INTOLERANT BUT TRUE!
“The one who comes from above is above all; the one who is from the earth belongs to the earth, and speaks as one from the earth. The one who comes from heaven is above all. He testifies to what He has seen and heard, but no one accepts His testimony. Whoever has accepted it has certified that God is truthful. For the one whom God has sent speaks the words of God, for God gives the Spirit without limit. The Father loves the Son and has placed everything in His hands.
“Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God’s wrath remains on him.” John 3:31-36.
Whose words are these? Jesus’ words? John the Baptist’s words? The Apostle John’s words? My guess is that they are a little aside that John wrote to interpret John the Baptist’s defence of his lesser position as the friend of the bridegroom, not the Messiah. Sounds like Jesus, doesn’t it? Again, my guess is that, during the author John’s years as an intimate friend of Jesus, first as His disciple during His earthly ministry and then as an apostle to the world, he began to think like Jesus.
Over the years of his walk with the Lord, John saw in Him a man, but much more than a mere man. Jesus had spoken about heavenly things with such knowledge and authority that He must have been there before His sojourn on earth. Unlike other humans who only came into being at their conception, Jesus existed long before His time on earth.
We cannot conceive of anything we have not actually experienced. How can we? No matter how lively an imagination we might have, whatever we conjure up is only fanciful. It has no foundation in fact. Science fiction is only that and only useful for entertainment. Jesus was not into sci-fi; He spoke about reality based on truth. This is the difference between Him and those who have created religious beliefs out of their imagination.
Why is it that people refuse to accept His testimony? The religious leaders clung tenaciously to their ideas and interpretations of the Torah because they believed that they were right. Underneath that was the need to impress the people and to hold onto the power they had over them by setting up and policing the rules they had made around the Torah. Underneath that, however, was something far more sinister and closer to the bone – they were greedy and wicked at heart.
Jesus diagnosed their problem, and the problem of everyone who refuses to believe in Him:
“This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed.” John 3:19, 20.
John uncovered another amazing truth about the man, Jesus. It was His anointing with the Holy Spirit that made Him the man He was. Contrary to what we may think, Jesus set aside His deity when He came into the world, and lived and acted only as a man. He steadfastly chose to live in submission to the Father and not use His divine power to do anything.
At His baptism, He was affirmed by the Father and anointed by the Holy Spirit for His role as Messiah. Satan hounded Him to act independently of God but, to His dying breath, He chose to be a true Son by trusting and obeying the Father, not doing His own thing. The Father, in turn, entrusted to Him the role of atoning sacrifice, and gave Him the highest name and authority in heaven and on earth.
Unfortunately for those who reject Jesus and declare that Christians are intolerant by insisting that He is the only way to the Father, they will discover in the end that they were wrong. The Bible could not have stated it more clearly:
“Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God’s wrath remains on him.” Intolerant according to us, maybe, but nevertheless true.
Acknowledgement
Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.