Covenant Essays. T. Hoogsteen
Читать онлайн книгу.
longed for a rule culturally infiltrated with sensual pleasures. Ironclad Caesarists perceived a global power of military overmight submissive to the reigning Caesar. Outnumbered Jews dreamed of a kingdom of law starting at the time of the general resurrection of the dead, they in supreme control. Each outmoded enemy force fomented a rulership at war against the Lord Jesus and his Kingdom. Each eschatologically oriented competitor to the Christ saw the future in an eternally authoritative identity isolated from the Lord and Savior.
This world, according to the Fourth Gospel, enclosed a three-fold realm of suffocating evil, each a powerful evolution of power, which brooked no opposition from the Christ and his Kingdom. Throughout, then, in the tortuous calamities of that time Jesus testified in different ways to the world’s hatred, its detestation of, its abhorrence at his Person and work, and its reprobate refusal to believe him in the strength of the Spirit of truth. This detestation of and abhorrence at the Lord and Savior began within Jewry. John 1:10–11, “He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world knew him not. He came to his own home, and his own people received him not.” Hence, he prophesied, John 14:19p, “Yet a little while, and the world will see me no more.” John 14:22, “Judas (not Iscariot) said to him, ‘Lord how is it that you will manifest yourself to us, and not to the world?” In answer, the Savior prophesied that the bad-tempered world’s enmity only increased with aging.
Therefore, with the first half of a general conditional, for instance, John 15:18a, “If the world hates you . . . ,” Jesus posited a vital part of a statement of fact—with a future emphasis. The Lord revealed this violence of resistance as a burden of existence for the Twelve, a continuous action always on the increase. In the Gospel according to John, the Apostle pointed to the gathering enmity to kill Jesus, which the Twelve witnessed from nearby. This ill intention spread wide. Earlier, John 9:22, yes, “. . . the Jews had already agreed that if any one should confess [Jesus] to be Christ, he was to be put out of the synagogue.” This stain of excommunication with or without due process forced a person into inevitable and unenviable placesof alienation. Overall, before the Acts, the Jews unloaded little evidence that they hated any of the Twelve, except they accompanied Jesus. All Jewish abhorrence before the Crucifixion tightened about the Messiah. Later, in the Acts of the Apostles, snobbery of hatred agitated with willfully blind intervention—jailing, scourging, and death.
In this conditional, a general statement of fact, Jesus said, John 15:18b, “. . . know that [Jewry] has hated me before you.” This “before you” earmarked in point of time that the world hated Jesus before the Twelve. Second, this “before you” escalated in terms of priority an unimaginable deep hatred from out of the soul of the Old Church, which enmity the Apostle documented unapologetically from the Fourth Gospel’s beginning. That is, first, the Jews refused to acknowledge and bow before him as the Lord and Savior. John 3:11, “. . . you do not receive our testimony.” Not his. Not the Father’s. Rather, they persecuted Jesus with increasing vigor, plotting to kill him. John 7:1, 30, 32, 8:40, 44–45, 59, 10:31, 33, 39, 11:50, 57; etc. Jewish determination to do him in knew no restraint. From within the narrow perimeters of Judaism, they perceived nothing of the glorious vistas of the covenant life the Lord revealed.
This must be stressed: the world, all flesh, beginning with Jewry, hated Jesus before the Twelve, not only in point of time, but more intently, out of unintelligible conviction; the antithetical world of the Jews, as well as the Caesarian and the Hellenistic, tolerated absolutely no room for the Lord of the Church, Savior. Hence, out of a limiting principle, they detested him. For his origin as the Son of God was not from below, out of any old-line civilization, and his ruling as the Holy One did not derive out of any sphere of unbelief. In every way, all flesh perceived him an intrusive alien, unwelcome, a disturber of human plans for and dreams of world conquest. He himself was in the world, but not of the world, of any sphere created by unbelievers. For instance, to Judaists on the attack he declared, John 8:23, “You are from below, I am from above; you are of this world, I am not of this world.” Later, in the great prayer that is now John 17, he spoke to the Father with a pastoral eye on the disciples, vs 14, “I have given them thy word; and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.” As accurate descriptor, Jesus tarnished these enemies forever.
---
During this extensive teaching phase, the Lord Jesus prophesied that the Twelve too had better count on this hatred. Such was the groundbreaking education of disciples soon to be apostles. In this world of cascading pressures and hardening enmities they lived, always squeezing and seducing them to conform to cultural roots deep within reprobation.
WORLD LOVE
Jesus plainly and dominically informed the Twelve of the world’s eschatological negativity; in the ongoing historical process of the Church, they too faced forbidding pain. John 13:16, 15:20a, “Remember the word that I said to you, ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will persecute you.” Under the teleological forces inherent in Christ’s rulership over heaven and earth, they also had to absorb man-eating persecution, a view of the future to soak into all depths of soul. In the meantime, however, still at table, Jesus drew the Twelve appropriately into his messianic pain.
Hatred of Christ, strangely, bonds unbelievers in a love, albeit a different sort, i.e., a set of inflamed connections solely determined by striking out against the Son of God. This worldly love, actually, a friendship borne out a common enmity, bonded first the Jews together—Pharisee and Sadducee—longtime unsavory enemies. For the Crucifixion a conjunction solidified between Jerusalem and Rome; in that reprehensible friendship, the Sadducees, representatives of Hellenistic civilization, brawled as fiercely as the Pharisees. Thus, the three hateful evolutions of power sought to eradicate the Christ from out of the midst of their worlds. Whether this or that religiosity—at the time of the writing of the Fourth Gospel: Hellenism, Caesarianism, and, worst, Judaism—the threesome underwent assimilation to oppose Jesus. At Jesus’s trial, the Sadducees, largely Hellenistic in culture, and the Pharisees, main formulators of Judaism, easily joined cavalier Caesarianism to murder the Lord Jesus, seeking thereby to do away with his coming Kingdom.
To brace the Twelve for worse to come, Jesus taught, John 15:19a, “If you were of the world, the world would love its own.” By this contrary-to-fact conditional, he declared the opposite: his disciples were not of the world. Hence, they too faced persecution. They were in the world, but . . . not of the world. Hence, they were his, the New Church in her beginnings.
Nevertheless, Jesus prophesied, allowing none to forget covetous Judas Iscariot, the temptation to be of the world, Hellenism, Caesarianism, Judaism, or an amalgamation of the three, glimmered and shimmered with sunny demeanors all around. Appeal made by each religiosity and all collectively impinged attractively upon these men; perhaps not so much as they listened to Jesus in this remarkable teaching session, but later, when they experienced its punitive values. Even while with Jesus, Judas had already fallen, engrossed in a burning temptation. The worlds of man through token friendship offered pleasant release from the hatred Jesus prophesied. What intrinsic value pains of shunning and persecution, if avoidable? However, the Satan, by manifesting himself through the various religiosities of the day, the one sensually appealing, the other powerfully fearsome, and the third comfortably familiar, promised a love, a friendship to the Twelve. Friendship to people suffering pains of rejection by offering a helping hand, imposing support, or confidential affection catches at the heart. In drawing to a common front against the Christ, the world loves its own and gladly makes room for any uncommitted followers of Jesus Christ.
All drawn into the religious hopes of Hellenism, Caesarianism, or Judaism understood and helped each other. However deep or shallow this friendship may have been, adherents sensed a rudimentary belonging together. Even so, more contemporary, Roman Catholics, whatever differences among themselves, know they belong together in Papalism. Similarly, Protestants, whatever tensions among them, know an abiding bond in Arminianism, or in Dispensationalism. Humanists, too, however they differ on specific issues, know they belong together in human rights movements. Islamics as well, wherever across the globe, immediately connect in Mohammedanism. For the same reason small-c conservatives draw together into common fellowship. In addition, small-l liberals find togetherness among themselves. Whatever the religiosity, ideologists sense deep down