Thomas Blackshear
Forgiveness
Life and death are two facts everyone grows up learning about so that by the time a person is an adult, he or she knows death is the sure and certain end of life. I, too, have seen this principle to be true without exception, so it is the surest fact I know.
Then Jesus came and changed the surest thing I know. First he changed the terminology used from time immemorial to more accurately represent what is happening. It's hard for me to accept because my eyes and experience have told me different my whole life. But, on three occasions Jesus went to a group of people and told them that the person they were mourning for was only sleeping. The groups really couldn't fathom the idea because it contradicted everything they had been taught and everything they had seen and experienced. That didn't stop Jesus, though, from saying that people were really only sleeping. And when he brought them back to life he merely told them to wake from their sleep. He told two of the three very directly, "Wake up." And they did. He told the third, Lazarus, a direction to walk out of the tomb, "Hey, out here," knowing that Lazarus was already awake. Even for himself, Jesus did nothing different. After being killed in the sight of many, many people and sealed tightly in a tomb. He simply woke up.
Jesus also taught about life in a different way than others. Teachers before him could say that following their teachings would give a person "quality life" or "enlightened life" while alive. But Jesus told a woman he could give her living water, and after drinking it, she would never thirst again. He told Martha that he was life, that she should trust him on that because her brother was going to wake up. He told other people that he was truth and life, but he didn't mean that he was offering good instruction to follow, and by following it, they could live enlightened (the abundant life).
It was a different teaching. John 10 illustrates well the idea that has changed what I have seen and what I have experienced. Jesus was saying that his words were authentic and different from what others before him had taught. He used an analogy about a shepherd with his sheep, but the people he spoke this to didn't understand his analogy. So, he changed one element in the analogy slightly. He said that he was a gateway for his sheep to enter through for good pastures. Everyone else who had come before him as a gateway to some kind of good teaching was merely a thief to rob the sheep of good pasture. Then he spoke of what he had that the ones before him never had.
Verse 9
ἐγώ εἰμι ἡ θύρα· δι’ ἐμοῦ ἐάν τις εἰσέλθῃ σωθήσεται καὶ εἰσελεύσεται καὶ ἐξελεύσεται καὶ νομὴν εὑρήσει
(I am the gateway. Whoever enters through me will be rescued. He will come and go and find pastures to eat from.)
Verse 10
ὁ κλέπτης οὐκ ἔρχεται εἰ μὴ ἵνα κλέψῃ καὶ θύσῃ καὶ ἀπολέσῃ· ἐγὼ ἦλθον ἵνα ζωὴν ἔχωσιν καὶ περισσὸν ἔχωσιν
(The thief doesn't come unless he is coming to steal, take life, and destroy. I have come so that you could have life, and you could have something more than you can imagine.)
Jesus didn't keep people in the dark. He gave his purpose. He said that he came so that people could have two things. I have thought I knew what the first thing was - life - because I was taught as a youth that life referred to my second life as a reward for believing and following the Bible. The second thing was merely a description of the first thing: abundant life. Jesus came that we might have life and have it more abundantly. Translations have opted to describe the quality of life than to speak of Jesus offering life and offering something else separately. Consequently, I didn't know about a second reason for his coming.
As it turns out, I think I am like Martha, after Lazarus died. She told Jesus she knew Lazarus would rise again on the last day. That's where I was. Jesus chastised her for not seeing that he was life, and so was Lazarus for believing. I feel Martha's chastisement because Martha's response would have been mine. She understood, as have I, that this life ends, then believing produces a second type of life, a spiritual life.
In order to arrive at a translation of what Jesus said as abundant life, one has to make the second idea following the second verb into merely an adjective for life. Other people translate the second idea after the second verb descriptively also, but put it into an adjectival phrase, like life in all its fullness or an adverbial phrase such as live life fully. That's not what is said, though, so it is hard for me to make the second idea a description of life. Jesus said "I have come so that you should have life and you should have ______." The normal way to make adjectives or adverbs in Greek does not use two verbs . The sentence construction in this passage has two verbs. They are the same verb, but that redundancy is to show that there are two separate elements, two different direct objects, following the verb. That would make the second object a substantive like life is, not a description of life. The meaning of the second element would not change the semantic domain of something extra, added, extravagant, superfluous, or extraordinary, as in the word abundant. It would just change the part of speech from a descriptive word or phrase to a nominative word or phrase. So the idea is that we could have life (first direct object) and something extraordinary (second direct object).
So, something exceedingly more than I have now is what Jesus said he was offering. I have life now, but going through Jesus as a gateway to eat in green pastures offers me a whole lot more of something I don't have now. As I have understood the passage in the past, entering through Jesus gave me more of something I have already. But, Jesus is saying that if I don't go through him as the gateway, then I don't get what he offers. Instead, a thief steals my life and the second idea, kills them in me, and eliminates them altogether.
The second object is a noun, so it is a place (or an idea). Jesus told the Twelve later in John (John 14.4) that he was going to prepare a place for them (or an idea, if the place is taken as metaphorical). So, in the passage above, Jesus seems to be indicating this place he was preparing. This idea would make the translation of the second half of verse 10, "I came so that you could have life and have an extraordinary place, one beyond your imagination."
For John it took Jesus' sleep before he understood what life was. He had to go to the tomb, walk in, and see Jesus' grave clothes on the ground and his face cloth folded on the burial pedestal. He looked around, then knew what he was seeing. It impressed him - so much so that he included an image of what he came to understand from the tomb when he wrote his visions at the end of his Earthly life. His last vision was of the place where God was, Jesus also. His description follows (Revelation 22).
Verse 1
Καὶ ἔδειξέν μοι ποταμὸν ὕδατος ζωῆς λαμπρὸν ὡς κρύσταλλον, ἐκπορευόμενον ἐκ τοῦ θρόνου τοῦ θεοῦ καὶ τοῦ ἀρνίου
(He showed me a river as clear as crystal, flowing with the water of life from the throne of God and the Lamb)
Verse 2
ἐν μέσῳ τῆς πλατείας αὐτῆς καὶ τοῦ ποταμοῦ ἐντεῦθεν καὶ ἐκεῖθεν ξύλον ζωῆς ποιοῦν καρποὺς δώδεκα, κατὰ μῆνα ἕκαστον ἀποδιδοῦν τὸν καρπὸν αὐτοῦ, καὶ τὰ φύλλα τοῦ ξύλου εἰς θεραπείαν τῶν ἐθνῶν
(And in the middle of its widest part, the river flowed on either side of a live tree, which produced twelve fruits, one type for each month, and which grew both fruit and leaves for healing of the nations.)
Since water is the sustaining force of life on Earth, what better image for John's vision than showing water as a river from the source of life itself, the throne of God and the Lamb. John understood what Jesus was about and who he was. He was the essence of life. He didn't have life in him, he was life as was his father. They shared the same essence. John used the thrones of God and Jesus as the source of a river giving life to a tree to produce its fruits and leaves for healing the world's nations.
Beautiful imagery. He captured very well what he had suddenly realized and understood clearly when he had gazed at the burial clothes on the ground of the tomb those many years ago. Jesus was life, and he surrounds us like a river around a tree living in the middle of it. And, we serve as a healing force for the nations. Beautiful imagery, truly.
Verses 3-5 give that o-o-oh so flavorful morsel. What Jesus said when he walked the Earth, that he came for people to have something so much more than is imaginable, is also described. It was the second idea from John 10 where Jesus said the purpose for him to come was so that 1) we could have life, AND 2) we could have something much, much more, something extraordinary, beyond our imagination - the direct presence of God.
Verse 3
καὶ πᾶν κατάθεμα οὐκ ἔσται ἔτι. καὶ ὁ θρόνος τοῦ θεοῦ καὶ τοῦ ἀρνίου ἐν αὐτῇ ἔσται, καὶ οἱ δοῦλοι αὐτοῦ λατρεύσουσιν αὐτῷ
(There will no longer be anything restricting us from him. The throne of God and the Lamb will be in it, and everyone will serve him.)
Verse 4
καὶ ὄψονται τὸ πρόσωπον αὐτοῦ, καὶ τὸ ὄνομα αὐτοῦ ἐπὶ τῶν μετώπων αὐτῶν
(They will see him in person and his name will be everywhere they look.)
Verse 5
καὶ νὺξ οὐκ ἔσται ἔτι καὶ οὐκ ἔχουσιν χρείαν φωτὸς λύχνου καὶ φωτὸς ἡλίου, ὅτι κύριος ὁ θεὸς φωτίσει ἐπ’ αὐτούς, καὶ βασιλεύσουσιν εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας τῶν αἰώνων.
(Night never falls, and no one ever needs light from a torch or from the sun because the Lord God illuminates their world. They rule into infinity.)
I don't have to settle for believing like Martha or like the Twelve before Jesus appeared to them after he woke up. I don't have to worry about whether I will receive an abundant life now or not. Jesus came for us to have his life and his place. We have a three dimensional life now. It will continue after we sleep with some modifications, evidently, to this existence. We experience an existence now, but going through the gateway of Jesus and sleeping briefly allows our existence to change over to an incredibly majestic place, a place in the direct presence of God. Continuance of existence is the name of the game because thieves steal, end, and destroy one's existence, or at least our existence in the presence of God.
My response to what Jesus offers is deep and not always found in words. But if music and words could express it, it would be in the words to the song below, Take off my shoes.
[The Greek text used is the Nestle-Aland 28th edition.]
[Songs used are Take Off My Shoes by Delirious and I'll See You Again by Westlife.]
[Introductory art, Forgiveness, by Thomas Blackshear retrieved from
https://www.google.com/search?q=christian+art&rlz=1C1CHFX_enUS524US524&espv=2&biw=1366&bih=643&tbm=isch&imgil=XcD9egmRwI1opM%253A%253BEEU6XG3sbIgqfM%253Bhttp%25253A%25252F%25252Fwww.spiritandflesh.com%25252Fart_Christian_art_Jesus_Christ_Cosmic_Christ_artChristianReligion.htm&source=iu&pf=m&fir=XcD9egmRwI1opM%253A%252CEEU6XG3sbIgqfM%252C_&usg=__f6MgpiEc1SXco5HCuR4GUKiIzgg%3D&ved=0ahUKEwj5zraWi_3LAhVhkoMKHc1-CBYQyjcILA&ei=op0GV_n1EeGkjgTN_aGwAQ#imgrc=ebn9OG6tZKmPhM%3A]
[Translations from Greek are my own.]
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