The Gospel introduction to perhaps Jesus’ most pivotal prayer varies in other translations but agrees in the Lord’s focus on the moment:
“Father, the time has come.
“Father, the hour has come
The Lord Jesus spoke these four words to the Father of a specific time of fulfillment of God’s plan of grace – a plan from before time into a moment of completion on the Cross of Redemption.
Time and Eternity
First let us consider time itself.
We measure and divide our numbered days counting by millenia, century, year, season, month, week, day, night, hour, minute, second, instant even to a millisecond.
All time measured as a meter or mile, distinct with start and finish and definable to man, a creation of indefinite but comparable time on this earth.
Seasons and sundials only approximate time given to mortal man fading faintly into the shadow of death and disintegration.
We measure our mortal hours by digital devices, clocks ticking away, watches counting the seconds passing into that which will be long forgotten in generations to come.
Time
“Father, the time has come.
Glorify your Son, so that your Son may glorify you— just as you have given him authority over all humanity, so that he may give eternal life to everyone you have given him.
What does Jesus mean by this— the time or the hour has come?
The context is this: Jesus is with the Disciples alone, having just finished the Last Supper. Judas now departed and after this all will leave this night for Gethsemane.
John 16:31 Jesus responded to them, “Do you now believe?
32 Indeed, an hour is coming, and has come, when each of you will be scattered to his own home, and you will leave me alone. Yet I am not alone…
ὥρα – יוֹם – עֵת
Time – Specifically Hour from the Greek – a certain definite time or season fixed by natural law and returning with the revolving year.
Jesus points to this ‘certain definite time’ in a relational mortal sense. He may literally mean an ‘hour’ as this definite time, point of time, moment in which He and the Eleven must move on to His surrender to to sacrifice in Gethsemane. (It is now such and such an hour.)
Jesus, alone with the Father and the Eleven, knows that His time is come.
In a larger, immortal and timeless sense, His time has also come for completion of the redemption God planned for sinners before even the first sin of Adam.
Time from the Hebrew is: time (of an event), time (usual). experiences, fortunes, occurrence, occasion; however it can also point beyond the measurable timeline of history to perpetuity, for ever, continuing future, as well as ancient (of past time), for ever (of future time). Time may refer eternally of continuous existence and for ever (of God’s existence).
From נָצַח (H5329) – נֶצַח
From a root meaning preeminent, perpetual, an overseer; the Hebrew understanding of eternal time suggests:
O LORD, You are my God;
I will exalt You, I will give thanks to Your name;
For You have worked wonders,
Plans formed long ago, with perfect faithfulness.
The LORD of hosts will prepare a lavish banquet for all
peoples on this mountain;
A banquet of aged wine, choice pieces with marrow,
And refined, aged wine.
And on this mountain He will swallow up the covering which is over all peoples, Even the veil which is stretched over all nations.
He will swallow up death for all time, And the Lord GOD will wipe tears away from all faces, And He will remove the reproach of His people from all the earth; For the LORD has spoken.
And it will be said in that day, “Behold, this is our God for whom we have waited that He might save us. This is the LORD for whom we have waited; Let us rejoice and be glad in His salvation.”
When Jesus had finished saying these things, he looked upward to heaven and said,
“Father, the time has come.
Glorify your Son, so that your Son may glorify you— 2 just as you have given him authority over all humanity, so that he may give eternal life to everyone you have given him.
The Lord Jesus does NOT instruct followers to ‘love the world’ (as God so loved-the world…), but HIS first NEW commandment is to LOVE ONE ANOTHER.
Jesus asks the Apostles who have been together for three years as a church, iterate followers in community with and taught by the Lord Jesus, to love one another.
We know from story after story how competitive His Disciples are, but now that Jesus will return to the Father His command is that they MUST love each other.
Church
Previously we examined the possibility of who Jesus commanded in:
We may also point ahead to more obvious application of his warning to the church of these last days.
Have you ever really met the ‘christians’ who come to your church?
It’s really difficult in this impersonal 21st century #social environment!
Our relationship to others of the Church pales by comparison to the close personal relationships of the Apostles to each other or even that of the saints of the first century church. Yet have we, the church’ possibly missed a relational community commanded by the Lord Jesus?
Let’s first look to a definition of church and scriptural application.
from ek, “out of,” and klesis, “a calling” (kaleo, “to call”), was used among the Greeks of a body of citizens “gathered” to discuss the affairs of State, Act 19:39. In the Sept. it is used to designate the “gathering” of Israel, summoned for any definite purpose, or a “gathering” regarded as representative of the whole nation. In Act 7:38 it is used of Israel; in 19:32, 41, of a riotous mob. It has two applications to companies of Christians, (a) to the whole company of the redeemed throughout the present era, the company of which Christ said, “I will build My Church,” Mat 16:18, and which is further described as “the Church which is His Body,” Eph 1:22; 5:23,
(b) in the singular number (e.g., Mat 18:17, RV marg., “congregation”), to a company consisting of professed believers, e.g., Act 20:28; 1Cr 1:2; Gal 1:13; 1Th 1:1; 2Th 1:1; 1Ti 3:5, and in the plural, with reference to churches in a district.
Since “It has two applications to companies of Christians, it’s worth restating from this definition of church:
(a) to the whole company of the redeemed throughout the present era, the company of which Christ said, “I will build My Church,”Mat 16:18, and which is further described as “the Church which is His Body,”Eph 1:22; 5:23,
(b) in the singular number (e.g., Mat 18:17, RV marg., “congregation“), to a company consisting of professed believers, e.g., Act 20:28; 1Cr 1:2; Gal 1:13; 1Th 1:1; 2Th 1:1; 1Ti 3:5
Church briefly defined then is:
ALL of the CHURCH, every true follower of Jesus, Master and Teacher of the Church.
EACH true believer joined to the CHURCH personally, relationally, locally and beyond all measure of both distance and time.
This is the Church which the Lord Jesus commands by saying, “Love one another, as I have loved you.”
We are called to Him, therefore we are called into relationship with Jesus AND His church.
And we are called out – to take His love, visible to seekers of the Lord in His Body the Church, the Personal Love of Jesus in the Holy Spirit by which He builds us into His eternal love.
A New Commandment
John’s Gospel builds the case of Jesus’ Authority, questioned by the Jews to whom He was sent.
Before addressing Jesus’ New Commandment given to the Disciples just after the last supper, take a brief look at His explanation about His obedience to God the Father.
A Chain of Command from the Father
John 10 & 12:
“I am the good shepherd, and I know My own and My own know Me…
… they will hear My voice; and they will become one flock with one shepherd.
… the Father loves Me, because I lay down My life so that I may take it again…
I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This commandment I received from My Father.”
excerpt John 10 NASB
And Jesus cried out and said, “He who believes in Me, does not believe in Me but in Him who sent Me. He who sees Me sees the One who sent Me.
John 12:44-45 NASB
49 “For I did not speak on My own initiative, but the Father Himself who sent Me has given Me a commandment as to what to say and what to speak.
50 “I know that His commandment is eternal life; therefore the things I speak, I speak just as the Father has told Me.”
John’s Gospel has already set the scene for Jesus’ New Commandment. Let the church hear what our Master and Teacher Christ Jesus says to the church.
By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
John 13:34 CSB
Beloved believer, does everyone know that Christ Jesus is your Teacher and friend? Does the world see your Lord and Savior by your love for one another of His Church?
Are you truly, my fellow saint, a disciple of Jesus?
Do you and Christ’s Church love one another?(And remember, they know us by our love of one another or deny Christ by our lack of love for each other).
“Do not let your heart be troubled; believe in God, believe also in Me.
6 Jesus told him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you know me, you will also know my Father. From now on you do know him and have seen him.”
10 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…
“If you love Me, you will keep My commandments.
John 14:15 NASB
The Spirit of Obedience
Witness by the Holy Spirit of the LORD
Recall that John’s Good News of Jesus Christ, the Apostle’s Gospel of witness begins before time:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
2 The same was in the beginning with God.
The Apostle John was first a young disciple of John the Baptist, known to many as a Prophet of God. John witnesses:
32 John testified saying, “I have seen the Spirit descending as a dove out of heaven, and He remained upon Him. I did not recognize Him, but He who sent me to baptize in water said to me, ‘He upon whom you see the Spirit descending and remaining upon Him, this is the One who baptizes in the Holy Spirit.’
34 I myself have seen, and have testified that this is the Son of God.”
John also opens his Gospel testifying to the Authority of Jesus through the same Holy Spirit of the Lord God.
Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.
34 For He whom God has sent speaks the words of God; for He gives the Spirit without measure.
35 The Father loves the Son and has given all things into His hand. He who believes in the Son has eternal life; but he who does not obey the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him.”
Do you hear the Spirit of Truth?
“… but he who does not obey the Son will not see life!…
Do you, beloved disciple of the risen Lord Jesus recall this?
Do we, HIS CHURCH, have ears to hear Christ’s commandment to the Church – “Love one another, as I have loved you:” is this not for us?
Verily, verily, you may know is a Hebrew tool of emphasis by saying something twice, here meaning truly, truly. The youngest of Jesus’ Jewish Apostles now emphasizes the strong personal relationship of our Lord’s NEW COMMANDMENT a third time.
Here was John recalling this most important time preceding Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection. Do you recall the intimicy of this setting in the upper room?
John 13:
So when He had washed their feet, and taken His garments and reclined at the table again, He said to them, “Do you know what I have done to you?
“You call Me Teacher and Lord; and you are right, for so I am…
“Truly, truly, I say to you, a slave is not greater than his master, nor is one who is sent greater than the one who sent him.
John 13:16 NASB
There was reclining on Jesus’ bosom one of His disciples, whom Jesus loved… He, leaning back thus on Jesus’ bosom, said to Him, “Lord, who is it?”
This is the Apostle John, youngest of the Lord’s young Disciples, laying at Jesus’ breast as they all reclined at table. Consider what John means to have recalled Jesus’ emphasis on a New Commandment to love one another.
THE KING OF THE JEWS is about to become the SACRIFICE for sin on a Cross in Jerusalem!
Prophesy of Isaiah
Therefore, hear the word of the LORD, O scoffers, Who rule this people who are in Jerusalem…
Therefore thus says the Lord GOD, “Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone, a tested stone, A costly cornerstone for the foundation, firmly placed. He who believes in it will not be disturbed.
And Jesus said of the church:
… upon this rock I will build My church; and the gates of Hades will not overpower it.
Jesus, of Simon Son of John, who the Lord then called ‘Peter’ or ‘the rock’ – Matthew 16:18b
In the intimacy of an upper room meal with the Lord Jesus, who had washed the Disciples feet, it was Simon Peter who motioned to John to ask Jesus who His betrayer would be. Judas departs then the Lord COMMANDS three times that they must LOVE ONE ANOTHER.
This is My Command
12 “This is my command: Love one another as I have loved you.
13 No one has greater love than this: to lay down his life for his friends.
14 You are my friends if you do what I command you…
Are you, beloved, a friend of the Lord Jesus? And do you, fellow disciple, love one another – His Church?
“This is what I command you: Love one another. “If the world hates you, understand that it hated me before it hated you.
Comman and encouragement of the Lord Jesus – John 15:17-18 CW
‘He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.’
The Revelation of Jesus Christ to John (numerous times)
Life has not been progressing even remotely how we had planned.
Here we are locked up as if in the prison of death. All normal life interrupted by events of recent days. Yet what next — what now?
For the church in the year of our Lord, 2020 of these last days, it was Easter we could not celebrate in our familiar gathering of all who believe (as well as some who would like to hope in something other than death).
In the first century, this waiting by the Apostle Thomas to see Jesus once more was somewhat different. For the other Disciples had given reliable first-hand witness of the Good News of the resurrection of the Messiah Jesus, their friend and Lord!
Many of us have recently taken an entire day to worship the Lord Jesus on Resurrection Sunday or Easter Sunday.
We have watched (even online) a sermon entirely dedicated to the Gospel of Jesus Christ being raised by God the Father from the tomb after His Sacrifice — His real and human suffering in the flesh –His sacrificial spilling of His Blood on the Cross for our sins.
He IS risen indeed!
Yet what now? What in this long time of waiting will happen next? God only knows.
And what, for Christ’s sake (yes, for the Messiah’s sake), must we do?
My own study of the Gospel of John in the year of our Lord, 2020, has reached briefly into the doubting thoughts of all concerning death and what does follow.
Today is the eighth day since Thomas received the reliable Good News that Jesus had appeared to the other Disciples after DEATH.
The Apostle Thomas must have greatly anticipated the time (whenever it might finally come) to witness the risen Lord Jesus in person. (Most of us know the story already mentioned from the Gospel of John.)
It’s just been eight days of the fifty days during which the risen Lord Jesus bodily appears at various times to more than 500 witnesses. For Thomas, just about six more weeks to once again personally see and hear the Lord, the Son of Man risen from the grave.
If you follow talkofJesus.comdid eight days seem like a long wait after the rapidity of the events leading up to the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Jesus?
And if you’re anything like me (and likely Thomas) even eight days, thirty or forty days must seem like an eternity. Remember, it is not.
Today we take not the liturgical path leading to Pentecost, the chronological path of detailed witness of the Apostles, nor do we simply return to what we did before, recognizing that things have changed since we planned our year.
Like Thomas and the Disciples, we did not come to this day anticipating it to be any different than the last three years.
Life changed for the Apostles once Jesus rose from death.
And now life changes for the 21st century church caught in a diaspora of faith and witness.
All seems lost for the Lord’s chosen Disciples once Jerusalem’s religious authorities and powerful Roman governor crucify the Messiah Jesus. Even those who had believed, been healed and followed Jesus to Jerusalem’s gates were left in despair. But then prophecy is fulfilled.
The Sacrificial Lamb for our sin completes that for which the Son of Man was sent by God the Father.
Jesus IS risen!
After instructing the Disciples to take the Gospel into all the world, He ascends into the heavens from which He came. He will return once again in glory at the end of the age!
Those same men who sought to preserve their own flesh by cowering behind locked doors now boldly witness the risen Lord Jesus in the public place.
All the Apostles would eventually be martyred for their witness of Jesus Christ, except John (though he would be tortured and exiled). For now and until their earthly deaths the Apostles’ witness and preaching, emboldened by the Spirit of God, convicted sinners and attracted believers by faith in the Lord Jesus.
Peter and the Apostles, filled with the Holy Spirit of the Lord God, preach to the crowds in the Jerusalem!
The crowds are amazed, then Peter directs his preaching directly to the Jews, a remnant of faithful Jews recognizing the fulfillment of prophecy in what they have just witnessed.
Acts 2:
‘In the last days,’ God says, ‘I will pour out my Spirit upon all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy.
Take now to heart, fellow 21st c. believer, that which Peter preached to those who had not seen the Lord raised from death on the Cross.
Most had not been among the more than five hundred to witness the risen Christ Jesus, before His ascension on Pentecost just a few days prior to Peter’s preaching.
23 But God knew what would happen, and his prearranged plan was carried out when Jesus was betrayed. With the help of lawless Gentiles, you nailed him to a cross and killed him. 24 But God released him from the horrors of death and raised him back to life, for death could not keep him in its grip.
Isolated, then sent out
Do you suppose that the locked doors of your church surprise God?
Could the Lord have a purpose in all of this — a purpose central to the Gospel of Jesus Christ crucified, buried, risen and returning again in glory?
Of course God knew it! – the Lord God knows everything that has happened and will happen, even those unseen things which require our faith and glorious things beyond our grasp.
Peter now recognizes this through the Holy Spirit of God, the same Holy Spirit he witnessed in Christ Jesus our Lord.
God the Father and the Son of Man are ONE in the Same with the Holy Spirit!
And Peter preaches the GOOD NEWS with anointed confidence to those with ears to hear.
Son of David, Son of God!
31 David was looking into the future and speaking of the Messiah’s resurrection. He was saying that God would not leave him among the dead or allow his body to rot in the grave.
“God raised Jesus from the dead, and we are all witnesses of this.
33 Now he is exalted to the place of highest honor in heaven, at God’s right hand. And the Father, as he had promised, gave him the Holy Spirit to pour out upon us, just as you see and hear today.
34 For David himself never ascended into heaven, yet he said,
‘The Lord said to my Lord, “Sit in the place of honor at my right hand until I humble your enemies, making them a footstool under your feet.”’
36 “So let everyone in Israel know for certain that God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, to be both Lord and Messiah!”
37 Peter’s words pierced their hearts…
His words pierced their hearts
Do they pierce yours?
Does the Gospel of Christ Jesus, sent to save sinners from death ring out to the crowds beyond the locked doors of a church building where once you gathered?
A response of faith
… and they said to him and to the other apostles, “Brothers, what should we do?”
What must we do?
If now the Holy Spirit finally pierces our own tech-brittled 21st century hearts, what is our response while we wait for the LORD’s return?
Or even our response in this brief time before our own inevitable DEATH?
For like this time of waiting for the Apostles, this life will no longer be the same for you and me.
A former perspective of Church
We have put on our ‘Sunday best’ for Easter for all these years. And we call ourselves, “Christian.”(Always from within the walls of our ‘church,’ and occasionally even in this world where we live, work and play.)
What witness of Jesus yet resounds in the hearts of those who hear us claim — the Holy Name of the Lord?
For they no longer may enter the building of our gathering, the place to which we once gladly invited:
“Let’s go to church.“
It seems that everything has changed and our vision for the church building no longer applies.
Could a prosperous and comfortable church of these recent centuries have wandered aimlessly into a by-path meadow? It has remained an enduring challenge to the church.
May God’s Grace preserve you from straying into Bypath Meadow!
The man who professes to be a Christian must not expect God’s angels to keep him if he goes in the way of worldliness. There are hundreds, and I fear thousands, of church members who say that they are the people of God, yet they appear to live entirely to this world. The great aim is moneymaking and personal aggrandizement—just as much as it is the aim of altogether ungodly men.
The Acts of the Apostles witnesses the boldness of the early church even in the face of DEATH for their confidence and love in Christ.
Unbeliever you know in this 21st century world of chaos look near and far for an example of men and women who exemplify the ‘god’ we claim by the witness of our lives.
We tell some that Jesus died on a Cross for our sins.
While our witness makes them wonder of YOU ‘so love the world’ that YOU would die for THEM.
‘Where is the Christian who does not fear death,’ they ask?
Yet when some agendized so-called ‘christians’ act boldly in ways repugnant to their own ideals, good-seeking souls of this world ask,
‘Why would I want to be a fool like THEM?’
IF GOD SO LOVED THE WORLD, WHY DON’T I SEE IT IN CHRISTIANS?
THEY are after our money to build their grand cathedrals of prosperous vanity.
How are their corporate jets any different than those of the world’s great philanthropists who would save our world for another generation?
Are these so-called ‘christians’ banned from their big gatherings any better than the man isolated in a cave or on a mountaintop?
Really, are Christians any different than me?
Fair questions of the world to any who claim faith.
In our witness they observe a discrepancy between claim of Christ and our inability to differentiate between you and the world, because of Christ.
Assuming God (against Whom the world rebels), how must those obedient to the Lord act when the world seemingly slips rapidly back into the chaos preceding creation?
Fortunately, scripture provides not only answers, but also direction. For we are SINNERS LIKE THEM seeking justice, yet offering solace in LIFE after DEATH.
Are you the Christian who fears not DEATH (yet is no fool)?
Proverbs & Prophecy
When the wicked die, their hopes die with them, for they rely on their own feeble strength.
We find that those who do not believe may well accept the comfort of Scripture as hope for their own future. Proverbial advice, however, need not come exclusively from scripture.
Others may have it right as well, so our random words of wisdom from scripture may make no more difference than those from a worshiper of stone living in the lies of idolatry. The Lord our God is One!
The Prophet Isaiah, who we so often quote concerning the Messiah of God also promises a glorious future:
Behold, a king will reign righteously…
No longer will the fool be called noble, Or the rogue be spoken of as generous.
For a fool speaks nonsense, And his heart inclines toward wickedness: To practice ungodliness and to speak error against the LORD, To keep the hungry person unsatisfied And to withhold drink from the thirsty.
33 Little children, I am with you a little while longer. You will seek Me; and as I said to the Jews, now I also say to you, ‘Where I am going, you cannot come.’
“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another.
35 By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.”
Does the church obey this new commandment of Jesus?
IF YOU HAVE LOVE FOR ONE ANOTHER…
Is this not the witness of Christ which builds His CHURCH — soul by sinful redeemed soul?
Has the world not seen our white-washed building without seeing Christ?
“Go into all the world,” the Lord commanded the disciples. Yet Jesus never suggested that we bring all of the world into our building of worship.
Let your hearts, imprisoned in cells away from each other, hear what the Lord through Scripture says to the Church.
For when once more we gather together, to ask the Lord’s blessing, perhaps those wandering lost souls of our neighbors will see that Christ’s Church is in fact, us.
Amen.
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