Alive To God

Do you remember the Magic Eye stereograms that were all the rage a few decades ago? You saw a poster with a jumble of colors, focused on a dot in the center, and soon a jet in 3D popped out of the poster, coated with the random pattern saw earlier. Every now and then we would read the Word of God, reading a passage we’ve read many times, but then, focusing on it a little longer, there comes a freshness, a great dimension is added to it, and we wonder. Sometimes we get these “Aha” moments when the Spirit opens our understanding.

Passing through Samaritan territory, Jesus did what Jews don’t normally do. He took time to start a conversation with a marginalized woman which started when He sat at a well asking her for water.

She, surprised, asked, “How is it that You, being a Jew, ask a drink from me, a Samaritan woman?” (John 4:9). She points right at the bone of contention. The elephant in the room. They were speaking from opposite sides of the tracks. How, indeed, could He ask?

Because He’s Jesus. He came to break down walls that separate people from God. Easing the conversation forward, Jesus addresses her with a spiritual question, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, ‘Give Me a drink,’ you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water” (v. 10).

We are continuing the story of Jesus meeting the Samaritan woman at a well. But the claims Jesus makes of Himself are not what she expects.

When Jesus, tired by His journey from Judah midway to Galilee, asks for a drink, the woman who came to the well is puzzled or perhaps suspicious. “How is it that You, being a Jew, ask a drink from me, a Samaritan woman?” (John 4:9). She knows that Jews avoid her people at all costs.

Jesus said to her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, ‘Give Me a drink,’ you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water” (v. 10).

In many places, racial, religious, and cultural differences divide us from one another. Jesus transcends these boundaries, bringing salvation to all peoples. In John 4, we see Jesus breaking through boundaries.

John 4:1-3 gives the reason why Jesus is on the move from His place in Judah at the end of the previous chapter. He is returning north to His hometown in Galilee.

What changes everything, though, is v. 4, “But He needed to go through Samaria.” Generally, the Jews avoided meeting Samaritans by taking a longer route around them. The Samaritans had intermingled with other races when the Assyrians led the northern tribes into captivity in 722 BC, and left behind Gentile captives from other lands.

There are times when people seem to be depending on you or praising you more than they ought, and you need to direct them to trust in Someone greater than yourself. Unfortunately, sometimes we’ll be full of ourselves when we speak. In this passage, we’ll see how John the baptizer, called “Rabbi” by his followers, dealt with it.

John 3:21-24 introduces the setting and the characters. The time is prior to John’s imprisonment, and his followers were baptizing at the Jordan river, just south of the Sea of Galilee. Jesus and His disciples were further south, in Judea, also baptizing.

In John 3:17 we see the contrast between the “saved” and the “condemned.” Condemnation implies that judgment has been passed upon us by the Judge, and we are all guilty of breaking God’s laws. If we are saved, we who were under condemnation are no longer condemned.

According to Jesus in 3:16, we would perish for being under condemnation. But Jesus gave His own life in place of ours, receiving in Himself our sentence of condemnation and death. When we place our faith in the Son, the condemnation passes away and we receive a new kind of life where God counts us innocent not guilty; accepted in His sight and not condemned.

In John 3, we have an interesting interplay of words here. The term “born again” is introduced, and as the chapter continues, it is expanded on with new words, such as Spirit (as opposed to flesh), everlasting life (as opposed to perishing), saved (as opposed to condemned), and light (as opposed to darkness). In my understanding, all these words and concepts help us appreciate how the Lord intends the born-again life to be understood.

Jesus puts born again against the backdrop of flesh and Spirit in vv. 5-8. So being born again is emerging out from the flesh-dominated life to being born into a Spirit-dominated life. The senses and abilities of our bodies are disregarded in favor of the leading of the Spirit. He doesn’t guide us according to normal ways and means.

Nicodemus, a respected Jewish teacher, meets with Jesus and starts of with a positive address to Him, though he saw Him only as a “teacher from God” (3:1-2). (Jesus is possibly referring to this title in 3:12-13, that He was literally from heaven and therefore could speak of heavenly things. Nicodemus spoke the truth better than he knew!)

Jesus seems to cut Nicodemus’s flattering introduction short by jumping straight to the core issue that Nico (and by implication the whole body of religious leaders) have not recognized. He must be born again (vv. 3-8). He saw the signs but didn’t understand their significance. They are signs of the kingdom of God come to earth.

When Jesus visited Jerusalem on a Passover, He found something in the temple that did not belong there. “And He found in the temple those who sold oxen and sheep and doves, and the money changers doing business” (John 2:14). Does this sound familiar?

In the book of Revelation chapters 2 and 3, Jesus examines seven churches. As in Jerusalem, He found something in the churches that did not belong there. The church of Ephesus had left its first love. Pergamos put a stumbling block before the children of God. Thytira allowed a woman prophetess to woo God’s servants into sexual immorality. Sardis was a dead church. The Laodicians were a lukewarm church.

In John chapter 2, Jerusalem’s issue was making “My Father’s house a house of merchandise” (John 2:16). In every case, the church and temple had not lived up to its calling. The temple was the place where God’s holy presence dwelt. And from there He was to rule and bless those who kept His commandments. From within His people, He would make Himself known.

Jesus performed various signs, or miracles, at a certain Passover, and many believed in Jesus as a result, v. 23. But that wasn’t enough for Jesus to return their trust, v. 24. This response should interest us. What is Jesus looking for in His followers that was missing in these believers?

When the Jews asked for a sign that showed He had authority to drive out the moneymakers, Jesus pointed to the temple of His body. “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up” (John 2:18-19). Why did Jesus point to His body? 1) Because His body was the incarnation of the divine with the human. The tabernacle and temples were merely signs pointing to the true tabernacle of God’s presence. The Son of God “tabernacled” in the human body of Jesus. His was the true and superior dwelling place of God’s presence, v. 21, like a flame of fire that outshines a mere drawing of a match. God was working through Him.

2) Because the true light now shines to help people see the “real world” of God’s kingdom. Role-reversals like those of Christ ruling over the temple become commonplace in the kingdom of light. Christ and His work of preaching the kingdom with its healings exposes the darkness of men’s hearts, who are valuing things and activities over God Himself. Idols become apparent next to the character and power of God in Jesus. Who should you base your life on, God’s incarnate Son, or a man-made thing?

When Jesus came to Jerusalem one Passover, He found that the temple caretakers had lost their vision. What was to be a place for worshipers to pray on holy ground, became an opportunity for the caretakers to prey on the pilgrims.

What should have been a quiet place for reflection and prayer was full of noise and distracting commotion from the buying and selling of animals in the courtyard.

At a wedding at Cana in Galilee, Jesus miraculously turned water into wine. But John inserts a significant piece of detail that I’ve often overlooked: “Now there were set there six waterpots of stone, according to the manner of purification of the Jews, containing 20 or 30 gallons apiece” (John 2:6 NKJV).

The details of “waterpots of stone” for “purification of the Jews” points directly to rituals the Jews relied on to be pure before the Lord. Since John used metaphors throughout his book, we can do the same here. We just need to keep to John’s emphasis given in 20:31, lest we be unfaithful to the word.

The Bible reveals the state of our hearts. We may come to the Scriptures initially skeptical of Jesus, as Nathaniel did in v. 46 (“Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”). But when the Lord reveals His grace, He turns us around.

When Philip approached Jesus accompanied by Nathanael, Jesus told Nathanael that he was an Israelite without deceit. When Nathanael asked how He knew him, Jesus said He saw him under the fig tree before Philip called him (vv. 47-48).

“The two disciples heard him [the baptizer] speak, and they followed Jesus” (John 1:37). John’s goal was to turn people to Jesus, not to build up a large following of his own. His job was to be the voice in the wilderness prophesied in Isaiah 40:3 to prepare the people for Christ’s coming.

These two disciples paid attention as John turned their allegiance from him to follow Jesus. This is the goal of all those who earnestly want to be witnesses of Jesus. People notice and hear you, and follow Jesus, not you. What kind of life is this where people turn from you to Christ? A holy life. First we ourselves need to be with Jesus.

The Pharisees were doing their job when they investigated this man in unusual garb who preached an unusual message. They were expecting a Prophet like Moses (Deut. 18:15, Acts 3:20-23), Elijah the prophet (Malachi 4:5), and the Chosen One (Isaiah 42:1) as God promised, before the coming of the Lord.

“Now this is the testimony of John, when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, ‘Who are you?’ ” (John 1:19). He said: “I am ‘The voice of one crying in the wilderness: “Make straight the way of the Lord,” ’ as the prophet Isaiah said” (John 1:23). (Luke 3:4-6 gives the fuller quote in his parallel passage.)

“John bore witness of Him and cried out, saying, ‘This was He of whom I said, “He who comes after me is preferred before me, for He was before me” ‘ ” (John 1:15). John the baptizer testified of the Son, that He had existed before the baptizer did, although the baptizer was born first (see the sequence of John-then-Jesus birth order in Luke 1-2). The infant John had leaped in recognition of the baby Jesus that was in Mary’s womb when she visited him while he was in his pregnant mother Elizabeth in Luke 1. 

After 400 years of prophetic silence, God raised up a prophet called John and gave him unusual clarity about the coming one. The baptizer knew He existed before himself, so he elevated Him. The God of ages past had entered history and visited His people through the Son.