Commentary on John 15 (7)

[瑤翰 김요한]

John 15 Commentary (7)

What is being done in Christ on this earth is done in heaven.

Our prayers, if they are in truth, are connected to heaven, our worship  is connected to heaven, and our evangelism is connected to heaven.

Although we are fallen and flesh, when we receive Christ in us, his attributes work in us, making us like him.

The Holy Spirit intercedes with groans that cannot be expressed in words so that we may be conformed to the image of his Son. (Rom. 8:27-30)

Of course, theologically speaking, there are communicable and incommunicable attributes of God, but only the communal attributes are clearly given to us as an inheritance through the Holy Spirit.

That is exactly God’s desire. 

So why do we not receive this blessing?

When we first believe, God usually shows us signs.

That's why, when people are young in faith, they only chase after certain things or try to get something that can become their own.

God shows signs to show people who say there is no God that there is a God and to make them hear the Word and believe.

When we see those signs, we begin to believe that God is alive and from then on, we begin to believe that we can make God’s things real to ourselves.

However, the problem is that many people have been caught up in this sign faith for a long time.

The Bible says that faith is the substance of things hoped for.(Hebrews 11:1) 

Because we believe in the promises of God, and the work of life appears in us according to the promises, and the symptoms of awareness that we feel are the substance of faith.

It’s a funny story, but a pastor went to Germany and preached this sermon.

“Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

So, imagine in your mind what you want with faith.”

He preached and came back, and the next year, when he went there, someone said this.

“Pastor, I was so touched by your sermon. I wanted to drive a red car. So, after hearing your sermon, I just imagined a red car in my mind, and God gave me a red car. This is it.”

This success story of faith is being passed down like a legend in Korean churches.

In the end, you know better than I do what that pastor looked like at the end.

Hebrews 11 is not a word that tells us to believe that way.

Did Abraham want a red car?

Did he look at the Messiah coming from afar and make it real?

He saw the Messiah with perspective vision and believed in him.

Did the ancestors of faith want a red car?

No. They looked to the coming Messiah with faith and returned home believing as if they had met the Messiah.

That is what Hebrews 11 wants to tell us.

So many people have faith that realizes something according to their needs through signs and wonders, so they end up not being able to hear the word of God.

The sign is the stage where God calls us to the word, but if we make a mistake, many believers stay there for too long, and have the faith of a child and try to obtain the desires of the flesh, which is a big problem in today's Christianity.

Of course, when we do God's work, God is not the one who does not reward people with peace, safety, and a comfortable environment in life.

However, if all I get from believing in Jesus Christ and seeking God is these things, if that were all the reward for my efforts, I would have stopped testifying to the Word.

If all I wanted was this life, I would quit this work right now and work hard to earn money.

David’s faith is not the same as that of today’s Christians.

He does not sing, “I became a great king because I believed in God well, and I became a great general because I believed in God well.” 

Instead, he sings that God gave him the joy of salvation.

He boasts that God gave him the blessing to sing to the Lord.

That is why David confesses, “Lord, you alone are my portion and my cup; you make my lot secure.” (Psalm 16:5)

In other words, all David gained throughout his life was the Lord.

That is why he says, “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.” (Psalm 23:1)

In Psalm 23, the Lord is not only a symbolic being who is my shepherd, but also the One who revives the soul, and even when I walking through the dark valley of death, the Lord is not just someone who says, “I am your shepherd,” but someone who comforts with his staff and rod.

There, the shepherd is a shepherd of comfort, and a shepherd who sets a table in the presence of the enemy.

He is a shepherd who anoint the head with oil and make the cup overflows.

And he is a shepherd who always follows us with goodness and kindness throughout our life.

David sings that the ultimate gain of life is for the saints to become the house of the Lord and gain God.

Do not think that gaining visible reality through faith in God is all that is gained through faith. That is not eternal.

However, such a thing is only a momentary sign that calls us out of the world, sin, and death, and comforts us, and it is not evidence of eternal faith.

The Lord's will to make us live as strangers in the world through suffering is, 'Please do not consider what you see as blessings now, but cry out to me in the midst of tribulation and suffering, and I will give you something better than what is in the world, and through it you will praise me and show my great achievements through you.'

We must not forget that the Lord's great will is directed toward us.

The same purpose of secular religion today is to try to realize what God has as one's own through religious practices.

If you get caught up in this, get stuck, and become accustomed to it, your faith will be very difficult.

Those people continue to try to use God only for their physical needs.

To be honest, most sermons are about exactly that.

However, we must not forget that the sign of Jonah was not that a poor man became rich, but that Jonah, who did not listen to God’s words, changed into Jonah who listened to God’s words.

This means that there was a qualitative change in Jonah’s existence.

The Lord said, ‘An evil and adulterous generation seeks a sign, but I have nothing to show them except the sign of Jonah (Matthew 16:4).’

When we apply to ourselves the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the message of the cross, the logos of the cross, the mystery method of the cross, it is painful and difficult, so we give up on ourselves with cries and tears, but we give up our ego and greed, and although we used to live by our own ability and wisdom, after passing through the message of the cross of Christ, we live not by our own ability and wisdom, but by the power and wisdom of Christ who works within us, and we become the boast of God.

‘For the foolishness of God is better than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is better than human strength. Therefore he calls the weak to shame the strong, and lifts up the lowly things to shame the things that are’ (1 Corinthians 1:27-28). 

This is the sign of Jonah and the sign of the cross of Christ.

It is not that calling the thing that are not and making them incredibly rich is the sign of Jonah, but that before that, they were useless humans in the eyes of God in Adam, but through the grace of the atonement of Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection, they were finally transformed into useful humans and revealed God’s achievements.

It is not that even though I am weak, I believe in God, so He will make me richer than that rich man or make me greater than that great man.

Who can make his height one foot taller or eat ten bowls of rice a day?

The sign of Jonah is a sign of change.

The Jonah who went into the belly of the fish and came out was a different Jonah.

The sign of the cross is not the blessing of possession, but the blessing of existence.

Let's remember that and go into John 16 together next time.

Written by Ptr. Yohan Kim.

Translated by  Nancy Chung

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