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.
Categories
The Triune God
How does one go about explaining something that is so different from us? To try to explain such a thing is to traverse the road of potential major error, this is why we approach the subject at hand with reliance on the Lord for guidance and patience in our weaknesses.
The trinity is a broad subject that would definitely cover more than a single post, book or even library. When one tries to study God in all his greatness and otherness, one sometimes falters at trying to express his attributes and repeatedly one may find him or herself relying on church councils or confessions or doctrinal statements. Those statements are extremely helpful in that godly men studied the word and came up with a concise thought on what they had gleaned.
Error drove the forming of such councils and confessions because they had to respond to what others were saying. So it is the case that the driving force behind some of these confessions would be to prove how another thought was wrong. It is a valid way to progress in the things of Christ?but sometimes we must be careful in relying solely on those councils, catechisms and confessions. Whereas those men sat together and inquired of the Lord in the matter and found themselves fully convinced not one of them had the Lord Himself speaking in their ears or face to face. In other words, these men were interpreting the Word of God just as much as we are?so a study in the trinity must be reliant on the Word of God and not of Men for who knows the inner workings of God but the very Spirit of God?