As you get older, the idea that the Old and New Testament are just about Jesus, comes into focus more-and-more. This explanation [below/right] of the scene in the Garden of Gethsemane, in focus, is another picture of the Salvation given us… let me repeat that… GIVEN/GIFTED TO US by our Great God’s work at Calvary
- Then the other men [the company of soldiers, the commander, and the Jewish temple police] surged forward, took hold of Jesus, and arrested him. At that moment Simon Peter drew his sword and struck the high priest’s slave, Malchus’, right ear off. But Jesus responded, “No more of this!” Jesus said to Peter, “Sheathe your sword! […]”, the Jesus touched Malchus’ wound and healed him.
[Adapted telling from Luke 22:49-51; John 18:9-15; Matthew 26:49-55 via the International Standard Version (ISV) and the Holman Christian Standard Bible (HCSB)]
A neighbor noted this when watching that video of the “flyover country” Christian’s insight:
So good. Romans 8:1. There is now no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus. It’s the sweet exchange. As human beings, it’s normal to want to come and bring something, show some effort. Earn our salvation. But we can’t.
THIS IS WORTHY OF A FEW VERSES FROM ROMANS 8:1-5 (ISV):
- Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in union with the Messiah Jesus. For the Spirit’s law of life in the Messiah Jesus has set me free from the Law of sin and death. For what the Law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the flesh, God did. By sending his own Son in the form of humanity, he condemned sin by being incarnate, so that the righteous requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us, who do not live according to human nature but according to the Spirit.
I have an insight into a verse many have not seen a connection in. The Apostle Paul visited the Church in Jerusalem ~ keep in mind that Paul was God’s replacement to Judas, not Matthias (who was chosen by lots). In visiting with some of the other Apostles in Jerusalem, he would have surely heard stories about Jesus’ life.
This event in John 13:1-20 would have been one:
JOHN 13:1-2; 4-8
Now before the Passover Festival, Jesus realized that his hour had come to leave this world and return to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. [….] Because Jesus knew that the Father had given everything into his control, that he had come from God, and that he was returning to God, therefore he got up from the table, removed his outer robe, and took a towel and fastened it around his waist. Then he poured some water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to dry them with the towel that was tied around his waist.
Then he came to Simon Peter, who asked him, “Lord, are you going to wash my feet?”
Jesus answered him, “You do not realize now what I am doing, but later on you will understand.”
Peter told him, “You must never wash my feet!”
Jesus answered him, “Unless I wash you, you cannot be involved with me.”
Leon Morris notes of this section in one of the best commentaries on John that this was a story about the cross:
Many take the story as no more than a lesson in humility, quite overlooking the fact that, in that case, Jesus’ dialogue with Peter completely obscures its significance! But those words, spoken in the shadow of the cross, have to do with cleansing, that cleansing without which no one belongs to Christ, that cleansing which is given by the cross alone. As Hunter says, “The deeper meaning then is that there is no place in his fellowship for those who have not been cleansed by his atoning death. The episode dramatically symbolizes the truth enunciated in I John 1:7, ‘We are being cleansed from every sin by the blood of Jesus’.”4
4 Hunter A. M. Hunter, The Gospel according to John, The Cambridge Bible Commentary (Cambridge, 1965) Hunter adds, “Many people today would like to be Christians but see no need of the cross. They are ready to admire Jesus’ life and to praise the sublimity of his moral teaching, but they cannot bring themselves to believe that Christ died for their sins, and that without that death they would be lost in sin. This, as Brunner has said, is one of the prime ‘scandals’ of Christianity for modern man—and the very heart of the apostolic Gospel.”
Leon Morris, The Gospel according to John, The New International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1995), 544–545.
Now, this is me, but I think that that story was the Holy Spirit inspired precursor to this well known verse in Christendom.
In other words, Paul refashioned this Last Supper story of Jesus washing feet to Philippians 2:6–11:
He loved them to the end […] Jesus rising from his seat [throne], removed his outer robe [Godhood], took a towel and fastened it around his waist [took on humanity], he poured some water into a basin and began to wash the disciples [ work on the cross for our punishment]
… hence Paul’s rewording of the core of this story:
PHILIPPIANS 2:6–11
6 who, existing in the form of God,
did not consider equality with God
as something to be exploited.
7 Instead he emptied himself
by assuming the form of a servant,
taking on the likeness of humanity.
And when he had come as a man,
8 he humbled himself by becoming obedient
to the point of death—
even to death on a cross.
9 For this reason God highly exalted him
and gave him the name
that is above every name,
10 so that at the name of Jesus
every knee will bow—
in heaven and on earth
and under the earth—
11 and every tongue will confess
that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.
Jesus’s “servant work” was to cleanse us completely! Even when we live our Christian life at times trampling on His Imago Dei in each of us causing his wrathful jealousy to protect this Image by judgement…
- The remarkable plotline of God’s story is that the depth of the brokenness of the world’s inhabitants is answered by the uniqueness of Jesus. God is jealous of His own image in man, an image created to reflect the rays of His moral majesty. In fact, our creational identity as the image of God says a great deal about who we are, and our purpose, and meaning. (GOSPEL for LIFE)
…all He sees is Christ. It is the old man who is judged righteously in the trampling of this Holy Image in his or her rebellion. And they will know one day that God’s Grace was involved in every breath they took! Every tongue will confess…
And everyone will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord
and bring glory to God the Father
Amen?
Man, God is Good.
A. W. Tozer said of Ravenhill: “To such men as this, the church owes a debt too heavy to pay. The curious thing is that she seldom tries to pay him while he lives. Rather, the next generation builds his sepulchre and writes his biography — as if instinctively and awkwardly to discharge an obligation the previous generation to a large extent ignored.”
Soak in this understanding of Law vs. Gospel via THE WHITE HORSE INN’s discussion of God’s grace in Genesis chapters 15 thru 18 and the promises of redemptive history. Here is the description of this episode from White Horse Inn:
In his Genesis commentary, Walter Brueggemann notes that in chapters 16 to 18, Abraham and Sarah “are not offered as models of faith but as models of disbelief.” In this part of the narrative, he says, “the call is not embraced, but is rejected as non-sensical.” This helps to explain why the couple sought to fulfill God’s promise with Hagar’s assistance. But as Paul explains in Galatians chapter 4, this entire narrative is a tale of two covenants: one of grace, and another of works. Shane Rosenthal talks with Mike Brown about these issues and more as we continue our series on the Gospel in Genesis.
Show Quote:
There are only two kinds of religions in the world – one that seeks righteousness by keeping the law and one that seeks righteousness through faith in Christ. With the exception of Christianity, all of the religions in the world with their pursuits of enlightenment, salvation or self-realization fall into the first category, the category of trusting in self, in one’s own obedience. It’s a religion of human ascent that tries to earn God’s blessing through personal effort rather that receiving God’s blessing by grace through faith alone.
Mike Brown