reynaldo reynoso (admin)
Stated Purpose of the Book of John: John 20:30, 31 ?And truly, Jesus did many other signs in the presence of His disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His name?.
The book of John opens revealing the Word who existed with the
Father (1:1) and was in fellowship with the Father from the very
beginning (1:2). John eventually shows us that within Him was the life
and this life was the very light of men (1:4)…for Jesus Christ Himself
being the resurrection and the life ( 11:25,26) was and is the light of
the world ( 8:12). In a conversation with Nicodemus, Jesus explains
that the worst part, the very condemnation of the world, was that the
Light shone in the darkness but men loved darkness rather than light
(3:19). This puts us in an immediate problem when we get to John 12:39
Men have a potential problem when it comes to loving (agape) in that full-servant enjoyment sense. It has been seen plenty of times, a wife gets sick and a husband starts taking care of her and watching over her and his self-perceived role of “husband / lover” shifts to the bitter “caretaker / parent”. In some cases, if an illness is prolonged the husband may detach to the point of remaining in the caretaker role even after his wife gets better.
Mentally, it’s a dangerous place to be in. No longer are the lover feelings being placed on the wife, but she becomes a vehicle of love-bearing or caretaking: self-sacrifice at it’s worst. The difference is so drastic that the husband might transfer his intimate love to something or someone else.
Now, it would be important to realize that I did not say, "men are not sinners".
That would have been foolish and completely inconsistent with the
thrust of the passage. I am simply saying that the poetic passage is
not a point by point listing of the utter depravity of man but rather a
descriptive illustration of how all of mankind, both Jew and Greek, are sinners (Rom. 3:9).
People are often pictorial in their thinking. We may not be very good with amorphous concepts which consist only of words, but when we attach the words to an image the words make sense. For instance, the idea of a “singularity in space and time whose escape velocity exceeds the speed of light” makes more sense when described as a “black hole”. The mind went from a mathematical construction right to an image of a swirling mass of darkness with maybe a little spaceship being pulled into the vortex.
God often employs illustrations to get us to understand what he’s
talking about…be it inanimate objects (the tabernacle) or living
advertisements (Pharoah). One particular illustration in the New
Testament has an incredible double-edge. The word-picture paints a
mural of love for husbands to learn from and at the same time forms
part of the greater canvas of Christ’s love for the Church.