The Bereans …received the message
with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day.
(Acts 17: 10-11)
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The Doctrinal Basis of the Christian
Faith |
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Introduction:
We are to engage in
what is called the synthetic study of the Bible, which means, as we use the term,
the study of the Bible as a whole, and each book of the Bible as a whole, and
as seen in its relation to the other books. The word « synthesis »
has the opposite meaning to « analysis. » When we analyse a subject
we take it apart and consider it in its various elements, but when we
synthesise it we put it together and consider it as a whole, which is what we
are now and in following editions on this website about to do with the inspired
Word of God.
Contents
·
Studying John’s Gospel chapter by chapter
– Part One
·
Studying John’s Gospel chapter by
chapter – Part Two
·
Abbreviated Study on John’s Epistles and Revelation
– Part Three
·
The Periods of Jesus’ life in the
Gospels
·
Studies in Isaiah (In preparation)
·
Questioning the Whole Bible (New)
·
Monthly Daily Bible Reading Scheme
·
Preaching the Word (In Preparation)
&
Synthetic Studies in John’s Gospel
Foreword
Is there a meaning to
life, to this world, and universe? What is wrong with this world? Why there is suffering
and fear in the midst of so much that is beautiful and good? Why does peace and
security elude even those who earnestly seek it? Why is there a guilt
consciousness ever present in the heart of man? Is there a key to the
understanding of these things, a light to reveal the way, a chart by which we
may set a course that will lead to that which will bring peace and dispel all
fear?
Indeed, there is a
meaning; there is a principle. God has given clear light that we may understand
the life we live and the world we live in. And that light is God Himself and
the fact that He is love – a fact the great consequences of which even
Christians have been slow to understand. For the great foundation principle of
His universe is love.
We are told that
science is discovering love. Psychologists and physicians are now realising
that love, or the lack of it, has a profound effect on man’s health. Love is
truly a basic necessity for man’s mental and physical welfare. The observers of
nature will tell us that all animal life will eventually respond to love. Even
the atheist, Bertrand Russell, through the mist of his human reasoning, catches
a vague glimmer of the truth, which forces him to confess, somewhat
apologetically, “The root of the matter, a very simple and old-fashioned thing,
a thing so simple that I am almost ashamed to mention it for fear of the
derisive smile with which wise cynics will greet it – is love, Christian love,
or compassion. If you feel this, you have a motive for existence, a guide in
action, a reason for courage, an imperative necessity for intellectual honesty.
If you feel this, you have all anybody should need in the way of religion.
Although you may not find happiness, you will never know the deep despair of
those whose life is aimless and void of purpose; for there is always something
that you can do to diminish the awful sum of human misery”.
But, science has still
a long way to go. And the pessimistic atheist, with a love mixed with despair,
a love without faith and hope, is far from understanding it. Man by his wisdom
cannot understand God. The love which is God and which is the basis of God’s
universe is something far greater and more fundamental than man’s mind, in its
present condition and grasp. Yet, although it is beyond man’s wisdom, God has
maintained a witness to it among men and all those who have loved God have been
enabled by His Spirit to know it:
“That Christ
may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love,
may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and
depth, and height; and to know the love of Christ, which passeth
knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fullness of God.” (Ephesians
3:17-19)
To learn what love is
we must go to God, for He alone is perfect love and He alone can reveal unsearchable riches and power of that which is the
foundation of His universe. And we shall not go to Him in vain.
In his Gospel, John
the Evangelist claims to have been an eye-witness of the scenes that he records
(
“For God so
loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth
in him should not perish but have everlasting life.” (John 3:16)
To say that one loves
God or man has no reality except as there is the evidence of that love. God’s
love is manifested in action, as stated in the above quotation. “God is love”.
Love is not merely an attribute of God; it is the essence of His being. His
attributes are derived from it. All His thoughts and purposes are expressions
of it. All His actions are motivated and controlled by it. His whole being is
ruled by the law of perfect love. God’s love is always manifested in action:
“In all their affliction He was afflicted, and the angel of His
presence saved them: in His love and in his pity He redeemed them; and He bare
them, and carried them all the days of old.” (Isaiah 63:9)
“Now before
the feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour was come that he
should depart out of this world unto the Father, having loved his own which
were in the world, he loved them unto the end.” (John 13.01)
Love must express
itself; therefore it requires an object. For that reason God created man. But,
essential also to love is the communion of love. Therefore love’s object must
be capable of returning love. So God created man in His own image and likeness,
with love as the ruling principle of his being. Love must be intelligent and
voluntary. Therefore, God created man an intelligent being with an absolutely
free will. A being that loved because he was obliged to do so, or because he
could not do otherwise, would be incapable of true love. He could not provide
the true communion of love that love requires. But the communion of love is not
love’s ultimate objective. It cannot satisfy love fully. Love is a creative
force, and communion that is sterile is not the product of perfect love. Love
that does not go beyond communion and produces only personal enjoyment is
selfish and is not true love. Love finds its perfect fulfilment in a fellowship
of selfless service which has as its objective the producing of the fruits of
love in benefit to others. The true communion of love, therefore, is found in
fellowship in love’s work. It was for such service that God placed man on the
earth. He placed him in a position in which the full expression of love was
possible; man’s position was an exalted one. He was made a co-labourer with God
in the works of love. He was to replenish the earth, having power to create beings
in His own image: beings to love, who were capable of fully returning his love
and with whom he could fellowship in love’s work. He was to subdue and use all
the forces and resources of the earth, to exercise dominion over all its living
creatures and to be its head and ruler under God.
“In the
beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The
same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him; and without
Him was not anything made that was made. In Him was life; and the life was the
Light of men. And the Light shineth in darkness; and
the darkness comprehended it not. (John 01: 01-05)
“And as
Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be
lifted up: that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have eternal
life. For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that
whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life.” (John
03.14-16)
The Cross of Jesus
Christ in the believer’s heart is something infinitely vaster and more
fundamental in its significance than any trial or difficulty. It is death,
utter, complete, all-embracing; it is life: Christ’s
life, full abounding, dynamic, triumphant. In the believer it is the
consummation of the work of God’s Word, the two-edged sword, in dividing
between that which is of the soul and that which is of the Spirit of God. The
Cross of Christ is the basic, essential fact in God’s dealings with the
believer. We can know God only as we know the Cross of Christ. We can
understand God’s Word only as we know the Cross of Christ. In all preaching and
teaching, in all faithful prayer, unselfish service and warfare, the Christian
acts upon the Cross of Christ.
All good is derived from
perfect love. Truth, justice, holiness, purity, mercy, kindness, faith,
patience, longsuffering, unselfishness, hope, joy, peace, unity – all are
products of love. They are its natural and inevitable fruits. When they are the
fruit of perfect love they are perfect. Perfect love also, from its very
nature, is perfect in wisdom, omniscient, omnipotent, invincible and eternal.
“Love is
never tired of waiting; love is kind; love has no envy; love has no high
opinion of itself, love has no pride; love’s ways are ever fair, it takes no
thought for itself; it is not quickly made angry, it takes no account of evil;
it takes no pleasure in wrongdoing, but has joy in what is true. Love has the
power of undergoing all things, having faith in all things, hoping all things…
But now we still have faith, hope, love, these three; and the greatest of these
is love.” (1 Corinthians 13: 04-08, and 13 in Basic English.)
On the Gospel of John
The first three
Gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke are called the synoptics, from two Greek words
which mean “a view together,” the idea being that they set forth the same
general view of the story of Jesus Christ, and contain much the same material
although differently arranged. They were the earliest Gospels published
probably within twenty-five or thirty years of the date of the ascension, and
did the work of an evangelist in carrying the knowledge of Jesus to peoples
theretofore ignorant of Him. From among these men and women thus converted to
Jesus Christ, Jews, Romans and Greeks, the Christian Church was now founded,
and to this latter body, composed of all three classes, the Gospel of John was
addressed.
We were happy, one
day, when we heard a young convert say, “I do not have a religion, I have
Christ”. At his office some of his colleagues had asked him if his religion
forbade him from doing certain things and he prefaced his reply with just that
statement. We felt he had gone far and seen a clear light.
Christ is the fullness of God, of His wisdom, power and love. In Him, we find met all the longings of our soul. From Him, we drink
the living waters; from Him, moment by moment, we receive light and strength;
in Him, we find comfort and peace, triumph and rest. Without Him, we have
nothing; we are weak and undone, poor and alone. In the Bible, the Word of God,
we do not find religious dogmas but revealed facts about the living God and the
living Christ. We are not given doctrines to accept as a religious code but
spiritual facts to be experienced in our lives. God’s purpose was not to give
man a set of doctrines that he should accept by faith as a mysterious formula
from the spiritual realm and learn by heart that he might state them correctly,
but to provide him with spiritual truth that would be life, wisdom and power to
him in the inner man.
Christ is our life. As
He fills our self-loving hearts with Himself, the image and likeness of the God
of perfect love is manifested anew in us, and God’s purpose for us is
fulfilled. There is communion between Him and us – the fellowship which brings
perfect joy, the working together in the carrying out of the great purposes of
love that through Christ bring life out of death. Then, there is the fulfilment
of the prayer which the Lord made for us to the Father:
That they
all may be one, as You, Father, are
in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may
believe that You sent Me. And the glory which You gave Me I have given them,
that they may be one just as We are one: I in them, and You in Me; that they
may be perfect in one, and that the world may know that You have sent Me, and
have loved them as You have loved Me. (John 17: 21-23 NKJV) And I have declared
to them Your name, and will declare it, that the love which You loved Me may be
in them, and I in them.” (John 17: 26 NKJV)
Thirty years about,
had elapsed, and with the growth and development of the church had come up
certain questions for investigation and settlement that the fourth Gospel was
particularly designed to meet. These questions touched mainly on the person and
work of Jesus, as the Messiah, His nature and the character and significance of
His death, so that in answering them John necessarily reveals to us the deepest
and profoundest truth found anywhere in the Gospels. For the same reason John’s
Gospel is nearly altogether new in its facts as compared with the synoptics.
This is absolutely not to say that John invented what he wrote, or that
the substance of his Gospel was unknown to the other writers, but only that in
the wisdom of God the relation of such things as he records was held back until
the period when it was particularly needed and could best be understood and
appreciated. John was the last survivor of the twelve, dying somewhere near the
close of the first century, kept on the earth by divine Providence, until, like
his Master, he, too, had finished the work given to do.
The victorious walk
with Jesus Christ means the fulfilling of the basic commandment to love God
with all the heart, mind and strength and our neighbour as oneself. That is the
victorious life that our Lord lived. For us to do this, Christ must live in us,
for to Him alone is it possible. Triumphing in Christ is not a passive state.
The victorious life is not the peace of stagnation. It is unceasing warfare. It
is Christ’s continual victory over our persistent weakness; the manifestation
of Christ’s love and the bringing into death of our selfishness. It is
self-discipline based upon love and faith. It is the acknowledging of own
weakness that His strength may be revealed. It is participating, as an
instrument, in the carrying out of Christ’s purposes. It is trusting
Him implicitly and obeying Him without question. It is permitting Him to dwell
in us in His fullness and to carry out His perfect will through us.
The proof of the later
date of John’s Gospel is found in references as
Further illustration
of its depth, if desired, could be found in the nature of the miracles it
records, every one of which seems to show a higher degree of power, for
example, than those in the synoptics, and so
testifying all the more emphatically to the divine origin of Jesus’
message, and by inference to the deity of the Messenger. Witness the turning of water into wine
(chap. 2), the healing of the nobleman’s son in the same chapter, and that of
the impotent man in chapter 5. Also the man born blind (chap.
9), and the raising of Lazarus (chap. 11).
The nature of the
discourses in John’s Gospel illustrates the same thing. They are the
profoundest themes which fell from the lips of our Lord: The New Birth (chap.
3), the Living water (chap. 4), the Honour of the Son (chap. 10), the Farewell
Discourse (chaps. 13-16).
Consider also, in this
connection the character of the doctrines emphasised in John’s record. For
instance, those related to the Godhead alone: Observe how he speaks of God in
the abstract, (
The task that God gave
the Christians was not the reforming of the world or of society but the
preaching of the Cross of Jesus Christ that men might become again “partakers
of the Divine nature”. Any other work is waste of time because it can produce
no true fruit. Our Lord taught the folly of endeavouring to put a new patch on
an old garment. He made no attempt to do so. The ministry to which the Lord has
called us may take the place that He should occupy, if we come to think of it
as our power, our work and not as Christ speaking His Word and working His work
through us. Even our knowledge of the Lord’s will may separate us from His
presence, if we take His purpose into our hands to bring it to pass by our
strength to the secret glory of our own heart.
When we realise that
Jesus Christ is our goal, our life, our all, not religion, we feel in our mind
a great release. We are freed from the deadness of the letter; we have gone
beyond the sphere in which the Pharisee may cover his heart of sin with a cloak
of religious works and orthodoxy. We have so left that which never could
satisfy our thirst for God and have entered into reality. We have found Him and
communion and joy and strength, and we could never be content again with
anything less.
Philippe
De Coster, D.D.
Evangelical
Bible Teacher
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