A Tale Of Two Masters

"I know that you are Abrahams decendants, but you seek to kill Me, because My word has no place in you.  I speak what I have seen with My Father, and you do what you have seen with your father."  They answered and said to Him, "Abraham is our father."  Jesus said to them, "If you were Abrahams children, you would do the words of Abraham.  But now you seek to kill Me, a man who has told you the truth which I heard from God.  Abraham did not do this.  You do the deeds of your father."  Then they said to Him, "We were not born of fornication; We have one father - God."  Jesus said to them, "If God were your Father, you would love Me, for I proceed forth and come from God; nor have I come of Myself, but He sent Me.  Why do you not understand My speech?  Because you are not able to listen to My word.  You are of your father the devil, and the desire of your father you want to do.  He was a murderer from the begining, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him.  When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources, for he is a liar and the father of it.  But because I tell the truth, you do not believe Me.  Which of you convicts Me of sin?  And if I tell the truth, why do you not believe Me?  He who is of God hears God's words; therefore you do not hear, because you are not of God."
John 8: 37 - 47 NKJV

It's hard to imagine that Jesus would throw down such a rebuke on Gods chosen people.  Yet here in the temple on this day, Jesus delivers a stern rebuke to the leaders of the Jewish people.  However, there is absolutely a good reason for this.  For Jesus never wrongly condemned anyone.  His judgement was and always has been righteous.  So, in laymans terms, one could say that these Jewish leaders of the day deserved whatever they received from Jesus.  With this I will not argue.  I guess that one could make the case that this was not a condemnation from Christ, but a rebuke.  For Jesus Himself had said on more than a few occasions that there is only one judge, and that is His Father in heaven.  If anything, one could also describe this conversation with these Jewish leaders as a warning.  Jesus knew that these men were on the wrong path and following the wrong influence.  And that, friends, is the point of this discussion, just who it is whose circle of influence that we are under.  It is obvious in Jesus' conversation with these men in the temple just whose influence they were following, and He makes it a point to point this out to them.  Of course, they disagreed with Him.  To these men, they were confronting a heretic and blasphemer.  I won't waste time here on the "What could have" of this conversation.  It does not matter that these Jewish leaders could have had a sudden change of heart and decided to accept what Jesus was telling them.  For this situation, this very conversation, had been predestined long before it even happened.  Long before the formation of the world, our Lord had charted the course the life of His Son would take.

Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits, whether they are of God; because many false prophets have gone out into the world.  By this you know the Spirit of God:  Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God, and every spirit that does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is not of God.  And this is the spirit of the Antichrist, which you have heard was coming, and is now already in the world.  You are of God, little children, and have overcome them, because He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.  They are of the world.  Therefore they speak as of the world, and the world hears them.  We are of God.  He who knows God hears us; he who is not of God does not hear us.  By this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error.  Beloved, let us love on another, for love is of God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.  He who does not love does not know God, for God is love.  In this the love of God was manifested toward us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him.  In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent Hs Son to be the propitiation for our sins.  Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
1 John 4: 1-11 NKJV

I look at the words of the apostle John in 1 John 4 and I see the very same words, give or take a few, that Jesus taught that day in the temple among the Jewish leaders of His day.  His message had not come too far.  And, this message resonates among us today as well.  In the temple, as well as with the apostle John, the question is raised of just who whose influence we are following.  Do we follow the influence of our heavenly Father, or do we follow the lead of he whom John refers to as the "Spirit or error?"  It doesn't take a bible scholar to understand just who John was refering to here.  For he is the very same one Jesus had warned the Jewish leaders about when He told them, "You are of your father the devil."  These are the same two influences which we face today.  For those of us who follow Jesus, we face the exact same challanges which those whom Jesus warned that day in the temple.  Will we follow Christ who is within us{Galations 2:20}?  Or will we feel free to dabble with the spirit of error?  We realize, after all, that our original "spirit" lies with our heavenly Father in whose image we are created.  We are of God.

~Scott~