jesus told them to prepare for the world to hate them also.  All of the signs and miracles and power that Jesus demonstrated invited believers to become great in the Kingdom of God.  Hence the final invitation in the Gospel of John writes like so in John 20:30-31,

And truly Jesus did many other signs in the presence of His disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His name.

Do You Believe in the Son of God?

There is so much of the image of God reflecting in fallen man, that it makes no sense to praise God and curse people (James 3:9)!

The things that partner with God we long for in our souls; "He has put eternity in their hearts" (Ecc. 3:11).

Do you want a Father who is willing to bust His butt to prove that He is knowable through sons (John 14:11-14)?  I hope that, amidst all the trials you may have in being set free of sins, you still believe God wants to deliver you from bondage, through the intimacy of knowing God and being filled by Him and being ministered to by His amazing grace.  Nowhere does it say that we have to be perfect instantaneously.  A great life's legacy is to ongoingly receive God's forgiveness and patience.  Don't give up on righteousness as the final destination. God is looking for Christians who stay in a perichoretic relationship with God till they're taken home.  We imitate our short life's version, of Christ's "forever."   This is the design for so many NT passages conditioning perseverance.  Revelation 21:6-7,

I will give of the fountain of the water of life freely to him who thirsts.  He who overcomes shall inherit all things, and I will be his God and he shall be My son.

*   For a framework depicting the stages of reconciliation between Jesus and His people through the Gospel of John, keep watch for upcoming posts.


Scene from Jesus of Nazareth the Movie, in an extended interpretation of John 7:45-52 & 11:46-53


[1]  Dillow, Joseph C.  Life in the Spirit.  Reign of the Servant Kings: A Study of Eternal Security and the Final Significance of Man.  Hayesville, NC, Schoettle Publishing Co., 2006; pp. 368-371.  

Who's Your Daddy?

How long has the Godhead been in close-quarters intimacy with each other? From eternity. John 1:1-2,

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  He was in the beginning with God.

Jehovah's Witnesses think that they have crucified the doctrine of the deity of Jesus Christ (removed Jesus from being equally God as the Father is God - as we would reply in our doctrines, the Godhead is Trinitarian) by changing "was God" to "was a god." But the evidence of a Trinitarian relationship between Jesus and the Father is made much more resounding by one other word, used two times in this very first introduction to the identity of Jesus Christ: that word, is "with." Jesus was God and With God, from the beginning. Amazing, then, that at the end of the Gospel of John what He is inviting his faithful disciples in the upper room to do (John 13-17) is be "with God" and therefore have the same experience of abiding with God that He has always had. Our Savior is an Abider. He has always been abiding with God. He is at the core of God and has been in the Bosom forever, and will continue to be so. What does an abider look like?

1 - In tune with the needs and wishes of someone else, always carrying around the interests of another as a framework for what choices need to be made.

2 - Obedient, listening and subservient to the heart of someone else. Makes a good representative to a foreign nation (and we are "ambassadors" for Christ).

3 - Intimate relationship is made possible through deep love. Love overlooks the differences (and in our case, sins) to see the value and innate image of God inside their soul, even if on the outside not everything matches or is identical or is cleaned up.

This is parallel to a read of Romans 4-8, where we discuss how we involuntarily replicate the "image" of the "first Adam," until Romans 8 when we employ the Spirit to put to death the deeds of the flesh, after reckoning our minds dead to sin in chapter 6, and after we have received the Spirit as a unearned and unstrived for gift-of-God like Abraham in Romans 4. In Romans 8 we finally take up the image of the "last Adam" (Jesus Christ), who is the image of God, and we are also made in that same image - yet we do not have the power apart from God to carry it out in our lives (Rom. 5:17).

Love sees the image of God, and confirms the image, and aids the image. Identifying with another NEVER means we are identical. There is great variety and diversity in the house of God (2 Tim. 2:20). So it is with the Godhead. The Son will always be the One heard and seen, the Savior who came and will have a body of flesh forever. The Father is always seated (as far as I know?), never rises. When God spoke on Mt. Sinai the voice of God was so terrible that His people said, "if we hear the voice of the LORD our God anymore, then we shall die" (Deut. 5:25) so they asked Moses to go and talk to God to save them from further experience.  God met their desire by giving His people the Word, Jesus Christ, who was not terrible in voice but like a Lamb, completely approachable.

Variety is something God has in His heart. He designed this world choc-full of variety because differentiation is a part of who He is. With all the differences between the Father and the Son, they know each other, intimately. The word for their kind of "knowing" is perichoresis. They are always listening to each other, and finding each other fascinating, being willing to represent each other, giving their own will over, wanting to gain the satisfaction of the other. That is the intimacy Jesus had With God. When Jesus comes to earth and walks and teaches and does signs, what is He doing, but showing us in everything He does, in everywhere He goes and everything He says, that He is "With God." He talks about it from start to finish. He models it, too. Jesus models the answer to our need for salvation: Be like Him. Be "With God." "Abide in Me and I will abide in you." When we abide with Him we are the Image.

'Perichoresis' by Derrick

When Moses came with the law, God appeared hierarchical. "Do this, do that." Not much development of why we should. Just a whole lot of fear if we did not. Alternately, how do we feel about obeying God when the stage of God becomes the Godhead, with their differences and needs on display to each other and the world?  Have you watched a man and his wife make a decision together?  What did it reveal about their character to watch them respond to each other?  The Israelites largely thought it difficult to believe God as approachable and available for relationship. Moses seemed special because he was a prophet.  It was not the best portrayal.  But the price-tag of revealing their relations is immeasurable; that Jesus would leave heaven and die. That's why it says in the beginning of John that "the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ" (1:18).

We never "learn" that God is approachable until we see that Jesus is in relationship with God, and God answers all His prayers, and Jesus obeys Him completely because of the Father's love.  Now that we have seen the character and love of God in action between the two, we can see that God is wide-open with an invitation for us to experience the same relationship. And just in case we were wondering if the invitation is official, it is - but only faithful followers in the upper room discourse have categorically attained it.  Consider how exclusive Jesus is with most believers in the Gospel of John....

Be a Somebody - Be an Ambassador

In John 2:24 Jesus talked to those who were starting off well because they "believed in Jesus." But they hadn't been yet sanctified to abide.  Jesus knew what was largely "in man" and it wasn't the Father.  For that reason, "Jesus did not commit Himself to them." The word "commit" is the same word used as "believe" or "faith" in the Gospel of John. John was explaining, "But Jesus did not believe in them." Later, Jesus does believe in (commit Himself to) His disciples, and John 6 is the dividing line.  In John 6 He teaches that if anyone wants eternal life they must eat Him and drink Him for their daily needs. When they get to the other side of hearing that, most disciples turn away permanently (6:66) because it's so difficult to understand and believe, but Peter says, "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life." These disciples are sanctified and willing to stay with Him and take Him in.  By the time of the upper room Jesus has found viable candidates for replicating the image of the Abider-God.  John 14:22-24,

Judas (not Iscariot) said to Him, “Lord, how is it that You will manifest Yourself to us, and not to the world?” Jesus answered and said to him, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him. He who does not love Me does not keep My words; and the word which you hear is not Mine but the Father’s who sent Me.”

After Judas departs, Jesus reveals His emptiness apart from everything the Father has given via intimacy.  John 17:6-8,

“I have manifested Your name to the men whom You have given Me out of the world. They were Yours, You gave them to Me, and they have kept Your word. Now they have known that all things which You have given Me are from You. For I have given to them the words which You have given Me; and they have received them, and have known surely that I came forth from You; and they have believed that You sent Me.

It is very similar to say, "If I were by myself, this would mean nothing, and I would have no purpose. But because I choose to represent the heart of another, now I'm a somebody."

Even the Demons Believe and Tremble

It's the mutual giving of honor that honors each person of the Godhead.

Who do you honor?  Who do I honor in the moments of my life?  Everybody wants to be an advocate for significance. Everybody wants to represent goodness or God Himself.  Maybe you are an orthodox believer in God.  You believe that Jesus Christ is who He says He is.  That's good.  You will certainly go to heaven when you die.  God is faithful, and He cannot deny Himself (2 Tim 2:13).  Maybe you once believed in Jesus Christ -- maybe you have evolved to embrace atheism.  You also will go to heaven because of God's faithfulness toward those who are His.  What distinguishes an abider from everyone else, from the orthodox to the atheist?  The answer is, where their "resources" (8:44) come from.

Unless believers stay in that submissive, perfect, loving closeness with God (which does at times require some honest obedience, Romans 8), we get CUT OFF from that flow (resources) of God sharing Himself - His heart, His thoughts, His strategies, His purposes. Again, Jesus is speaking to believers in Him (Jn. 8:31) in the context of this passage of scripture I refer to as the "who's your daddy?" passage.  These are brand-new believers from the moment earlier who need to catch up.  They really need to hear the recent sermon Jesus presented on the Bread from Heaven, so He tells them the theological jist of all John 6 in a single sentence: "If you abide in my word, you are my disciples indeed" (Jn. 8:31).  But they are offended at abiding in God.  John 8:37-55,

“I know that you are Abraham’s descendants, but you seek to kill Me, because My word has no place in you.  I speak what I have seen with My Father, and you do what you have seen with your father.”  They answered and said to Him, “Abraham is our father.” Jesus said to them, “If you were Abraham’s children, you would do the works of Abraham.  But now you seek to kill Me, a Man who has told you the truth which I heard from God. Abraham did not do this.  You do the deeds of your father.” Then they said to Him, “We were not born of fornication; we have one Father—God.”  Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love Me, for I proceeded forth and came from God; nor have I come of Myself, but He sent Me.  Why do you not understand My speech? Because you are not able to listen to My word.  You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you want to do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources, for he is a liar and the father of it.  But because I tell the truth, you do not believe Me.  Which of you convicts Me of sin? And if I tell the truth, why do you not believe Me?  He who is of God hears God’s words; therefore you do not hear, because you are not of God.” Then the Jews answered and said to Him, “Do we not say rightly that You are a Samaritan and have a demon?”  Jesus answered, “I do not have a demon; but I honor My Father, and you dishonor Me.  And I do not seek My own glory; there is One who seeks and judges.  Most assuredly, I say to you, if anyone keeps My word he shall never see death.”  Then the Jews said to Him, “Now we know that You have a demon! Abraham is dead, and the prophets; and You say, ‘If anyone keeps My word he shall never taste death.’  Are You greater than our father Abraham, who is dead? And the prophets are dead. Who do You make Yourself out to be?”  Jesus answered, “If I honor Myself, My honor is nothing. It is My Father who honors Me, of whom you say that He is your God.  Yet you have not known Him, but I know Him. And if I say, ‘I do not know Him,’ I shall be a liar like you; but I do know Him and keep His word.

In eternity past, Satan stopped being an ambassador for God's purposes.  He stopped honoring the heart of God.  He started to speak for himself.  Though he knows about God and trembles, he is condemned.  He is out of fellowship with God and has never been offered redemption.  He is forever excluded from the flow of perichoresis.  Therefore: even though Satan was made to desire significance and to be an ambassador for God, he can only speak of God as an outsider, CUT OFF from intimacy.  He can only guess about God as the most remote of observers.  He can only?  Lie.

It's the abiding intimacy that funds the truth-words, the promises, the power and the significance of Jesus Christ.  His whole life was the perichoresis that accompanied Him.  Witnesses involuntarily witness whoever they are spiritually intimate with.

Every moment of Jesus' ministry was pulled off by one tiny little secret of success:

And He who sent me is with Me.

John 8:29

Frenemies

(frenemies are enemies who act like your friend)

If Jesus is the servant and friend of God, and Jesus is our Savior, how can we know if Jesus will always be there to be the centerpiece of our salvation and experience of eternal life?  If, somewhere in the vast breadth of eternity Jesus separated Himself from God, would we lose eternal life?  John 17:3,

And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.

John 17:23-23,

I in them, and You in Me; that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that You have sent Me, and have loved them as You have loved Me.  Father, I desire that they also whom You gave Me may be with Me where I am, that they may behold My glory which You have given Me; for You loved Me before the foundation of the world.

What would happen if, down through the ages, Jesus grew tired of his place and decided to turn his back on God? Ever heard of anything like that in scripture?  It calls into question the kind of being Jesus is. Is Jesus God Himself or some lesser deity or angelic in nature? Can angels and other beings turn their back on God? Why, yes - and they have! This is the original example, Ezek. 28:12-13, 14-17

You were the seal of perfection, Full of wisdom and perfect in beauty.  You were in Eden, the garden of God....  You were the anointed cherub who covers; I established you; You were on the holy mountain of God; You walked back and forth in the midst of fiery stones.  You were perfect in your ways from the day you were created, Till iniquity was found in you.  By the abundance of your trading You became filled with violence within, And you sinned; Therefore I cast you as a profane thing Out of the mountain of God; And I destroyed you, O covering cherub, From the midst of the fiery stones.  Your heart was lifted up because of your beauty; You corrupted your wisdom for the sake of your splendor; I cast you to the ground, I laid you before kings, That they might gaze at you.

Judas was another instance.  John 13:21-22,

When Jesus had said these things, He was troubled in spirit, and testified and said, “Most assuredly, I say to you, one of you will betray Me.”  Then the disciples looked at one another, perplexed about whom He spoke.

It happened to King David.  Ps. 55:12-14,

For it is not an enemy who reproaches me; Then I could bear it. Nor is it one who hates me who has exalted himself against me; Then I could hide from him. But it was you, a man my equal, my companion and my acquaintance. We took sweet counsel together, and walked to the house of God in the throng.

What's to say that Jesus wouldn't do that one day? God had invested Satan with a lot of power and influence.  We say "it was pride that was Satan's fall," and it is.  Pride is a one-word answer for believing that power and influence comes from ourselves, and our status stands independent of others because by nature we possess goodness and life. It is a false belief. How can pride be overcome? We need the kind of Savior who is eternally faithful to God.  We need Him to remain subject to God meanwhile gathering a people from the earth to save from death and sin. We need one with the character of God Himself, to remain faithful and have the integrity to never turn his back on God. Jesus presents this argument to the Jews as their tool of discernment for whether He is the Christ and the Son of God, John 5:41-47,

“I do not receive honor from men. But I know you, that you do not have the love of God in you.  I have come in My Father’s name, and you do not receive Me; if another comes in his own name, him you will receive.  How can you believe, who receive honor from one another, and do not seek the honor that comes from the only God?  Do not think that I shall accuse you to the Father; there is one who accuses you—Moses, in whom you trust.  For if you believed Moses, you would believe Me; for he wrote about Me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe My words?”

Apparently the depraved heart of man loves the concept that men are sole originators of anything that brings life.  But Jesus says in a way, "The message hasn't changed. It's just that I'm manifesting it in the flesh." Those who already "identified" God properly from the Old Testament have no trouble "identifying" God in Jesus Christ.

The heart of God is that He is not alone in Himself. All those who come in their own name and their own message should receive a red flag of alert. God never has to speak for his own credibility and reputation. Even if he was robbed all of humanity's praise, the rocks would cry out.  God always uses another to testify of his own credibility and reputation. He uses the context of observable relationship in action to prove His identity. If the Father can be manifested in Jesus, the Father need not say a word.  That's why the Son has such a critical role with the Father - because he isn't here to testify of Himself, or to do His own will or to seek His own glory. He is here to gain all those things for the Father. Jesus is completely empty of Himself. But: that doesn't mean that Jesus isn't gaining glory and His own interests while here - because everybody should gird themselves - the Father is doing that very thing for the Son right now in front of everybody's faces - and this is the point of sermons given by Jesus such as John 5:22-38,

Therefore the Jews sought all the more to kill Him, because He not only broke the Sabbath, but also said that God was His Father, making Himself equal with God.  Then Jesus answered and said to them, “Most assuredly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, but what He sees the Father do; for whatever He does, the Son also does in like manner.  For the Father loves the Son, and shows Him all things that He Himself does; and He will show Him greater works than these, that you may marvel.  For as the Father raises the dead and gives life to them, even so the Son gives life to whom He will.  For the Father judges no one, but has committed all judgment to the Son, that all should honor the Son just as they honor the Father. He who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent Him. “Most assuredly, I say to you, he who hears My word and believes in Him who sent Me has everlasting life, and shall not come into judgment, but has passed from death into life.  Most assuredly, I say to you, the hour is coming, and now is, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God; and those who hear will live.  For as the Father has life in Himself, so He has granted the Son to have life in Himself, and has given Him authority to execute judgment also, because He is the Son of Man.  Do not marvel at this; for the hour is coming in which all who are in the graves will hear His voice and come forth—those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of condemnation.  I can of Myself do nothing. As I hear, I judge; and My judgment is righteous, because I do not seek My own will but the will of the Father who sent Me. “If I bear witness of Myself, My witness is not true.  There is another who bears witness of Me, and I know that the witness which He witnesses of Me is true.  You have sent to John, and he has borne witness to the truth.  Yet I do not receive testimony from man, but I say these things that you may be saved.  He was the burning and shining lamp, and you were willing for a time to rejoice in his light.  But I have a greater witness than John’s; for the works which the Father has given Me to finish—the very works that I do—bear witness of Me, that the Father has sent Me.  And the Father Himself, who sent Me, has testified of Me. You have neither heard His voice at any time, nor seen His form.  But you do not have His word abiding in you, because whom He sent, Him you do not believe.

There is no gaining of relationship going on here for Jesus.  Jesus was not becoming the Son of God when he was ascended, nor when he was resurrected, nor when He was baptized.  Jesus Christ has always been the Son of God.  A Son is one who reflects the will of the Father, and it is this character that He had from eternity which allowed the Father to describe the accomplishment thus far to his revealing in the Jordan River: "This is My Son, in whom I am well pleased."  The defining distinction of a "son" is that he is in constant Spiritual need from God (Rom. 8:14).  This is why Jesus, though he had all "accomplishments" as the lofty Son of God, remained completely self-less. John 6:57,

As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so he who feeds on Me will live because of Me.

Sons are not those who lose God and regain God like human beings do in their fallibility.  There is only one kind of "gaining" Jesus ever demonstrated, which is daily provisions for Spiritual life. The relationship has been established in eternity long before Jesus put on flesh.  It's only that now it is unfolding before us in the Gospel of John.  Jesus' state of abiding in God is pretty much the conversation of all doctrine in this Gospel, and everything to which He is inviting God's people in this Gospel.  It is the means by which there is, and will be, any such "thing" as eternal life.

Our Savior, the Abider

Today begins a new series on the theme of abiding with God; essential to the doctrine of the gospel.  We recently read about Martha and Mary, whose faith was challenged to identify God-with-us, and in that post we touched on the invitation God gives to the church corporately to identify themselves as abiders.  We read about Joseph and his persecutions for manifesting God-with-us, and before that we read how identifying believers firstly as abiders with God protects God's flock from sectarianism and grows the Kingdom of God.

Why does abiding matter?  I will give a three-part response to frame its necessity.  (I am trying a new way of breaking posts into more edible sizes.)  After that I will exegete various passages excluding the Upper Room Discourse from the Gospel of John (chapters 1-12).  I am hoping a steady approach will spark some interesting thoughts from readers.

All posts under this theme will be under the label of this introductory title "Our Savior the Abider."