Intermediary or Revelator

For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. (John 3:16)

I am now looking at the center of one of the reasons that I am studying the book of John. For all of my life and for many around me this verse has been so memorized and quoted that it has caused many people to become calloused to its real meaning. I determined several years ago to confront this problem, at least in my own life, by spending much time in inductive Bible study to explore more thoroughly the surrounding context of this verse in order to revive the true power contained in these words. Part of that necessarily involved becoming much more deeply acquainted with everything that surrounds and supports this verse so that it is not left isolated as just a religious icon or relic.

As I spend time pondering, questioning, probing, praying and listening for ideas and inspirations from this passage I am feeling more connected with some of what is present here. But I still want much more heart-understanding and involvement in really knowing God, in believing in God the way that Jesus intended for us when He first spoke these words to Nicodemus. So I continue to probe and explore and question and seek to see and experience God's face in these verses and to feel more intently His presence in my own heart and mind.

One thing that drew my attention this morning is something that may potentially raise hackles in some people's minds but that I find helpful and enlightening. It is carefully examining the identity of the pronouns in this verse and pondering the implications of alternatives. This method exploded my understanding of the parable of the debtor in Matthew 18 and turned the typical interpretations about that story completely on their heads. Now I see something along the same line in this verse for the first time.

To me it now seems more evident that the real subject of this verse is God the Father. If this is so – and it seems rather apparent at this point – then it also would follow that the Him that is used later in the verse is referring to the Father quite more so than to the Son, although it does not exclude the Son. In other words, Jesus is telling me that I need to not only believe in the Son of God who was lifted up on the cross to reveal the truth about His Father as mentioned in the last two verses, but that I need to go all the way and really believe in the Father Himself – whatever that involves. This core belief that needs to become pervasive in my heart and mind will itself become the passport and protection that I need in order to not perish when I face the full revelation of God's glory in the Judgment.

That means that every one of the pronouns in this verse refer primarily to the Father. It is God the Father who gave His Son to this world as a gift. It is God the Father who I am to believe in so that I shall not perish. It is believing in God the Father who did not send His Son into the world to judge the world (v. 17) and it is believing in both the Son and the Father that keeps me from being judged or condemned (v. 18).

Yes, it is clear in verse 17 that the world is saved through the Son. But I am reminded that the primary purpose of the Son was to reveal the truth about God the Father, not to present an alternative to Him. This subtle but very destructive idea of a difference between the Father and the Son that has crept into and infiltrated all of Christianity – and every other religion for that matter in to some extent – that the Father God is less loving and more dangerous than the Son of God is a pure invention of the accuser of God, Satan himself. It is a most pernicious evil and a diabolical idea that has caused us to distort nearly every doctrine that we hold about God and about religion. It has kept my own heart in chains of fear for all of my life and I am only recently learning the truth about how God feels about me. As my heart perceives this truth more clearly I am seeing that truth seep into the various places where this lie has distorted my ideas about religion and about all of reality.

Due to the massive distortions in the Dark Ages of the original beliefs and messages about God that the early church enjoyed, we now find ourselves in our day deeply immersed in many false assumptions about God that we don't even question because we don't know there is anything wrong with them. Religion has hijacked doctrines and supplanted a true perception and knowledge of God with many false but very subtle ideas that sound correct, righteous and logical and that permeates nearly everything we believe. It has only been in the last few years that I even became aware of this situation and have been forced ever since to challenge everything I believe up to this point in the light of fresh revelations about the real truth about the Father.

Jesus was not sent to this earth as a sweeter God than the Father in order to form some kind of intermediary go-between to set up an arrangement for us to be saved in heaven while appeasing an angry Father so we can live closer to Him. But that very essence of thought is what fills the minds and hearts and beliefs of most Christians today. I have been discovering that this lie about the Father has kept my own heart at a great distance from Him until it was unmasked and shown to be the lie that it really is a few years ago. Ever since then I have been on a journey of seeking to know the real truth about God and even more importantly to have that truth transform my own heart, attitude, disposition and spirit as well as to reshape and reform my intellectual concepts about what is true and what is false.

So as I learn more about what is really meant by Jesus' many comments about believing, I am also prompted to challenge my own beliefs about the Father as well as about Jesus Himself. Because again, the main purpose that I now see for Jesus coming to this earth in the first place was to radically challenge our assumptions about God and how we think He feels toward us and how He relates to us. It was because of the millions of lies about God that had saturated religion in Jesus' day that God sent His Son into the world to expose and shatter those lies and paradigms. But Satan has used religion yet again to accomplish very similar results by distorting very revelation of God in Christ that was meant to undo those lies. So once again there is great need of a reforming of our opinions and ideas about what God is like, our beliefs about both the Father and the Son this time.