Why Does God Seem Distant?

Posted on June 16, 2017 by Editor

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John 14:15-21

Think about someone who you know very well.

You know this person’s favorite foods, their birthday, and their personality. But you also know their mood or opinion without asking. You know their hopes, their dreams, and—sometimes—you even know things about them of which they are unaware!

Think about that person.

Now, think about why you know them so well.

Most likely, you know them well because you spent time with them. You laughed with them, became furious with them, and cried on their shoulder. Through everything, you each became a part of one another.

Our relationship with God is very similar.

If we wish to develop our relationship with God, we must pay attention to Him. When we read scripture, we must ask ourselves “What is the character of God?” By doing this, we can begin to build a relationship with our heavenly Father.

What better scripture to start with than John 14:15-21? This passage is full of descriptions of God’s character! For example, in John 16, Jesus mentions that God is sending us an advocate (the Holy Spirit) that will be with us forever. God is eternal—he will always exist and will be with us forever.

In John 14:17, Jesus says that the Holy Spirit is “the Spirit of Truth,” meaning that God is Truth. Human beings are, at best, “mostly truthful.” Even when we try our best to be completely honest, deception is still in us. We can even deceive ourselves! God, however, is completely truthful—there is no deception in him. Truth is an essential component of his nature.

We also learn in John 14:17 that God is knowable. “The world cannot accept [the Spirit of Truth] because it neither sees nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you” (John 14:17). God is the author of creation, an entity higher than being, itself. But we can know him. Most of us are unable to meet (much less know) the leader of a country (or even the mayor of a city.) But we can know God!

God is eternal, true, and knowable—but he is so much more!

“If you love me, keep my commandments,” Jesus says in John 14:15. His disciples would immediately connect Jesus’ words with the Shema, an important prayer composed from the words of Deuteronomy 6:4-9. The Shema is one of two prayers that the Jewish people are directly commanded to pray and is an essential declaration of the Jewish faith. In ancient times, the Jewish people had to recite this prayer twice a day—once at sunrise, once at sunset—so the disciples would have known the Shema better than the back of their own hands.

Why the Shema? The Shema begins with the words, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one” (Deuteronomy 6:4). The Lord is one. Jesus is reminding his disciples that there is ONE God. He then reveals that this God is of three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

A holy trinity.

The concept is so simple, yet so complex. Something our brothers and sisters in the twelfth century knew full well.

This is called “the Shield of the Trinity.” It’s a diagram of God’s nature created by Christians from twelfth century Europe who were seeking to create a visual interpretation of the trinity. As you can see here, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are of the same substance, but they cannot be reduced to one another (the Father is not the Son, the Son is not the Father and etc.) How can this be?

Perhaps we should introduce the trinity by examining what it isn’t.

The Trinity is not:

  • One God in three forms When explaining the trinity, many Christians like to use the analogy of water, ice, and steam. But this is a faulty analogy. If steam cools or if ice is heated, it becomes water. But The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit never change forms. Furthermore, different states of water do not exist in relationship to one another; they are simply different states of one form. God is not like this.
  • A hierarchy One of the most common modern heresies is the idea that the Father is superior to the Son and Holy Spirit—or that the Holy Spirit isn’t a person at all. As we have discussed in previous blogs, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are not only equal persons, but they are constantly serving one another.
  • Three distinct gods Christians have always believed in ONE God in three persons—you can find proof for this all throughout the Old and New Testaments (as well as the creeds from the church throughout history).

Today’s scripture is filled with references to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. In verse 16, for example, we see every member of the Trinity: the Son asks the Father for the Holy Spirit to rest on his disciples. Then in verse 21 we see that the Father loves us because we receive the commands of Christ. The Holy Spirit helps us to remember these commands (John 14:26).

Later in John 14, Jesus tells us that he does exactly what he sees his Father doing. If we think about it, this is a difficult thing to wrap out head around. Why would Jesus mindlessly follow his Father? Unlike us, Jesus doesn’t worry about being “authentic” or “independent.” Instead, he concerns himself with following his Father; knowing that his Father has his best interests at heart.

All three members of the Trinity are fully God and worthy of worship and praise. However, we do not see them dominating one another; we see them serving and following one another. We see them giving glory to and caring for one another.

What a difficult form of love! This love requires sacrifice and devotion. It requires giving up glory and allowing others to be right. Jesus gave up his life on the cross, but he never once asked for praise. He never asked for glory. Instead, he simply continued to listen to his Father—and his Father lifted him up.

If we really want to know God, we cannot insist on saying, “I love you, but I won’t listen to you.” Think about it in another way: a husband completely ignores his wife for several months. When she breaks down and asks him about it, he replies, “I love you, but I don’t want to listen to you.” Does he really love her? It’s the same way with our relationship to God. The feeling of love is not real love.

We cannot do works to earn favor, but if we really love someone, we will act in a certain way toward them. We will listen to them, we will spend time with them, and we will learn all of the little things about them that makes them who they are. To love God then, we must listen to Him through the scripture, to spend time with him through prayer, and to learn all of the little things about Him that makes Him who he is.

It is then that Jesus will reveal himself to us.

“Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching,” Jesus says in John 14:23. “The one who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love them and show myself to them”

God doesn’t live in buildings. He chooses to live in us, his Church. The Bible describes us as being the home of God. When we obey Christ’s commands, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit come to live in us—the Creator comes to live in the Created—and we become to know Him better than we ever knew ourselves.

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The Three Circumstances In Which The Church Is Obligated to Go Underground

Posted on June 5, 2017 by Pastor Foley

John Calvin identified two marks of the true church: “the word of God purely preached and heard, and the pure administration of the sacraments.”[36]

The only legitimate reason to take the church underground, then, is to overcome any hindrance to the word of God being purely preached and heard, and the sacraments purely administered.

  • When the government determines who may preach, what may be preached, or where preaching may take place, the church is obligated to operate underground rather than accommodate the restrictions.
  • When the government or the general public restrain the free hearing of the gospel, the church is obligated to go underground rather than accommodate the restrictions.
  • When the pure administration of the sacraments is impaired, the church is obligated to go underground rather than accommodate the restrictions.

Let us consider an increasingly common example. Suppose a government permits the church “freedom of religion”: they may preach and hear the word and participate in the sacraments, but only inside buildings officially registered with the government. Is the church obligated to go underground?

Yes, the church is obligated to go underground because in such a situation the word and the sacraments are no longer able to be purely preached, heard, or administered almost anywhere in that society. In such a situation the church goes underground not so it can preach and hear and participate in the sacraments only in a small secret cave or in a clearing in the middle of a forest. (This is the stereotype of the underground church.) Instead, it goes underground so the word and the sacraments may not be bound, in faithfulness to the truth of 2 Timothy 2:9. (For the Christian, truth is defined by the scripture, not the government or the general public. The scripture says that the word is not bound, and the church believes this even when the government insists otherwise.) Since the word and sacraments are not bound, then the Lord will lead the church to many places outside the church building where he desires that these means of grace be shared.

Let us consider another example. Suppose a government enacts laws criminalizing statements against homosexuality in public places or media, including Christian teaching that homosexuality is a sin. The government assures the church it can still do whatever it wants in its own building. Is the church obligated to go underground?

Yes, the church is obligated to go underground because once again there is an attempt to bind the word. The church is the servant of the word and the sacraments; the word and the sacraments are not servants of the church. This means that the church must serve the word wherever the Lord wants the word to be heard. The Lord does not respect the world’s boundaries of where, when, and by whom he may send his word, nor to whom he may send it. He has overcome the world, not simply acquired real estate in it.

The church in the free world, however, is prone to accept restrictions like these from the government, rather than go underground. The church says, “Our congregation is still able to preach and hear the word and administer the sacraments; it is not necessary for us to go underground.” But this attitude makes the church Lord, and the Lord, servant. The church in this case is like the fool in the Lord’s parable who says, “I’ll say to myself, ‘You have plenty of grain laid up for many years’”:

But God said to him, “You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?” This is how it will be with whoever stores up things for themselves but is not rich toward God.[37]

The word and the sacraments are not to be stored up for the church in the church by the church. The church can no more bind the word and the sacraments than the world can. They are not bound. The church is obligated to follow them and serve them wherever the will of the wind pleases to take them.[38]

Action Steps for Church Planters:

  • Are you planting an underground church because you are against something in society or in the existing church? If so, cease immediately and repent; no church may be planted because the planter is “for” something or “against” something else. The church is the servant of the word and the sacraments, not their master.
  • Are you physically and spiritually prepared to die for the enemies of the gospel? If not, you will not be able to keep the main thing the main thing in the underground church. First, prepare to preach, pray, or die anywhere at a moment’s notice, and only then will you be ready to plant the underground church.

Action Steps for Existing Churches:

  • Study when, how, and why existing churches in Germany went underground. Study especially the Confessing Church’s Barmen Declaration[39] and add it to your church’s foundational documents and creeds for memorization and study.
  • Ask yourself, “Can the word of God be purely preached and heard, and the sacraments purely administered everywhere in Korea?” If not, where not and why not?
  • Is the main thing still the main thing at your church? Or are sermons becoming shorter and shorter and sacraments becoming less and less frequently administered so that other, more popular things may become main things? When the congregation can only endure 20 minutes of sound biblical preaching, should the pastor accommodate that or preach as long as necessary for the fullness of the gospel to be heard, no matter how unpopular that may be with church members and visitors?
  • The rich young ruler (Mark 10:17-27) was prepared to obey the word within his own domain, but he was not prepared to abandon his own domain and follow the word wherever the wind was pleased to take it. Scripture says this is because “he was one who owned much property”. As the government and the general public begin to try to bind the word in Korea, are you prepared to sell all your church has in order to go underground so that you can accompany the word wherever it wants to go? The Lord says that the man with big barns was not wise to be tearing them down in order to build bigger barns at such a time. What does wisdom dictate that you do now to be able to follow the word and the sacraments into the areas where the Korean government and general public are likely to try to bind them?

(Excerpted from Pastor Foley’s book, Planting the Underground Church. To order a print or electronic copy of the bilingual Korean/English edition, visit Amazon or click here to visit the bookstore page on our website.) 

 

 

[36]  Eric J. Titus, “Calvin’s Marks of the Church: A Call for Recovery,” UDK:265.1:265.3 Professional paper, 2011, p. 114.

[37] Luke 12:19-21, NIV.

[38] See John 3:8, NIV.

[39] See http://www.sacred-texts.com/chr/barmen.htm.

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What does Jesus mean, “In my Father’s house are many mansions?”

Posted on June 1, 2017 by Editor

To watch other Voice of the Martyrs videos, visit the Voice of the Martyrs Video Page!

John 14:1-14

Where do you live?

Nearly all human beings regard this as an important question. Biblically, however, it is the important question—so important, in fact, that Jesus addresses it again and again throughout the Gospel of John, including in today’s lectionary passage, John 14:1-14.

“Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me. My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you may also be where I am. You know the way to the place where I am going.” (John 14:1-4)

This lectionary reading begins mid-story with Jesus responding to deeply worried disciples, so it is best to begin by examining the wider context. When does this conversation take place? Where are Jesus and the apostles? What has made the apostles troubled?

If we read John 13, we discover that this conversation takes place in the upper room the night before Jesus is crucified. Jesus has just finished washing the disciples’ feet and they are about to break bread when Jesus announces very disturbing news: “Very truly I tell you, one of you is going to betray me.” (John 13:21)

The disciples are stunned. At Peter’s prompting, John asks Jesus which disciple will betray him.

“It is the one to whom I will give this piece of bread when I have dipped it in the dish,” Jesus says (John 13:26). He then dips the bread and passes it to Judas.

“What you are about to do, do quickly,” Jesus tells him (John 13:27).

Judas takes the bread and leaves. The remaining disciples are confused as to what has happened. Did Judas go out to do something for Passover? Or could he possibly be the betrayer, even at that moment heading out to deliver Jesus—and all of them—into the hands of their enemies?

Then, an even more unthinkable announcement comes from Jesus.

Jesus says that Peter will betray him three times that night! Peter is a kind of spokesperson leader for the disciples—“the rock,” according to the name Jesus had given him. But Jesus announced that the rock would falter and crumble.

Judas left in the middle of supper. Peter will apparently be shortly behind him. Of course the disciples are troubled: their world is falling apart by the minute! What if they are all separated from Jesus forever?

“Do not let your hearts be troubled,” Jesus responds. “Where I am, you may be also.”

Sometimes when we read this passage, we wrongly assume that Jesus is speaking in a timeless fashion about the distant future: preparing a place in heaven for us after we die.

After Lazarus’ death, Martha thought in a similar way. “If you had been here, my brother would not have died,” Martha said (John 11:21). When Jesus assures her that Lazarus will rise again, Martha says, “I know he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day” (John 11:24).

Like us, Martha assumes that Jesus is making a promise about a time long hence. He isn’t. Jesus raises Lazarus that very day.

When Jesus tells the disciples that he is preparing a place for them, he is referring to their present circumstance—and ours. Where does he go to prepare a place for us?

To the cross.

Through Christ’s death and resurrection, his body is transformed into a place with many mansions—many rooms—in which we may dwell today. Easter is the way he prepares the place for us to live. Where is this place? When do we move there? What does it mean for us to live inside another person?

In John 8:21, Jesus tells the Pharisees that have confronted him, “I am going away, and you will seek me, and you will die in your sin. Where I am going, you cannot come.” This confuses the Pharisees. Where could Jesus possibly be going that they could not follow? Was he going to kill himself?

“You are from below; I am from above,” Jesus tells them. “You are of this world; I am not of this world. I told you that you would die in your sins, for unless you believe that I am he you will die in your sins” (John 8:23-24).

There are only two places where human beings can live: in our sin, or in the body of Christ. Even death does not change this: Wherever we live, is where we die, and it is where we remain after we die. This is a recurring message Jesus brings throughout the gospel of John, but the crowds and even the disciples do not understand. Perhaps this is because they—and us—always think of the physical world as the “real” world.

For example, in John 2:13-22, Jesus makes a whip of cords and drives the moneychangers out of the temple. The Jewish people confront him.

“What sign do you show us for doing these things?” they ask (John 2:18). In other words, what gives you the authority to drive these men from the temple?

Jesus tells them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I shall raise it up” (John 2:19).

The Jewish people are, understandably, confused. They’ve been building the temple for forty-six years and it is still incomplete! How could Christ possibly rebuild the temple in three days? It is then that John explains that Jesus is speaking about “the temple of his body” (John 2:21).

Jesus is speaking about his body as a temple: a temple in which we live and worship. And the time for this is not in the distant future. In fact, it “is now here,” as Jesus tells the Samaritan woman at the well.

“Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet,” she says. “Our fathers worshipped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship” (John 4:20).

Jesus replies, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father … the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth” (John 4:21-22).

Jesus is talking about the place where people live and worship today—either in their sins, or in Christ’s body. He is talking about real places—places that are even more real than the physical locations that are the most concrete places in our lives.

In John 14, Jesus talks about places in more detail. If you continue to read, you will see that the disciples, like us, are confused as to how someone can live inside of another person. Jesus explains further in the next chapter, giving a different image (vines instead of houses) but the same truth:

“As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me … I am the vine; you are the branches … If anyone does not abide in me he is thrown away and withers” (John 15:4-6).

We wrongly perceive the physical world as the “real” world and the spiritual world as vague and distant. However, the opposite is actually true: what we call the “real” world is actually a picture of the spiritual world. The physical world is real, but it is contingent upon the spiritual world; that is to say, it depends upon it for its shape and continued existence. At present it is distorted by sin (hence why we pray with Christ that things may be “on earth as it is in heaven”), but it is still sustained moment by moment by the grace of God.

An example or illustration may be helpful. You probably have a picture of your family lying around. However, the picture of your family is different from—contingent upon—your actual family; that is, the picture could not have come into existence unless you had a real family. A mother, for example, is much more than her picture. If someone were to say, “I want to spent time with my mother” but then spent all evening staring at her photo, you would become confused. “Why not go home and see your mother?” you might suggest.

It’s just as foolish for us to regard the physical world as the “real” world. The physical world is like a picture of the spiritual world—only a twisted and distorted version of it, though one that retains much beauty (and great value to God). Christ’s body, then, is more real than our own. When the Bible says that we live inside of Christ’s body, it is not a metaphor—it is reality. It is the realest place we live—or don’t.

When do we come to live in Christ’s body? When we believe and are baptized. It is then that we die to sin and become incorporated into Christ. Our branch is attached to his vine. We live inside of him, and death cannot change this. This is why the apostle Paul writes:

“For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38-39).

Where will you live?

Will you choose to live in your sin? Human beings cannot change location when we die; where we live when we die is where we will always live. If we choose to live in our sins, we will die in our sins. The only other place to live is inside Christ.

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