Gospel of John

Got Questions?

| Marie Griffith

This installment of Monday School is inspired by a man named Nicodemus. I think I love Nicodemus.

The only information we have on him is in the Gospel of John. He was a Pharisee, which means he was a scholar who studied the Law and was intentional in the keeping of it. He was also a member of the Sanhedrin, the ruling body of the Jews. He was highly regarded by the people and, obviously, an influential man.

One night he went to Jesus. John doesn’t give us any insight into why Nicodemus went to Jesus at night. Maybe he doesn’t want the other Pharisees to know. Maybe this was the only time he could speak to Jesus alone. We’re just not sure. But we do know Nicodemus respected Jesus because he called him Rabbi. Nicodemus acknowledged the fact that Jesus was a teacher from God. Then Jesus confronted him with a truth he didn’t understand.

Nicodemus knew a lot, but he didn’t know it all. He did what anyone who wants to know and understand would do. He asked Jesus a question. Then he asked more questions.

Someone I love is doubting what she thought she knew. She’s asking hard questions and I don’t always know the answers.

Her struggle would be unnerving except I know that God knows what is needed to make her faith real and strong. Coming to truly see, treasure, and trust Jesus Christ almost always begins in a crisis, one filled with questions.

I tell her to ask all the questions she needs to. Ask God. Ask me. Ask those she trusts to tell her the truth. Go to the Word with a desire to learn. Tell Jesus what she’s thinking and what she’s doubting.

Because she wants and needs it to be real. And don’t we all?

The last thing we learn of Nicodemus is that he, with Joseph of Arimathea, prepared Jesus’ body for burial. “Nicodemus also, who earlier had come to Jesus by night, came bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about seventy-five pounds in weight. So they took the body of Jesus and bound it in linen cloths with the spices, as is the burial custom of the Jews.         John 19:39-40

Nicodemus was brave and humble enough to ask the questions that night in the dark. Then he was brave and humble enough to prepare his friend’s body for the grave.

“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.”  Matthew 7:7-8

My prayer for those I love is the same one I pray for myself:

God, may we seek you wholedeartedly. Give us a wholehearted devotion to You and cause us to love you with all our hearts, all our souls, all our minds and all our strength.  

 

Our Trademark

| Marie Griffith

A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.
John 13:34-35

I’m not sure why, but the second verse was rolling around in my head all weekend and it prompted me to read the passage where it’s found and then some.

These words found in the Gospel of John are part of the final instructions Jesus gave to his disciples before he was arrested and crucified. With his public ministry completed, Jesus spent the last hours before his arrest with them.

I wondered about the new part, because this is not a new command. ‘Love your neighbor’ was part of the Mosaic Law from the beginning. Matthew Henry said in his commentary, “it is like an old book in a new edition corrected and enlarged. This commandment had been so corrupted by the traditions of the Jewish church that when Christ revived it, and set it in a true light, it might well be called a new commandment. Laws of revenge and retaliation were so much in vogue, and self-love had so much the ascendant, that the law of brotherly love was forgotten as obsolete and out of date; so that as it came from Christ new, it was new to the people.”

The commandment was new in experience. For the first time, the people had a perfect example of love in human flesh and they were about to see it in an even more powerful way.

So, love is how everyone will know we follow Jesus. It’s our thing….our trademark.

Love. That’s how everyone will know. It’s not the church we attend. It’s not our denomination, education, or accumulation. Our traditions, rituals, network, or political views. It’s not our Facebook posts, YouTube channels or Twitter feed.

It’s our love for one another. And it’s not just the kind that says the right words.

John wrote in his first epistle: “Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.’ 1 John 3:18

Then I remember what it says in Paul’s famous love passage:
“If I speak God’s Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, “Jump,” and it jumps, but I don’t love, I’m nothing. If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don’t love, I’ve gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I’m bankrupt without love.”  1 Corinthians 13 MSG

Without love, we are nothing. We are ambassadors of Jesus, commanded to love like he did.

It would be easier to finish this post using the collective “we” because it keeps me from having to look closely at my own life and asking myself, “do people know I follow Jesus by the way I love others?”

But I can’t dodge the question and I can’t compare myself to others. I’m commanded to love as he has loved me and honestly, I mess it up a lot of the time. Most of the time. On my own it is impossible, but with God all things are possible.

He never asks us to do something without giving us what we need to do it. And what He has given us is Himself.

Later in John’s Gospel, Jesus says, “If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples. As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love.”

Without love, I am nothing.

Father, thank you for Your love and grace. Show me how to love others like You love me. Deliver me from the love of my own comfort and make me willing to serve others. Make me more and more desperate for You and keep me in the light of Your love. Show me Your ways and align my heart with Yours, so I see others the way you see them. Create in me a clean heart, O God. Renew a steadfast spirit within me. I love You.

Photo courtesy of Joanna Schley