Testimonies and Glory

I went back this morning and reread the last half of the passage I have been contemplating for several months now to better see how it all fits together and look for more clues. There is still so much I am overlooking and I am loathe to move on before flushing out a few more life-changing principles or truths that can apply to my life.

Lately I have been thinking about this word glory and how much I have misunderstood what it really means most of my life. I am still trying to better grasp its true meaning and significance more clearly. Some of the things I see this morning are helping me to better understand this concept and how it is embedded into all the other facets of this passage as well as how it affects our lives. I see more patterns and connections that help to explain each other after carefully analyzing many of them individually.

There are several key words that seem very tightly linked to each other from this perspective. In John 5:44 Jesus says we receive glory from one another but do not seek the glory that comes from God. Immediately previous to that He just said that He Himself had not been received. So glory must be very closely associated with receiving Jesus personally.

As I look at the bigger picture in this passage it looks to me like the purpose of all the testimonies mentioned here is to attract people to seek this glory, to believe in both God and in Jesus based on the evidence presented in all these testimonies. To believe implies that there is something specific to believe as well as the existence of something that is contradicting those testimonies. There is little need of a testimony unless there is something or someone challenging the truth to start with. But clearly, Jesus is coming from the context in this passage of confronting a mass of disinformation about God and He is delineating a number of reliable sources that offer supporting testimonies about what is really true about God.

Once testimonies have been heard, the choice is unavoidable that those hearing the testimonies must make a decision as to what and who they will believe. Our problem, just as it was with these Jews, is that our immersion in religion has led us to believe that we already have the truth and anything that contradicts what we already believe must be false. Since Jesus' teachings and relationships with sinners flew in the face of common belief about how God was thought to feel about sinners and religious people, the Jews of His day found it very difficult to reconcile the life and disposition of Jesus with their deeply entrenched ideas about what God was like. And we are no different today.

When Jesus said that His works themselves were a testimony that the Father had sent Him, He was in essence saying that the way He related to people in His actions and disposition was an accurate reflection of how the Father related to them as well. Many today find an enormous tension between what they believe is the stern, harsh God of the Old Testament with the kind, humble, compassionate Jesus seen in the New Testament. Some even go to the point of overlooking the vast evidence of kindness revealed in the life of Jesus and almost exclusively focus on what they think they see in the few times that He confronted the Pharisees and leaders, like during the cleansing of the temple. They seek to project their assumptions about an angry God into such events in Jesus' life and read into some stories things that are not necessarily there.

What does it mean to seek the glory that is from the one and only God? From what I can see in this context it means several things.

In verse 43 it means to receive Jesus.

In verse 40 it means to come to Jesus that we may have life.

In verses 38-39 it means not mistaking a thorough knowledge of Scriptures as a substitute for knowing personally the Christ that is talked about all through those writings. It implies that the Scriptures need to do more than just fill our left brains. It means that the very word of God must reside in our hearts in order to bring into our lives the things that we learn and read about in Scripture.

In verse 36 it means making the life of Christ the first and foremost filter through which anything and everything else we hear or read about, the criteria which we use to perceive what God is really like. This includes the testimonies of the prophets along with all the history of God's dealings with His people as recorded for our benefit.

Verse 24 seems to sum it all up. To seek and receive the glory that only comes from God, we must hear the word of Jesus, believe the real truth about the Father who sent Him and thus enter into eternal life. By doing so we do not come into judgment but pass from death into life.

Failure to do this results in internal feelings of condemnation and accusation. When Jesus said that He would not be the one accusing these Jews before the Father in verse 45, He was implying that they were going to feel accused because of their unwillingness to believe the real truth about God and receive His glory in all the above ways mentioned. They claimed to believe the Scriptures, they claimed to follow the instructions of Moses their hero, but in reality they had such skewed pictures of God that in reality they didn't really perceive the underlying truths in his writings and the spirit that filled the life of Moses.

What they did not realize was the inevitable conflict that they would encounter when true judgment exposed their faulty views of God. Externally following the letter of Moses' laws had done little to transform their hearts. Their harsh, dark views of God prevented them from perceiving the true picture of God that Moses experienced in his own relationship with God. Because of this, when the real truth about God's love and compassion and mercy and the real truth about His justice and the way He really feels about sinners became evident to them in the life and teachings of Jesus, they felt that it was Jesus who was the one in the wrong instead of them. They felt that Jesus' ideas about what God was like were heresy and dangerous and even blasphemy.

The same is always true. When we cling to our dark views of God as either a stern judge or a wimpy, wishy-washy fickle Father who indulges us in any way we want and allows us to live apart from His principles without consequences, either of these belief systems will bring us face to face with feelings of condemnation when the real truth about God's mercy and justice come into view. We may think that we are being unjustly accused, that God is unfair with us, that we have been mistreated. But all of these beliefs are simply more evidence that we have been unwilling to seek the real truth, the authentic glory that only comes from an intimate knowledge of the one and only source of real life, the God who sent His Son, not to condemn the world but to save it by revealing the truth about what God is really like.

Far too often we think that salvation is all about making us good enough to go to heaven. Our notions of religion revolve around behavior and external issues of right and wrong and about rules and infractions of laws. But the real issue in this controversy we are caught up in between Christ and Satan is not about whether sinners can get to heaven or not, but is totally about what each of us are going to believe about what God is like. God has been lied about, slandered, maligned and misrepresented to the max. The judgment is all about vindicating God's reputation, not about determining how good or bad we might be. Humanity is only participating in this judgment as witnesses, not the ones who are on trial. Understanding this is vital to appreciating how we fit into this picture. Otherwise we come up with weird notions of what is going on and all sorts of crazy religions and cults develop as a consequence.

The core issue in this trial is the glory of God. His character has been seriously called into question by the greatest prosecutor ever to exist. God has chosen to never seek to vindicate Himself, for to do so would be to violate the very principles He instituted in justice. When someone seeks to justify themselves, to vindicate themselves before others, they immediately come under suspicion and their testimony is doubted because it appears that their self-vindication is evidence of selfishness and self-protection in their heart. It is assumed that anyone who tries to vindicate themselves is likely trying to cover up the real truth by masking all evidence that might indict or incriminate them.

So for someone to be properly vindicated they have to have outside testimony to corroborate their innocence. That is why Jesus stated in verse 31 that if He alone testified about Himself that His testimony would not be true (or valid). Does this mean that in so doing He would be lying about Himself? Not really. It just explains the principle that vindication can only happen through the testimonies of outside witnesses.

All of us are called to testify in God's trial. We will either be exposed as false witnesses or we will bear truthful testimonies about God's claims as to His real character and how He has dealt with us in our own lives.

In verse 42 Jesus makes a very important statement about witnesses. If the witness does not have the love of God in them, then they are not reflecting the real truth about the very essence of who God is. As such they will be exposed as false witnesses because the testimony they give about what God is like is something other than love. God is love. If my life or beliefs contradict that fundamental fact, then to that extent I am still bearing false witness against God.

A false witness feels defensive because their testimony is in conflict with what God says about Himself and what all the other truthful witnesses say about Him. In that position that witness starts to feel accused and condemned. They feel like it is God condemning them because their testimony disagrees with His. But in reality it is their own heart that is condemning them and that very condemnation becomes the fuel that will torture them in the end when truth is finally and fully revealed in the final Judgment.

The glory of God is in essence the identity of God, the truth about His character and His dealings with all His created beings. So to seek the glory that comes from God is to seek the truth about Him and as a result to come to reflect that truth in our own lives. The way I come to reflect His character is to let go of all my resistance to His love and to believe what He and all truthful witnesses are saying about Him. As I do that my life will become more and more free of condemnation and feelings of guilt as I become more aligned with His character and as His presence within me transforms me more and more into His image.