by on January 10, 2017

John 15:7-13

Image for Cal Staggers's blog post on John 15: 7-13 - a focus on interpreting and analyzing the textI’ll be covering a few more verses of Jesus’s parable about the vine and branches that he discusses with his disciples in this post.

v7: Christ reiterates that the disciples must “remain in Him” in order for His “words to remain” in them. He then states that they may ask whatever they wish and “it will be done” for them. Jesus is telling the disciples the positive results of remaining faithful to him and how when they ask for something that is “in Jesus” (according to what He approves), what they ask will be delivered. While he says these desires will be fulfilled, Christ does not specify how or when. Everything Jesus’ followers ask for “in Him” will be granted, but maybe not in the way or timing that they envision, but in accordance with the way that God knows is best.

v8: God’s desire is that the disciples grow in their faith and others realize that they are disciples of Christ.

v9: Christ goes on to talk about love, stating He loves his disciples as His father loves Him, which focuses on the emotional connection between them and the need to be loving. He ends this verse with another reminder about the necessity of remaining “in” one another, in order to keep this love front and center in their lives.

v10: Jesus moves on to repeating His theme of to “remain”. If the disciples remain with Him, He’ll remain in them, blessing them and showering them with His love. Christ also compares the disciples’ relationships with Him to his relationship with God.

v11: Moving on from love, Christ discusses the “joy” He feels in regards to His relationship with His disciples. He highlights another benefit they will receive from their relationship with Him, mainly that of having complete joy from their relationship with Him and the Father.

v12: Once again, Jesus stresses the importance of love, commanding the disciples to love each other as He loves them. This type of love is meant to be unconditional and forgiving, which goes beyond normal human love and requires Jesus empowering them. Jesus wants the disciples to practice the ideal kind of divine love He presents and to show that love to the rest of the world.

v13: Finally, Christ states what is one of the most well-known verses in the Bible: “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” This verse has been referenced countless times and is a defining factor of modern Christianity – to show others kindness and grace while practicing the type of love Christ has toward other people in the world.

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by on August 7, 2015

John 14: 1-12

cal staggers Preach-Bible-John

v1 is a continuation of 13:38 (which is obscured by the later-inserted, man-made chapter break), so after Jesus tells Peter that he’s going to deny Him, he doesn’t berate Peter – instead He encourages Him!  I was about to type that some of the denominational churches I’ve visited would tell Jesus He’s wrong for that, but then I would be just as judgemental as they were (hmmm… I still managed to work that in).

v2 We’re only in heaven for a snap, and then the 1000-year reign of Christ will wrap up the Old Testament era that got put on hold when the Jewish nation didn’t believe – so I think we should take this verse as a reference to the New Heaven and Earth when all believers will be in the New Jerusalem.  The city will be a 1,500-mile cube and that’s where our dwelling place will be (that’s a really quick draw from Revelation).

v3 Jesus is pulling out the stops on encouraging Peter and us.  And when you have an eternal perspective, you can describe Rapture through the New Jerusalem in one sentence.

v5  You’d think that Thomas would see that our Father’s house is in heaven – however now that I type that, I realize that, eternally speaking, it isn’t in heaven – it’s in the New Jerusalem.  So maybe Thomas is more honest than most of us in saying that he doesn’t get it.  The Father’s House is in a different time not in a different place, since Thomas is standing in the right place (after creation is remade) just not in the right time.

v6 I love straight-forward statements like this that let other “ways” know that they’re not the way at all.

v9 One benefit to Philip and the other disciples asking questions like this is that it gives Jesus opportunities to explain things to them that we all need to hear.

v11 Again we see that the purpose of Jesus’ miracles is to lead people to believe that He’s the Father’s son and to believe His promise of eternal life.

v12 Now this is a cool verse: “…the works that I do shall he do also” – it doesn’t say that our physical works will be as good as His, but just that we shall have physical works. “And greater works than these shall he do” – What we can do is even greater than the miracles that Jesus did, which means that the love we have one for one another (as He just explained in 13:35) is greater than His miracles.  That’s hard to imagine!

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by on June 17, 2015

John Ch. 13: 1-17

cal staggers Gospel_of_John_Chapter_13-1

You may have noticed that I’ve been skipping over what seems to be straight-forward and obvious in order to try and dig out what isn’t.  That’s probably not the best way to write out a study, but we’re going so fast that’s what I’m focusing on.

V1. Nice double meaning: “loved them to the end,” meaning both: loved them to the end of His life on earth, and He loved them to the utmost.

V4. On a practical basis, after walking in sandals down dirty roads to someone’s house, washing feet needed to be done before entering (which the host or his servant usually did, or someone who didn’t mind lowering himself to that menial chore – and which, apparently NONE of the disciples wanted to do for the others in this incident) and especially before eating – because who wants to recline at a low table with the next guy’s nasty feet in your face?  But, of course, Jesus has a bigger purpose in mind, an object lesson.

Peter is so impulsive – he’s my next favorite disciple after John.

V6. Jesus says that what He’s doing, Peter (and probably all the disciples) does not understand – which means it’s something OTHER than serving one another (which is the usual explanation of this passage).  But apparently He’s not teaching us to serve, so what is the lesson?  We get a hint in…

V10. So “bathing” also means “completely clean” and is different than “washing feet”.  We can figure out what “bathing” means because in v.2 we read that Satan is influencing Judas, who is not a believer.  In this verse Jesus says the group is completely clean, but not everyone is clean. Someone is not saved and is still dirty in their sins which must refer to Judas.  Dirt is a picture of sins.  Therefore, having taken a bath means to believe in Jesus for eternal life and for forgiveness of sins.  Once we do that we’re completely clean of our sins and never need to bathe again.

But we still need to figure out what washing feet means.  In verse 8 we see that Jesus tells Peter that if He doesn’t wash Peter’s feet, Peter can have “no part” with Jesus.  “No part” is a synonym for fellowship.  And we saw that dirt is a picture of sins.  So it appears that as we walk through life, our feet get dirty with daily sins.  Jesus must forgive us of our ongoing sins on an ongoing basis so that we can have continued fellowship with Him.  This is true even though our one-time bath cleansed us of our “positional” sins and gave us eternal life.

V14-15. Jesus tells the disciples that they should wash each other’s feet just as Jesus washes our feet.  Meaning that we should forgive each other as He has forgiven us.

V16. We shouldn’t think that we’re better than Jesus and that we don’t have to forgive someone, anyone, else.  Jesus has forgiven us of a life-time of sins that killed Him, so how can we be so arrogant as to not forgive someone else of what may seem to be the worst offense possible against us, but which is in reality a speck compared to what Jesus forgave us for (pretty convicting!).

But does Jesus just automatically wash our feet?  No.  We have to confess our sins to Him first.

We see in this concept spelled out in Matthew 6:12, the part of the Lord’s Prayer in which we ask, on a daily basis, our Father in heaven to “forgive us of our sins.”

And this also ties into one of my favorite promises in the Bible – I John 1:9:  “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us the sins and to cleanse us from ALL unrighteousness.”  Which lets us know that all we have to do is to confess the sins of which we’re aware, and then God will forgive us of ALL our sins, even the ones of which we don’t know.  And Jesus promises in John 13 that our fellowship with Him will continue.  Pretty cool.

V17. If we do this, we’ll be “blessed,” also translated as “happy!”

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