This year Pentecost is celebrated on May 27, 2007. The three assigned readings are Genesis 11:1-9 (Tower of Babel); Acts 2:1-21 (Pentecost event) and John 14:23-31 (Love between Son and Father). The text chosen for a sermon is John 14:23, “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 Our home with him.’”
When I began this Blog over a 1 1/2 years ago, my goal was to find a passage each week from the assigned readings which appears at first glance to contradict the teachings of the Christian faith. So far, I have not been disappointed and this week is no exception. How different does John 14:23 sound from the Christian doctrine that first God loves us and then we love Him? It appears that verse 23 teaches that first we not only have to love Him but also keep His word. Then the Father will love us and both the Son and the Father will come to us and make their home with us.
To demonstrate the apparent contradiction, all one needs to read is the very next chapter 15 in which Jesus makes clear in verse 5, “I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in Him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing.” The apparent contradiction is obvious. In 14:23 it appears that first we have to love and keep God’s word and then He will come to us. But in 15:5 it appears that apart from already being in Christ because He first loved us, we can do nothing!
The king of theology is interpretation (Scripture interprets Scripture) and the queen of theology is application (Law and Gospel). If you get the interpretation wrong, you will get the application wrong. The solution to our apparent dilemma is to realize that John 14:23 is read chronologically by most people. That is, first you love God; second you keep His Word; third the Father loves you; fourth, both the Father and the Son will make their home with you.
However, from John 15:5 it is obvious that our good works of loving God and keeping His Word follow our connection to Christ, not vice-versa. Perhaps the following analogy is helpful. An adopted son loves his parents who will love Him and make their home with him. Notice that when you read that sentence you do not read it chronologically in the sense that first the son does the loving prior to the parents making their home with him.
So also, John 14:23 is to be read in this way: “If there is love between you and Me it also means that you will be keeping My Word while the Father is loving you and We are making our home with you.” It is the difference between verse 23 being read chronologically or simultaneously. In this way, verse 23 does not contradict the rest of Scripture at all but in fact supplements and is consistent with the Christian faith.
And what an opportunity to make this clear than on the Festival of Pentecost. For that day celebrates the Holy Spirit making our body His holy temple by forgiving our sins and dressing us in the robe of Christ’s righteousness. In this process of sanctification one cannot divide the benefits received from Christ and our response of love and faith in the promises of our blessed Savior.
Name:Tom Baker
Dr. Baker,
More and more I see what you are saying here about scripture interpreting scripture and law and gospel. Just the other day the subject of Romans 9 and election came up. That night I read the main passage concerning this, “14What then shall we say? Is God unjust? Not at all! 15For he says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.” 16It does not, therefore, depend on man’s desire or effort, but on God’s mercy. 17For the Scripture says to Pharaoh: “I raised you up for this very purpose, that I might display my power in you and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.” 18Therefore God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden.” Pretty soon I started to despair all over again and struggle thinking on eternal election, thinking what if, it’s hard to get around this passage, well impossible. And despair is the door step to actually hating God later.
Then I started thinking, Law/Gospel, how may it look here and what is the lynch pin verse? Down in verses 30-32, 30What then shall we say? That the Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness, have obtained it, a righteousness that is by faith; 31but Israel, who pursued a law of righteousness, has not attained it. 32Why not? Because they pursued it not by faith but as if it were by works. They stumbled over the “stumbling stone.” Nothing is more Law Gospel than that.
So I began thinking about our reactions to verses 14 – 18, including my own. And it seemed to hit me. That passage is either very comforting or so terrifying one despairs and at length begins to hate and deny God. That passage seems to be one that can have either a very strong Law or a very strong Gospel flavor to it depending upon who is hearing it the old man, of works, or new man of faith/naked trust. The hardening part is what really sticks in the gut.
But then I recalled in Luther’s HD what he said about God’s love being creative and creating what it will love rather than fallen love that comes into being by its object…God loves the unattractive because He creates out of nothing, the unattractive sinner, what He will love…at the Cross God shows himself to be the true Creator. As opposed to fallen love that comes into being by that which it finds attractive. That’s grace Vs. works in the idea of the two “loves”, fallen love not really being true love. Then it hit me, “That’s what the hardening part hates the most. The worker to heaven, the spiritual bean counter and rewarder of good works. That’s the hardening. The same godly love of God that says, “I will love the unattractive sinner, mercy upon whom I will have mercy and compassion upon whom I will have compassion”, is the same love that chaffs the fallen flesh into an ever increasing hardening callous. Because it is that love that loves the unattractive, indeed ugly sinner, the nothing that is utterly against the fallen love and rasps that fleshy ‘spiritual bean and work’ counter. It’s utterly antagonistic to God’s love. The more God says, “I will love the wretched nothing sinner”, the more the working to heaven fleshy, especially religious part of man, is made bitter and hard because it’s always trying to “look attractive” for God, prostituting itself as it were with works lipstick and works stockings. And when God says I will have mercy upon the unattractive, the fallen beauty queen turns into the real hardened and ugly witch she really is and hates that very God because she cannot move God by her deluded and false love. It is as Satanic as Satan’s temptation of Jesus, God the Son, saying ‘…bow down and worship me’ in the desert. Like Satan fallen man ultimately would have God worship him, reversing the loves so as to be utterly false and against the real creation at all point, still a stream (religion) yet upstream of the natural created flow.
The old man hates the idea that he can do absolutely nothing because it means his complete death, death of the work and bean counter by the way of the law. But the new man, the naked truster, is strengthened by this same thing the old man hates, because the new man comes into being by it and in fact is made ever increasingly alive by it since works are dead and he is dead to the Law by Christ.
It reminds me of the Prodigal Son, when the elder son sees the lavish grace upon the openly rebellious younger son, revealing at length that he is exactly the same, not interested in his father as a relation but getting paid bean for bean. Or the prayer of the Pharisee Vs. the prayer of the tax collector. Or the parable of the first and last. Or the parable of the 1st hour Vs. last hour servants being paid the same.
Versus 30 – 32 drive that home.
Blessings,
Larry KY