So Simple, Yet So Not Happening

September 28, 2009, 8:15 am by dc-agape.

John Chapter 15 – 16:4

There are so many things that need to be said about this chapter.  Being fruitful, love and obedience, answered prayers, knowing Jesus’ purpose, the greatest love, being chosen, being hatred, hatred without reason, and killing in the name of YHWH.  This chapter is packed with good examples of what a follower of Jesus is supposed to do to the world, experience in the world, and display to the world.  But this chapter does one other thing…it makes it obvious to the non-believer that Christian ≠ follower of Jesus.  I will discuss each one, and let you decide.

Being fruitful is part of being a follower of Jesus.  This does not mean just the bringing of souls to YHWH!  It means living a godly life and having a virtuous character.  This does not mean sometimes being fruitful!  We think of seasonal fruiting plants and believe that bearing fruit can be sporadic, but this is not Jesus’ intent.  The “true vine” never goes dormant; it has the light of YHWH always making it grow.  Even the pruning is to make it have more virtue and more proof of a godly life.  Here is the first proof that non-believers have where Christians ≠ followers of Jesus.  In the modern world both “Christians” and non-believers both live virtuous lives.  I can say this because the word “virtue” is not linked to YHWH or even Christianity!  It is defined as living life in conformity to moral or ethical principles.  And YHWH does not have a strangle hold on ethic…it was perfectly fine to own slaves and to be polygamous in the OT, by Jesus’ time polygamy was out of fashion (unethical) yet slavery was still acceptable (ethical).  100 years ago it was unethical to marry inter-racially, but today we see that as common (and ethical) as treating each human as an equal.  Equality was certainly not ethical until the very most recent times, yet we still have issues with this concept!  So if ethics (virtue) change over the millennia, how exactly are we to tell who is a Christian?  We cannot unless they set themselves apart.  The only way Christians have set themselves apart from non-believers is to make false accusations against science, equality (slavery and equal rights), demanding constitutional amendments dictating their particular morality, and vandalizing of family planning clinics.  Are these truly godly life or virtuous character?  Worse is the cyclical nature of Christian’s virtue.  None become more virtuous with age!  No what the non-believer sees is that with age the skeletons in the closet are exposed, proving that the “spiritual” leaders are bogus.  The biggest sign of this is looking at the children of these leaders.  Billy Graham’s son Franklin Graham is a hatemonger, as was Jerry Falwell son Jonathan, and Pat Robertson (Timothy Brian).  Are these truly “godly”, are the actions of these men virtuous (both the father and the son)?  The biggest skeleton in each of these fathers’ closet is what the son does!  For it is from the parents that the child learns hatred and corruption.  Isn’t it always said that being the preacher’s kid is the worst, they even have a name for it Preacher’s Kid Syndrome?  If a preacher cannot bring their own child up to exemplify Jesus, that is one huge skeleton in the closet.

The Gospel of John returns to the concept of love and obedience being linked.  One cannot love Jesus without obey his teachings.  Not the teachings of Paul, Luther, John Smith, or John Calvin.  One must follow and obey the actually teachings of Jesus to love Jesus.  Yet only 66.6% of the NT does not deal with the teachings of Jesus.  Where is the focus on the important teachings that the followers of Jesus must obey?  Why have they been superseded by the teachings of Paul?  How can one obey and love Jesus when so little of his teachings remain?  Only two documents (the Gospels of Matthew or Mark and John) remain of the closest thing we have to the teaching of Jesus.  Even the Book of Acts is suspect, it was most likely written by a follower of Paul!  What happened to the documents that were written by the actually followers of Jesus?  Why were they not canonized?  What teachings did they invoke that the Orthodox Church found inappropriate?  Jesus had many disciples (more than the twelve) shouldn’t we have more copies of what the individual disciples had to say?  With the overwhelming focus on the teachings of Paul verse the teaching of Jesus, does not the NT come under a cloud of questionability?  Did none of the original disciples make records of their gnosis, their logos from Jesus?  Why did the followers of these men not record the sermons these men taught?  Or did these recording get written, but the Orthodox Church deemed them unacceptable?  Could the Christianity that “won” actually be a false teaching of Jesus?  It certainly is not based on obey Jesus; instead it is based on obeying men…especially Paul.  With so little of the Christian doctrine based directly on Jesus teachings one must wonder.  The Beatitudes are held as models to aspire to, instead of ways to actually live life.  But shouldn’t they be obeyed (not just used as an unreachable goal) if one loves Jesus?  As I have said before, Atheist do not hate YHWH nor Christians because of the hard teachings…no it is because of the hypocrisy in the lives of Christians that Atheist despise.  And the lame excuse of “we are only sinful human” does not cut it.  Being “born of the Spirit” and “guided by the Spirit” and “born of God” and this one specifically:

1^st John 3:9-10 No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God’s seed remains in him; he cannot go on sinning, because he has been born of God.  This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are: Anyone who does not do what is right is not a child of God; nor is anyone who does not love his brother.

This verse puts to death the lame excuse of we continue to sin after “loving Jesus”.  If you follow Jesus you no longer sin!  And if you claim to be a Christian and you continue to sin, you make this verse a lie.  By making this verse a lie, you invalidate the entire Bible…since this is the Word of God.  Loving Jesus means obeying Jesus, it also means living a righteous life without sin.  Otherwise, you make a mockery of the teachings of Jesus and will not be pruned, you will be thrown away to be burned.  Get it right “Christians” is all I can have to say!

Well since I have at least seven more topics from this chapter, this might go on for some time.  By far, the Gospel of John has got to be the most important source of the teachings of Jesus.  The Synoptic Gospels were written to collaborate with each other.  The Gospel of John was written to teach Jesus’ followers how to love and obey Jesus.

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