Why Believe in Jesus?

In recent columns I have been reflecting with you on words of Jesus in the fourteenth chapter of John’s gospel. In the beginning of that chapter he said to his disciples that in his Father’s house are “many rooms” or “many mansions.” He said that he was going to prepare a place for them. (He also pointed out that he would not lie about something so important to those whom he loved.) He went on to say that he is “the way, the truth, and the life,” and that “no one comes to the Father except through him.” Then he said that he and the Father “are one,” and he said, “whoever has seen me has seen the Father.”

As I have pointed out in preceding columns, these are extraordinary claims. Someone making such claims is either crazy, or a liar, or he is telling the truth. There are not other options.
Today I would like to go further to verse ten of chapter fourteen. Jesus says, "Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father is in Me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on My own initiative, but the Father abiding in Me does His works. Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father is in Me; otherwise believe because of the works themselves.”

Again Jesus is saying he is “in” the Father and the Father is “in” him. The preposition “in” means that the lives and personalities of God the Father and of God the Son inter-penetrate one another and are one. They are one, because God is one. The New Testament says that the “fullness of God dwells in Jesus” (Colossians 1:19 and 2:9), and that Jesus is “God become flesh” (John 1:14). God has done this (becoming flesh) so that he can identify with us, so that we humans can perceive Him, and so that he can suffer and die and be raised for us.

Jesus goes on to make the extraordinary claim that what he says and does, he says and does not on his own authority, but because of the Father living in him who is at work in him. Then in verse eleven he says, “Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father is in Me; otherwise believe because of the works themselves.”

So Jesus is asking his disciples, men who had known him and observed him closely over a number of years, to believe his claim of oneness with the Father. But then he says, if you cannot believe just based on your relationship with me, then believe because of the works you see in me. I believe by his “works” we can assume Jesus is talking about two things: First of all, he is talking about the miracles and acts of kindness that he did. Secondly, he is talking about all of his teaching. 

If we look at Jesus’ miracles and other acts of kindness (like pardoning the woman who had been caught in adultery and was about to be stoned—[John 8:1-11]), we clearly see the power of God, the mercy of God, and the forgiveness of God.  Then if we look at Jesus’s teaching, we see the same thing. The Sermon on the Mount, the Lord’s Prayer, and many of his parables are incomparable. Gandhi, a Hindu, said “the Sermon on the Mount is the most sublime treatment of ethics the world has ever known.” When a teacher of such wondrous teaching teaches us that he is one with God and that his teaching is from God, we should take him seriously. When the doer of such acts of power and compassion tells us that he is from God and one with God, we may want to believe him because the alternatives are not credible.  


This column first appeared in the Pearland and Friendswood Reporter News. Rev. Winfield Casey Jones can be reached at wrjones2002@gmail.com.   

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Fear and Faith

Fear and Faith Even after years of being a Christian and reading the Bible, I am often amazed by things which Jesus says. The real Jesus breaks through the “imagined Jesus” I sometimes make up in my own mind.   Or as my British friend the Rev. Mike Endicott says, my own sometimes “out of focus (oof)” Jesus gets replaced by the real Jesus you and I find in the Bible. Take the issue of fear. As a pastor I have often said to people who report being afraid, “It’s natural and normal to be afraid. God understands.” (I do believe that God still loves us when we experience fear, but I now believe that He wants to free us from bondage to fear by replacing it with childlike trust in Him.) Let’s look at a couple of scriptures I have noticed lately. 1. In Luke 4:40 Jesus is asleep in a boat on the Sea of Galilee, accompanied by his disciples. Waves start to swamp the boat, and the terrified disciples wake him up. He then says to his disciples, “Why are you so afraid? Do you still hav
Read more
Something (Not Quite Simple) To Keep Reading and Keep Praying Luke 18:1-3, Jesus’ parable of the persistent widow, is interesting to me. In his one-verse introduction to the parable (18:1) Luke, the gospel writer, gives its meaning and the reason Jesus told it. He says, “Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show they that they should always pray and not give up.”   In the parable and in its further explanation, (verses 2-8) we encounter the cast of characters. There are only three. First there is a judge who does not fear God or care about people. Second there is a widow who persistently comes to the judge with the plea, “Grant me justice against my adversary.” The third character is the woman’s adversary, who owes her justice. Because he won’t act, she needs the judge to compel his action. We learn from Jesus that the judge, though he cares for nothing beyond himself, will eventually give the widow justice though he does not care for God or people. He will do this
Read more

Receiving and Using Jesus’s Power and Authority

(Note, [there wasn’t room for this note in the local paper]: I feel so inadequate to write on this topic, because there are many distortions and misuses of scripture’s teachings about truths like the authority of believers and healing. But the temptation often is, when a teaching is distorted or misused, to avoid this teaching altogether, and that is wrong.   Just because people sometimes counterfeit twenty-dollar bills I have not sworn off of them. In the same way we must teach what Jesus teaches us about authority and healing, even though these teachings are frequently distorted.)     I ended last week’s column this way: “When we become adopted children of God through faith in His Son…then I believe Jesus gives us as a community some of his own authority and power.” I continued, “Next week…I shall continue to discuss (from scripture) the kinds of authority which I believe Jesus has given to his people.” So this week, let’s dive again into the Bible in an unexpected place, Gen
Read more