from Desiring God -Jan,2011
Videourile Vodpod nu mai sunt disponibile.The question I will try to answer from this text is: What is the common root that gives rise to such very different forms of unbelief in the brothers of Jesus, on the one hand, and in the Jewish crowds, on the other hand? I think this is exactly the question that the apostle John wants me to ask. I think he throws this question right in our face in verses 3–5, especially verse 5. He intentionally shocks us by telling us that Jesus’ brothers do not believe in him. And he shocks us even more by telling us what their unbelief looks like.
The Surprising Unbelief of Jesus’ Brothers
Jesus’ brothers are very excited about his miracles. They have seen some of them, and they want other people to see them as well. So they say to Jesus in verses 3–5,
“Leave here and go to Judea, that your disciples also may see the works you are doing. For no one works in secret if he seeks to be known openly. If you do these things, show yourself to the world.” 5 For not even his brothers believed in him.
Here’s the double shock: Jesus’ own brothers did not believe in him! This is James and Joseph and Simon and Judas (not Iscariot), mentioned in Matthew 13:55. His brother James would be one of the leaders of the church in Jerusalem (Acts 15), and would write one of the books of the New Testament. The apostle John knows all this. He knows James became a great believer and leader in the church. So he knows this is shocking.
A Window into the Nature of Unbelief
But he is not aiming merely to shock. He is aiming to teach about unbelief. So he shocks us again and tells us that what James’ unbelief produces is a certain kind of excitement about Jesus’ miracles. Notice carefully the connection between their unbelief in verse 5 and their excitement in verses 3–4: “Leave here and go to Judea, that your disciples also may see the works you are doing. For no one works in secret if he seeks to be known openly. If you do these things, show yourself to the world.” And why did they want Jesus to seek to be known openly and show himself as a miracle worker to the world? Verse 5: “Because not even his brothers believed in him.”
Now this is doubly shocking. If it had said, “We don’t think you can do these miracles; we think it’s all smoke and mirrors; we don’t want to be associated with you; we are embarrassed by what you are doing”—if they had said that, we would understand if Jesus said that they said it because they don’t believe. But they believe in his miracles. They believe he can do these things. They are amazed. They love it, and they want him to make an appearance in Jerusalem to win more amazed followers. And Jesus says that this comes from unbelief.
The Other Unbelief: The Jewish Crowds
So that’s one kind of unbelief in this text. The other kind seems to be almost the opposite. Many of the Jewish people in Jerusalem are not excited by Jesus’ miracles. They are threatened by them, and want to see him dead. Verse 1: “He would not go about in Judea, because the Jews were seeking to kill him.” And verse 19: “Has not Moses given you the law? Yet none of you keeps the law. Why do you seek to kill me?” In response, they say he has a demon. Verse 20: The crowd answered, “You have a demon! Who is seeking to kill you?”
Jesus says that their animosity comes from the miracle that he did back in chapter 5 when he healed the man who had been paralyzed for 38 years (John 5:5–9). He had healed him on the Sabbath. And somehow this unleashed a tidal wave of animosity. John 7:21–23:
Jesus answered them, “I did one work, and you all marvel at it. Moses gave you circumcision (not that it is from Moses, but from the fathers), and you circumcise a man on the Sabbath. If on the Sabbath a man receives circumcision, so that the law of Moses may not be broken, are you angry with me because on the Sabbath I made a man’s whole body well?”
So this is the second kind of unbelief—very different from the unbelief of the brothers. Or is it? They certainly look different. One is excited about his miracle working and wants it to be more public. The other is threatened by his miracles and wants them stopped, even it means killing Jesus. We immediately recognize the second response as unbelief. But Jesus wants us to see his brother’s kind of excitement as unbelief as well.
So my question is: How are they both unbelief? What is the common root?
Why It Matters
Before I try to answer that question, let me tell you why it matters. The short answer is that believing on Jesus is how we receive eternal life. John tells us in John 20:31 why he wrote this book—why he, for example, makes a big deal about what unbelief is in chapter 7—“These are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.” Believing is how you get eternal life.
And we know he means “eternal life” because John 3:16 says, “God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” And we know that what eternal life means is that by believing in Jesus we escape from the wrath of God which is on us until we believe. John 3:36: “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.” Apart from Jesus, we are all under God’s wrath because we all have treated God with contempt by giving him so little of our attention and affection and obedience.
Only in Jesus: Eternal Life and Escape from Wrath
And we know that Jesus is the only one who can save us from the wrath of God and give us eternal life, because he is himself God in the flesh. “The Word was God . . . and the Word became flesh” (John 1:1, 14). He is the Messiah: “I who speak to you am he” (John 4:26). And he is the Lamb of God: “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29).
So he is the only one who can die in the place of millions of sinners (“I lay down my life for the sheep,” John 10:15), and rise from the dead (“Because I lay it my life for the sheep, I will take it up again,” John 10:17–18), so that anyone who receives him and believes on him will become a child of God (John 1:12) and have eternal life.
The Word of Christ for Unbelievers—And for Believers
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