Jesus' claims here don't seem all that straight forward to me. To claim as he is shown here: Whoever believes in me believes not in me but in him who sent me. And whoever sees me sees him who sent me. is not to point the finger away from himself and towards God but to point to himself and say -- look here if you want to find God. In the religious context of his day -- surely that was a call for absolute obedience to him.
And he doesn't lay down the rules and regs here -- yes he will later. But this is not about -- do these things and you'll be in God's good books. There isn't a list of instructions. Procedures. Laws. Rules.
What counts is relationship. Jesus -- at least here -- calls us to a relational kind of spirituality. Reject me and reject life. Follow me and embrace life. We'll work out the details later.
4 comments:
I like your post, David-- a good improvement on my comment on the lesson. But I'm interested in what you may mean about the rules: "And he doesn't lay down the rules and regs here -- yes he will later."
Do you mean they will come later in the book-- or later on the disciple's path.
I'm also interested in what you may have to say about Fox's christology; all I can recall right now is "let Christ be your teacher."
I meant later in the book. And also elsewhere in the NT.
The Jesus of John seems much more interested in building a teacher pupil relationship than teaching content. If we go to this passage looking the 5 rules we need to obey in order to be good Christians it ain't there.
We follow Jesus. The rest comes later.
That's what I see here too, David - the call to relationship. I guess that's mostly the aim of the Spiritual Exercises - engender a relationship with Jesus and the rest will follow as a result of that
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