Another Cave Full of Riches

...I honor My Father, and you dishonor Me.

I do not seek My glory;

there is One who seeks and judges. (John 8:49-50)

Once again I sense that there is a goldmine of insights not far beneath the surface of these words of Jesus. There are parallels and contrasts here that are typically seen in a passage door that leads into rooms full of exciting concepts and convicting truths similar to this everywhere throughout the Bible. Learning to pay attention to these kinds of doors and learning to open them has become more rewarding since I have been using inductive study over the past few years.

I almost never know what is going to emerge when I come across these sorts of doorways, but I always get excited because going through these passageways and exploring the amazing beauties hidden away in the caves below is almost always awe-inspiring. After awhile one begins to anticipate such discoveries with more excitement because the Word of God really is powerful and life-giving. And for me, I have found that writing is a way of finding my way through the doorway and in the process of writing I can better listen to the promptings that come to my spirit as to which way I may need to turn as I ponder each element I encounter.

It is always very exciting to have such an encounter by exploring a passage with others through an inductive study of the Word, but of course that requires that you have friends interested and willing to invest the time to do it together. But so far I have not come across anyone over the past few years interested enough to invest that time to go on these journeys with me, so I have to remain content to travel these expeditions alone for now.

As I have been noticing recently, the surrounding passage has a great deal to do with the concept of fatherhood, who is one's real father and the effects of that in the life. These words are Jesus' response to an open insult against Him accusing Him of having a demon. His protagonists were becoming extremely uncomfortable with Jesus' statements about Himself and the way His words were exposing their own hypocrisy and empty religion. But instead of listening with an open mind and allowing His words to convict their hearts to repentance, they chose to resist His truth and become defensive. Whenever that happens a convicted one almost always go on the attack to discredit and silence anyone who is viewed as a threat to the status quo, who is undermining their comfort zone and the established system in place.

But Jesus is never deviated from speaking truth. He cannot be diverted by intimidation into compromising with self-serving systems designed to prop up counterfeits to God's government. Jesus is the Son of God and God is love. Therefore, everything Jesus spoke was in love but was also clear truth which at times caused those resistant to His love to be anything but loving. When love is resisted that resistance itself distorts the view of reality and causes one to interpret the motives of others as reflective of their own selfishness. Bitterness, antagonism, resentment and finally hatred and violence are always the result of resisting truth and love. This passage is a classic example of this sequence.

I notice the positives and negatives that line up in these verses that help to amplify each other.

I honor my Father. He is the One who seeks and judges. I am not trying to brag about this to get glory but to demonstrate the kind of attitude that all who live in true reality will have – selfless love and interest in others and especially interest in bringing honor to the Father.

You dishonor me, which is symptomatic of all who operate in the counterfeit system of reality. Those in false religion always tend to seek their own glory, but I do not do that. My focus is on attracting attention to the goodness and love of my Father.

The word seek in this last verse is reflective of the idea of worship. When we seek to attract honor for ourself we are in essence both indulging in self-worship and trying to attract worship away from others. Jesus clearly stated that He was not doing that but was pointing everyone to the worship of God.

In addition, Jesus points out here that God is a seeker. Does that mean that He worships others? Well, that should not be completely ignored, and we can look at it by examining carefully the different nuances and real meanings of the word worship. One meaning of worship is who we look to for receiving life. And no, God is not looking to any other source to receive life for He Himself is the only source of life there is. But He is seeking to attract the affections of His created beings to Himself, we who are designed to thrive on receiving and giving love. In this sense He is seeking every one of us, seeking to change our minds about Him and to enlighten our hearts to be willing to reconnect with His heart so that we can begin to experience abundant life.

God is also the only real Judge. In its true meaning the concept of judgment is simply to expose what really is but what has been hidden from public view. God is certainly not in the condemning business and we must be very careful not to allow any notions about condemnation to seep into our feelings about this word in this context, but in the true sense He certainly can expose what is hidden.

I am starting to notice strong parallels to many ideas in this chapter with what I found in chapter seven. There are many linked passages that compliment and explain each other and I want to take some time later to look for some of these links and see what comes out of that study that will bring even more light to my mind and clearer understanding of what Jesus said in these passages.