Synoptic Gospels: John 14:6-8

Routine, we spent a fair amount of time in verse 6, for obvious reasons, given the necessary application in the day in which we live, the dislike of that particular text and what it says. Obviously, there is a part of me highly tempted to make reference to events this week, and make application there.

I did that on Wednesday on the dividing line. If you do not listen to the program, maybe you might find that one particularly interesting in light of the fact that of the papal elections and the amazing comments that came out at that time, and then even more so since then, some very, very interesting comments that have been made that once again demonstrate that if you believe that the gospel is definitive of the faith, that is, if you do not have the gospel, that you don't have the Christian faith, if that is a non-negotiable, then you're in a small minority today.

In fact, I would say that the majority of non-Roman Catholics in the Western world, non-Roman Catholics who claim to be Christians, OK, we need to define these things because there's all sorts of people that would fit into the realm of non-Roman Catholics, but non-Roman Catholics who claim to be Christians, I would say that the large majority of those today would in no way make an objection to the inclusion of Roman Catholicism, its entire sacramental system, even the office of the pope within the bounds of the Christian faith.

If you say otherwise, you're a radical. In other words, everything that the Reformation had to say, pretty much unknown by the vast majority or rejected by the vast majority today. Certainly, we have seen that the large portion of those who are not Roman Catholics today are not Roman Catholic solely by tradition and taste, not by conviction.

They don't know what Rome teaches. They just don't happen to like the, I don't like candles, therefore I'm going to go someplace with a band, that kind of a thing. That's what we're facing these days.

But I'm going to resist the further temptation to go down that road, as interesting as it might be. I will on Tuesday be addressing three evangelicals who have made comments since that time. One is Evangelist Luis Palau.

Another is Gary Bauer, former Republican candidate for the presidency and very involved in family organizations. And then last night, I'm going to be asking for a little more clarification from Dr. John Piper, who said something I didn't quite follow on the subject of the centrality of justification.

Dr. Piper has written an entire book against N .T. Wright, and yet it would seem to me that between N .T. Wright and Roman Catholicism, there's a pretty large difference as to which one is at least somewhat closer than the other one.

And yet he made some comments that were meant as clarification, but all they did was make me want more clarification. So we'll be addressing those things on Tuesday. Going back to John chapter 14, once again, I believe what I had mentioned last time we were together, we had started talking a little bit about what oneness theology teaches.

And I had mentioned at that time that, unfortunately, in my opinion, a large portion of the Christian world, broadly conceived, if you were to give them somewhat of a quiz on the doctrine of the Trinity, would end up default falling into a oneness or a modalistic perspective.

I don't think I told you the story of the time back in the I think it was 99. It was prior to YouTube. You say, wow, we're starting to mark time by YouTube. That's a sad commentary on modern life. But what I mean by that is, prior to YouTube, I could do things I can't do anymore.

So I believe it was 1999, I was speaking at a large Southern Baptist church in Florida. And I went into the junior high class for Sunday school. And I role played with the junior high leader. I guess he was a youth pastor, whatever that means.

And what that means is he was a Bible college student, who, because he's young, can run with the kids. And therefore, you call him a youth pastor, and that's what you make him do. And it's part of the hazing ritual in Southern Baptist churches, just in case you were wondering.

But isn't it? I mean, that's exactly what it is. Every senior pastor starts twitching when you start talking about his days as a youth pastor. So it's just how that works. But anyway, I went in, and I played a Jehovah's Witness.

They had been studying, quote unquote, cults. And so they introduced me as Jehovah's Witness. And that's why I say this before YouTube. I couldn't get away with this now. YouTube sort of has ruined all my role playing opportunities, because if anybody knows me outside of us, it's because of YouTube.

So and within 45 seconds, I had this kid, this youth pastor, spouting heresy. Went straight to John 1 .1, and immediately had him saying that Jesus is the same person as the Father. And then once I had him there, then I could just tie him up in a nice little bow, and the rest was simple from that point.

You could go to most evangelicals, and it's just how you phrase the question. Well, you believe Jesus is God, right? Well, yeah. So he's one person with the Father. Well, yeah. No. No, he's not one person with the Father.

That's confounding the divine persons. And the reality is that was an earlier heresy than Arianism, the denial of the deity of Christ in the fourth century. It was the third century when they dealt with the concept of modalism.

There were different forms of it. There are different forms of it today. Even within the major denomination that you deal with, the United Pentecostal Church International, you'll find different spins on the subject.

There's sort of an orthodox position from their viewpoint, but you'll still find people who emphasize this over that, and stuff like that. But there's still a lot of different ways in which it is expressed even today.

But having said all that, hopefully we understand that the doctrine of the Trinity states that within the one being that is God, there eternally exists three co-equal and co-eternal persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

This is not something that came into existence at the time of the Incarnation. This is not something that has changed in the sense that the Father was active in the Old Testament, and then the Son became active during his lifetime, and now it's the Spirit that's active, and all this type of stuff.

No, the relationships between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are eternal. They take different roles in redemption, in what's called the economy of salvation. It is not the Father who became incarnate. It is not the Spirit who became incarnate.

It was the Son who became incarnate. The Father and the Son send the Spirit. That's going to be the promise of John 14 and 16 in particular, is that Jesus has here said, I'm going away, and I am not going to leave you alone.

I'm not going to leave you as orphans. I'm going to send you another parakletos, a paraclete, a comforter, and that comforter is the Holy Spirit. Now, that comforter is a comforter of the same kind. He's personal.

He's not an it. He's not like the Jehovah's Witnesses. I was doing a ride yesterday morning, and I was waiting for my riding partner to arrive, and I happened to look across the street, and here were the Jehovah's Witnesses.

They were out hitting this neighborhood. And if I had not been on the other side of the street, I would have chased one of them down, but there they were going door to door, and they believe the Holy Spirit is an it, God's impersonal active force.

That is not, of course, what we believe. We believe that the Holy Spirit is personal, always has been personal, but obviously takes a completely different role in redemption than that of the Father or the Son, and hence that's one of the ways we can distinguish between them.

The Trinity and the Personhood of the Holy Spirit

John chapter 14, the Gospel of John up to this point, and during this text as well, and all the way to the end of the book, makes clear distinctions between the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. Makes clear distinctions.

But if you're going to go someplace to try to blur the distinctions, if you're going to go someplace to try to get rid of the distinctions, you'd want to go to John chapter 14 because that's where the oneness folks go.

Yeah, they also go to John chapter 10, verse 30. I and the Father are one. And they understand that to mean I am the Father. And as we've pointed out, you could accurately translate that verse as, I and the Father, we are one, because it's a plural verb in the original language.

So even there, the distinction is maintained. But what you have in John chapter 14 is a presentation. As you had in John chapter 5, remember in John chapter 5, we've emphasized this a number of times, you have the Jews saying, you're making yourself equal with God.

And in Jesus' response, he does not deny his equality with the Father, but he denies that his equality with the Father is something that would cause confusion, competition, or anything like that. There is a relationship the Son bears to the Father.

He's always born to the Father. As a result, he gives life. He is honored. He is as honored. But it's the Father who is the fountainhead and source of the work of salvation. The Son is working that out.

The Spirit will come to make application. The gospel itself is Trinitarian. The unity between the Father and the Son is emphasized, but the distinction of the Father and the Son is also emphasized. Now, in John chapter 14, and in a number of texts in the book of Revelation, where you have the Father and the Son sitting upon the throne and things like that, if you approach Scripture with an external authority, and I would argue that in the United Pentecostal Church International, the external authority is the tradition and the fact that, in essence, because of their very strong Pentecostal leanings, their belief of the necessity of speaking in tongues to be saved, et cetera, et cetera, this all goes back to that early period where these especially godly men said these things by the Holy Spirit.

It almost becomes an external authority outside of Scripture. But if you don't interpret the Bible as a whole, this will be one of the texts you want to sit on to try to destroy the distinctions, because the emphasis here, you know, Philip says to Jesus in verse 8, Lord, show us the Father and it is enough for us.

Now, what has been one of the themes all through the Gospel of John, from the prologue of John, the 18th verse to prologue? No one has seen God at any time. The monogamous theos, the unique God, the one who, in verse 1, in the beginning was the Word, was with God, and the Word was God, the Word is as to his nature, deity, that one has made him known.

The fact that the Son is divine is what allows the Son to be the perfect revelation of the Father. And so when Jesus says in verse 7, if you had known me, you would have known my Father also. From now on, you know him and have seen him.

Philip's answer is, Lord, show us the Father and it is enough for us. And Jesus' response is, have I been so long with you and yet you have not come to know me, Philip? Now, if you come to this with the idea that Jesus is two persons, Jesus is two persons, not one person with two natures, but Jesus is actually two persons.

His physical being is the Son who came into existence at his birth in Bethlehem. But then he is indwelt by the Father. So that, John chapter 17, is going to end up being a conversation between one half of Jesus and the other half of Jesus.

If you come with that kind of an understanding, then what you're going to hear Jesus saying is, I don't need to show you the Father, Philip, because I am the Father. But if you've actually just allowed John to speak for John, then you've come to this point.

You're interpreting the book as a whole. And you've already had repetitive differentiation between the Father and the Son. You have had the Son repeatedly referring to the Father using personal pronouns that we would use of another person.

You have, even in the places where Jesus is claiming deity, such as in John chapter 8 or John chapter 10, you still have, I mean, John chapter 10, I and the Father, we are one. No one can snatch them out of my hand.

No one can snatch them out of the Father's hand. One in giving of salvation, and yet there's still a distinction being made between the Father and the Son. When you have that and you come here, then what you hear Jesus saying is, have you known me so long, Philip, and yet you do not realize that I am the very revelation of the person of the Father.

If you want to know who the Father is, you look at me. I am that one who has made him known, John 1 .18. I have exegeted him. I have explained him. Of course, most of the time, when you have conversations with someone, I know for me, very frequently these conversations come up while traveling, sitting at the gate, sitting in the plane, sitting on the train, trains, planes, automobiles, and so on and so forth, whatever it might be, and someone sees something you're reading, you see something they're reading, and you go and talk to them, whatever it might be.

You generally don't have time to be going back in the context, and hence, unfortunately, you end up spending a lot of time trying to make heads or tails out of a limited context. Someone says, yeah, but Jesus said the Father is greater than I am in this text in John 14 .28, if you're talking to a Jehovah's Witness or something like that.

And it can be challenging in a brief period of time to bring the context to bear, but you have to be able to do so. It is interesting, by the way, that John chapter 14 is not only where those would go who are trying to assert the deity of Christ while denying the Trinity, the modalists, the oneness folks, at the same time, it contains the favorite text for the people who deny the deity of Christ, period.

That's John 14 .28. Now, of course, most Jehovah's Witnesses can't quote you all of verse 28, but they do know the phrase, the Father is greater than I am. And so do Mormons, so do Muslims will obviously spend a fair amount of time on verse 28, given the widespread abuse of the text by just about everybody.

It is a generally abused text, I guess is what we shall call it. So Jesus is basically intimating in verse 7 that the disciples do not yet have a proper knowledge of who Jesus is. There's still more that they need to understand.

If you had known me, so then you would understand my relationship to the Father. And really, in a sense, that is an area of knowledge of Christ that we grow in continually. I don't think that any of us, no matter how mature we might be in the Lord, have fully grasped the entire range of ramifications that come from the fact that in Jesus, we have a perfect revelation of the character of the Father.

And certainly, we rarely, I think, give much thought to what an incredible gift of grace it is that God has made himself known in this way. The vast majority of men's religions, God is pretty much unknown and is exceptionally distant.

And we can only know a small amount about him. I mean, it is a radical thing to actually promote the idea that what we're saying is God has entered into his own creation. That is a radical thing. I think sometimes we try to play that down because, well, to be a radical is a bad thing, right?

I mean, radical anything is bad. And we don't like radical Muslims, so I don't want to be a radical Christian, right? So we want to try to make things a little bit safer, I guess, but the reality is we are literally saying that there was a God-man and that we can have true knowledge of the character of the Father because of the perfection of the revelation that is made in Jesus Christ of him to us.

That's an amazing thing to state. And it's understandable why Machen identified liberalism as another religion. Because once you have abandoned, if you don't believe that you can interpret the Bible as a whole, if you don't believe that what is said in John chapter 14 can be put together with and properly interpreted in light of and as a part of Philippians chapter 2, and that is also relevant to Colossians chapter 1, which is also relevant to Revelation chapter 5, if you can't do that, then there's no reason to believe in what is called the Jesus of faith.

That's why you have in scholarship today the contrast and the distinction between the Jesus of faith and the Jesus of history. For the majority of Christian scholarship today, quote, unquote, I use the term guardedly and without making any theological statements there, for the majority of quote, unquote, Christian scholarship today, the Jesus of faith is a later evolutionary development that doesn't, for most people, have really almost anything at all to do with the Jesus of history.

And they look at us, who happen to think that the Jesus of faith and the Jesus of history are one, as being hopelessly naive, hopelessly uneducated, and not even worth really dialoguing with us, because we're just, you know, we probably just couldn't understand, even if they tried to explain it to us.

So where does that come from? Well, obviously, once you no longer believe that the Bible is a revelation from God, that it's harmonious, that it can be read as a whole, that there are these themes that go with it, once you become a naturalist and try to deal with a supernatural canon of scripture, the results could be a mess.

And so you see in liberal denominations today, on the scholarly side, Jesus of history, Jesus of faith, they're not the same thing. It all evolves over time. And yet, still in the liturgy, you have the creeds being repeated.

And they're stuck in this weird world where they have to reinterpret everything in the creeds, sort of like, well, you know, we do this because it sort of connects us to preceding generations. But we realize that those were pre-critical folks, and, you know, they thought the sun circled around the earth, so they weren't all that smart, you know.

So we just do this because it makes us feel good, and it's what we've always done, type of a thing. That's not where we are, and by God's grace, never will be. And it all comes back to whether you really believe this is scripture, and whether you can interpret it in light of itself, or whether you have to just cut up into pieces and it's a hopeless mass and jumble of self-contradictory human thoughts, and I'm just going to piece together what I like.

Which, by the way, is why every time you read some new liberal interpretation of Jesus, and I made mention of this to John Dominic Crossin a number of years ago when we debated in Seattle. I forget what the exact quote was.

But someone had well said that when the liberal Reconstructionist, who's trying to come up with this view of Jesus, looks deeply into the well of the historical Jesus, shock of all shocks, what they always see is themselves looking back.

In other words, the Jesus they find is amazingly much like them. So if their primary concern is some kind of concept of social justice, then Jesus becomes a champion of social justice. And if their concern is the rejection of Roman imperialism and the power of the state, then all of a sudden Jesus becomes a rebel against Roman imperialism and the power of the state, and blah, blah, blah.

That's all you can do, because you become the filter. You look at all this stuff in the Bible, and you go, well, it contradicts itself, and so I'm going to pick and choose what I think actually represents Jesus.

Well, it's natural that as a human being, you're going to pick and choose those things that make Jesus look like the Jesus you'd like him to be. You're not going to create a Jesus who's unlike how you'd like him to be.

And in fact, I just ordered it. I haven't looked at it yet. I heard of it a couple weeks ago, but now it's available. There's a new publication out called A New New Testament. A New New Testament. It's not N-U-N-U, or Nanu Nanu, for those of you who are old enough to remember that.

It's not that, yeah. But it's not that. But you're getting too much oxygen to your brain right now, that's what's going on with you. But it's changing. It's something you've got to adjust to slowly. It takes a little time for your brain to use up.

But the New New Testament is 19 scholars got together. Now, they weren't churchmen. None of them are churchmen, interestingly enough. But 19 scholars got together and decided to expand the canon of the New Testament.

And 27 books, who needs 27 books? 40 is a much better number, don't you think? 40 is a good number. And so they have expanded the canon of the New Testament, mainly with a bunch of second, third, and fourth century Gnostic writings.

Though somehow, they actually stuck one in that may even be pre-Christian that's really weird. But they just thought that it would be a good thing to do. Now, of course, part of me wants to sit back and go, who do you people think you are?

I mean, the level of arrogance that is implicit in such an activity is amazing. But then I realize, I look at these guys, none of them are churchmen. They're not believers. So unbelievers do dumb things.

I mean, really, when it comes to spiritual stuff, are we really all that shocked that unbelievers will act like unbelievers? Yeah, that's how they do it. And when you realize unbelievers are going to act like unbelievers, then it's like, oh, OK, all right.

But this is going to be out there now. And I'm sure already some enterprising religious studies professor over at Glendale Community or something is going to be assigning it for their fall semester classes once it comes out, that kind of stuff.

But that kind of stuff is out there all over the place. What laid the foundation for that? Fundamentally, looking at the Bible as if it's just a collection of human thoughts. And you're just not going to understand what Jesus is saying here.

And of course, I think I've mentioned before, if you were to mention to a majority of Christian scholars today that, well, Jesus said to Philip, he who has seen me has seen the Father, how can you say, show us the Father?

Now, those are incredible words when you think about it. What prophet could ever make a statement like that? When Isaiah saw God, the first thought across his mind was, woe is me, I am a man of unclean lips.

But Jesus says, Philip, he who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, show us the Father? I mean, any one of us, we want people to be able to see Jesus in us, but we know that in this life, there is always going to be a distortion of that image.

There's always going to be some part of me in the way, right? I mean, we know that. And every prophet has known that. Jesus didn't know that. Jesus said, if you see me, you've seen the Father. Now, that's an amazing statement.

And it would have massive ramifications. Because, I mean, if that's the case, don't you think Jesus' moral and ethical teachings are sort of obligatory for us all? I mean, if he's right that he is a perfect revelation of the Father, then his moral and ethical teachings perfectly represent the Father's intention in the entirety of the law, right?

So he becomes the final interpreter of all of these things. And you would have to bow the knee before this one. I mean, this would have massive ramifications all across the board. And we look at that and we go, why aren't you, Mr. Christian Scholar, thinking seriously about what Jesus says here?

But what I'm saying to you is, Mr. Christian Scholar doesn't think Jesus ever said this. Mr. Christian Scholar goes, well, look, John is so unlike Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and comes so much later, that clearly this is John's, if we even know who John was, certainly wasn't anybody associated with Jesus.

He comes many, many, many decades later and he's taken the Jesus stories, and they've evolved over time, and he has a certain Jesus he wants to present. And so he's putting words in Jesus's mouth is what he's doing.

And now you know why they look at this and go, yeah, well, okay, all this tells you is that somebody at the end of the first century wanted other people to think that Jesus was a perfect revelation of the Father.

That's the most you can come up with from this. And in fact, they'll go so far as saying, yeah, and John was sort of cut and paste together from, you know, John wrote different versions and had different additions and sort of been paced together over time by other redactors later on.

And so, you know, you don't even have to interpret John to be consistent with John. You can just take every little phrase and stick it out on a desert island someplace, disconnect it from everything else, and play with it that way.

And that's how you write commentaries and get published and do things like that. So that's why in the quote, unquote, academy today, you generally will find these amazing statements. You'll find a level of embarrassment on the part of, well, you'll find a level of embarrassment on the part of any Christian scholar who wishes to be accepted in the broad realm of the quote, unquote, academy.

Particularly, you'll find embarrassment about the Gospel of John. You just will. And you say, well, what's the answer to that? Well, I would have to say that Christian scholars who are sound in their scholarship and yet unashamed at the witness of the Word of God and unashamed to embrace the worldview of the writers of the Word of God, that's part of God's blessings on a church.

And sound teaching and sound churches are a blessing on a nation. And maybe that's the explanation as to why we don't see that many of them in our land anymore. Oh, it's not that there aren't. I think still we have more than anybody else does.

But in comparison to the past, the numbers are dwindling. And I think it's part of judgment upon a nation that has had massive light, massive light, and has done everything in its power and continues to do everything in its power to squint its eyes and hide itself from that light.

So much so that we truly have become the Isaiah 5 generation. Woe to those who call good evil and evil good. We are fulfilling that day by day in our society. So I think it's all connected together. I think God's grace granting to people the willingness to stand against the flow and to stand for the validity of God's Word, it's a part of God's gift.

And when God's wrath is on a people, well, you see what happens. So having said all that, very briefly, we will stop in verse 9, and I'll try to make a note to remember that. Because the very next phrase will even take us beyond, do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me?

He who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, show us the Father? This is not an identification of Jesus as the Father. But it is an identification of Jesus as the perfect revelation of the Father.

That's what monogamous theos meant back in John 118. That's what it means to be sent, to proceed forth from the Father. And yet this is the same one who used egoi me of himself in John 8 .24 and John 8 .58, and just in the last chapter, in John chapter 13.

So you have, this is why the doctrine of the Trinity has always distinguished between the Father and the Son, and has never confused them. Because you just can't read the pages of Scripture and confuse the Father and the Son.

And yet, you have the emphasis of one God, and you have the emphasis on the deity of Christ. How then do you understand that? And really, the history of the codification and defense of the doctrine of the Trinity is a history of trying to remain balanced in light of all the questions, all the questions that man's mind can dig up in regards to this particular issue.

That's really what it's all about. And so we will pick up there with Jesus' claims concerning himself, whenever it is I get a chance to be back here again when I'm not preaching at the same time. It might be a little while.

All right, let's close our time with a word of prayer. Dear Heavenly Father, we do thank you for your word, and we thank you for your spirit, which causes us to believe and trust. And Lord, we recognize that it is the work of your spirit and your grace that causes men and women to bow the knee before Jesus Christ and to follow his example in bowing the knee before the word of God.

We would pray that this day you would bless your churches in this land and every land where your word is being preached. May those who stand before the congregations do so with a great love for you and without fear of the face of men.

Indeed, this morning in this place, we would ask that the word would go forth with power, that the blessings of your spirit would pray in Christ's name.