If you were new to the faith or ‘exploring’ Christianity, you may wonder why there are so many versions of Gospels. Together, the Gospels present or portray Jesus Christ as our Saviour and Lord. Individually, each of them portrays different facets of Christ.
Henrietta Mears defines in her book, What Jesus is All About, each of these four aspects. The Book of Matthew portrays the Promised Messiah, the Book of Mark the Servant of God, the Book of Luke Jesus Christ, the Son of Man, and the Book of John, Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
The apostle John has traditionally been known to many Christians as the one closest to Jesus’ heart. Some identify him as the person privileged to see the visions in Revelation.
On the 12-14th of October, the Klang Valley Bible Conference (KVBC) is organizing a series of expositions on John’s gospel, presented at the Petaling Jaya Free Evangelical Church (PJEFC) by the well-known theologian, William Taylor.
In this series of expositions, William Taylor will present talks on the topic of what God is doing on earth. Specifically in the first session, he shared on the What, the Why, and the How of Christ’s work. Taylor has an uncompromising style but what he shared was extremely important and crucial to humanity.
He conveyed that it is extremely important as Christians that we understand the importance of the work of God. If we identify ourselves as Christians, we need to align ourselves with God, especially as we near the Second Coming of Christ. We cannot be clueless about what God is about if we claim that we’re Christians. It doesn’t make sense.
With everything that has been going on around us, how do we know what the work of God is? Jesus explains the work of God in John 5. He later repeats his explanation in the later part of John 9 and in John 10:38, and John 17:11, 21. Jesus goes beyond the concept of ambassadorship. In John 15:16-30, He is essentially saying He and the Father are one and the same, and therefore coequal. If we want to know what God is doing, the simplest way is to look at Jesus.
John 5:21-22
21 For just as the Father gives life to those he raises from the dead, so the Son gives life to anyone he wants. 22 In addition, the Father judges no one. Instead, he has given the Son absolute authority to judge,
What is God’s work in the present day? It is to give life and to bring spiritual life to the lost and dead (John 5:24). William Taylor pointed out that there are 3 significant verses in John 5 (verses 19, 24, 25) in which Jesus explicitly indicated He was sharing something of paramount importance (“I tell you the truth..”; New Living Translation).
John 5:19
19 So Jesus explained, “I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by himself. He does only what he sees the Father doing. Whatever the Father does, the Son also does.
John 5:24
24 “I tell you the truth, those who listen to my message and believe in God who sent me have eternal life. They will never be condemned for their sins, but they have already passed from death into life.
John 5:25
25 “And I assure you that the time is coming, indeed it’s here now, when the dead will hear my voice—the voice of the Son of God. And those who listen will live.
Two things of significance are to be taken note of here in John 5:16-30. First, all of God’s work has been entrusted to Christ (John 5:21-22). Secondly, all who have ever lived will be summoned to judgment on the Day of Judgement (John 5:27).
It is by intent that Jesus healed the man at the pool of Bethesda on the Sabbath Day. The Sabbath is not just a day of rest. It is the day of God’s most significant work. It points forward to the day of our perfect rest with God through an eternal relationship. Christ is the fulfillment of the Sabbath.
There is an immediate implication in all of this for humanity. What Jesus is saying in John 5:24 is that first and foremost we are in actuality spiritually dead apart from Christ. By coming to this recognition, we understand the vital importance of the work of Christ.
Christ is no sentimentalist, William Taylor communicated. See what He says about humanity in John 8:12 (blind), 8:31 (in bondage), 8:34 (enslaved), and the reason why we hated Him and were unable to hear Him (children to the devil : John 8:44).
‘Have you ever seen a dead body help itself? There is no life in the flesh. When we are spiritually dead, we cannot help ourselves. The dead cannot help themselves and the flesh is helpless,’ Taylor elucidated.
The primary purpose of God for Christ is to bring about the answer to the primary need of men. It is the work of salvation, freeing humanity from bondage, and to give Life where we could not help ourselves. Without Christ, there is no hope for man.
How does Christ bring Life to the spiritually dead? It is through His Word. Christ is not primarily a material, ecological, and political Messiah. He came to save hopeless and helpless people like you and me. To bring light to the blind and freedom to the enslaved, to restore relationship between us and the Father.
The Word of the Son is powerful. A man who was crippled for 30 years – whose limbs must have been shriveled and contracted into contortions – walked just by hearing and obeying the Word of Christ.
What then is the mission of the Church? We can build hospitals and help the sick, but they will still be spiritually dead and therefore hopeless and without true Life. We can build the most beautiful sanctuary and do the Godly work of ecological stewardship, but the populace will still be without Life. We can be leaders with the highest integrity in the land but people will still remain Lifeless.
The crucial mission of the Church, therefore, is to work alongside Christ in what He is doing. It is not about the programmes, and there will not be a point to them if we forget our primary purpose. This unequivocal purpose is to channel all the Church is about and all of its resources towards bringing Life to others. It is by bringing the Word of God to others so that they may hear.
William Taylor will be presenting further expositions into the work of Christ as revealed in the Book of John over the 13th-14th of October 2015 at 8.15pm.
NOTE: This is a condensation of the message shared by William Taylor at the Petaling Jaya Free Evangelical Church, about the work of Christ, written through the writer’s understanding of the message. It is intended as a promotional piece for the conference and has not been vetted by William Taylor, KVBC, or PJEFC.
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Jason Law
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