|
CHAPTER
4
CHAPTER
FOUR
NOT
OF THIS WORLD
NOT
OF THIS WORLD
Once
more Jesus said to them, “I am going away, and you will
look for me, and you will die in your sin. Where I go,
you cannot come.” This made the Jews ask, “Will he kill
himself? Is that why he says, ‘Where I go you cannot
come’? ”But he continued, “You are from below; I am
from above. You are of this world; I am not of this
world. I told you that you would die in your sins; if
you do not believe that I am the one I claim to be,
you will indeed die in your sins.”
(John
chapter 8, verses 21-24).
What
does it mean to ‘die in your sins’? It means hell! If
our sins are forgiven, through faith in Christ, then
death cannot hurt us, it has no sting, and we enter
into heaven; if our sins are not forgiven and we die
in them, then the sting of hell awaits:
“Where,
O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?”
The sting of death is sin-------.
(1
Corinthians chapter 15, verses 55-56).
Indeed,
‘The sting of death is sin’.
Jesus
was not just another man; not even just an exceptionally
good or saintly man---He was very, very special. In
His own words, ‘I am from above---I am not of this world’.
This is in line with what we have read in Chapter 2
where Jesus says He is the true bread of life that comes
down from heaven. Jesus, Himself, and the whole of the
New Testament speak emphatically and continuously about
His coming from His true home in heaven to our sinful
world; about Him leaving His glorious heavenly abode
to enter a sin-darkened, deadened world---about God
taking human form, frail flesh and blood, to come alongside
His rebellious creatures, and to suffer and die for
us; to pay the due penalty for sin so that we who believe
on Him ‘shall not perish but have eternal life’.
IMMANUEL
Another
name/title for Jesus is Immanuel, meaning ‘God with
us.’ This we read in an Old Testament book written approximately
700 years before the birth of Christ:
“Therefore
the LORD himself will give you a sign: The virgin will
be with child and will give birth to a son, and will
call him Immanuel.”
(Isaiah
chapter 7, verse 14).
Then,
in the New Testament, we see:
All
this took place to fulfil what the Lord had said through
the prophet: “The virgin will be with child and will
give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel”---which
means, “God with us.”
(Matthew
chapter 1, verses 22-23).
This
name, Immanuel, marks out Jesus as One who is completely
separate from all who went before or came after. Jesus
did not just come to tell us about God; He was and is
the very God He came to tell us about. In the virgin
birth, God came to this earth in the body of a Man;
Immanuel---God with us. The Old Testament prophet, Isaiah,
also tells us:
And
he will be called Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
(Isaiah
chapter 9, verse 6).
WONDERFUL
COUNSELLOR; He advises us on all things needful for
us to know pertaining to our salvation, the Kingdom
of God, and living the Christian life. We will see further
connections with this title in a later chapter.
PRINCE
OF PEACE; God’s Kingdom is the only Kingdom where true
peace reigns, and will continue to reign forever. The
Christian is to be a man of peace. The only hope for
lasting peace anywhere, in our hearts, in our lives,
in our nations, in our world is by trusting in the Prince
of Peace. This is also a title which takes us way back
to the book of Genesis and a mysterious character called
Melchizedek, who was a type, a foreshadowing, of Christ,
and he was the King of Salem, the King of Peace (more
of the Melchizedek connection in chapter 20).
MIGHTY
GOD, EVERLASTING FATHER; some who prefer to think of
Jesus as just another gentle guru may have thought the
previous titles could refer to a very good man, a peace-loving,
gentle, wise man of some sort. One who might be able
to advise us, counsel us about his particular belief
in a god; one who might, like some, have tried to show
the way of peace through non-desire, non-resistance,
or through shutting themselves away from the world altogether.
If we do consider Jesus in such terms we now run into
a difficulty---‘Mighty God, Everlasting Father’. This
Immanuel, this Wonderful Counsellor, this Prince of
Peace, this Jesus, is also MIGHTY GOD, EVERLASTING FATHER.
Christianity
is founded on the belief in the ONE true God, in the
one triune God, in the God who is Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit---three persons in one Godhead. This is explicit
in Scripture, particularly in the New Testament. So
here we see Jesus in His divinity---totally one with
God the Father, and totally one with God the Holy Spirit,
whom Jesus calls the ‘Counsellor’ in John’s Gospel.
I
do not want to give the impression, by the title and
content of this chapter, that Jesus is so much ‘not
of this world’ as to be remote and unapproachable by
mere humans. He shared our humanity fully; He was a
complete Man, made of flesh and blood as are we, and
He came to bow down and to serve even, and especially,
the lowliest of mankind:
Who,
being in very nature God, did not consider equality
with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing,
taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human
likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, He
humbled himself and became obedient to death---even
death on a cross!
(Philippians
chapter 2, verses 6-8).
He
truly was not of this world of time and sin, He was
from eternity and the abode of righteousness. But He
became one of us, to suffer and to bleed and to die
for us, that we, who believe, might also become ‘not
of this world’ with Him.
He
left His starry crown,
And
laid His Robes aside;
On
wings of love came down,
And
wept, and bled, and died;
(Rev.
S. Stennett)
|
