YES, HE is Talking to YOU! (continued)
What is truth?
“I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now. Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear , that shall he speak: and he will shew you things to come” (John 16:12-13).
This is the next entry on Truth in the Gospel of John. After the Supper, the Master talks long to His disciples about the mysteries and the Truth and about the relationship between the Father, the Son and them and we can see from the nature of the dialogue and their questioning that they are still a bit perplexed by it all; they really do not understand. And so the Master goes on to say what is in our lead statement here, telling them that they cannot bear any more of what He is telling them. We should believe that the Master knows what He is saying and scripture tells us that He does. He tells them plainly that He will not tell them more but that the Spirit of Truth will come and He, the Spirit, will tell them what it is that the Master is not going to say. In the great Oneness of God is all Truth and it is accessible to us from the Father and through the Son and into our daily consciousness by the activity of the Spirit of God within. Now while the Master is telling the disciples of spiritual things, he is talking to them as men. It is as men that they need to understand and this is the same with us. When we are immersed in the life of the Spirit, all knowledge and understanding is available to us. When we are focused on the spiritual side of life and not on the carnal we, as men, then have access to this available knowledge and understanding. We pray, we meditate and we get revelation to the degree that we do these things and to the capacity of our finite minds to comprehend. This is what the Master is saying: that when He is gone from their presence that they will be able to look inward to their spiritual selves and access all Truth that is known to the Soul, which the Soul hears from the Father and from our Spirit which is the True man.
In an attempt at clarity, we will enlarge a bit on what we discussed in the last post regarding the true nature of man. We will say here that in his totality man is Spirit and this Spirit is manifest or made a living being as the Soul in its own place which we will call the Kingdom of God. This Soul then takes to itself physical form as a physical body with its personality aspects of mind and emotion and through this threefold form the Soul pours its life energy; this energy is what we call the Holy Spirit. Remember that the three, the Spirit, the Soul and the Life energy or the Holy Spirit are forever One and, just as the Father, Son and Holy Spirit of God are resolved into One God the Father, so mans Spirit, Soul and Holy Spirit and resolved into one Spirit being.
Jesus then is telling the disciples this very same thing albeit in simpler terms and without detail. He is saying to them that this will happen and, based on what they have seen and heard before from the Master, they know that it is true however, they still fail to understand. And the Master goes on to say: “He shall glorify me: for he shall receive of mine, and shall shew it unto you. All things that the Father hath are mine: therefore said I, that he shall take of mine, and shall shew it unto you. A little while, and ye shall not see me: and again, a little while, and ye shall see me, because I go to the Father” (John 16:14-16). Jesus repeats to them that the Spirit of Truth will show them all things and this is to be taken as it is written: all things that the Father has are the Sons and the Holy Spirit will show all this to them. The Father is Spirit and we need to look at this as spiritual and not as men. What does the Father have? All wisdom, all knowledge, all understanding, all Love or, for human terms, what the Apostle Paul calls the ‘fruit of the Spirit‘ saying: “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, Meekness, temperance (Galatians 5:22-23) and in another place saying: “For the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness and righteousness and truth; Proving what is acceptable unto the Lord” (Ephesians 5:9-10).
The Master continues in telling them again that He is leaving them and yet they cannot see what it is that He is saying and they say among themselves: “What is this that he saith unto us, A little while, and ye shall not see me: and again, a little while, and ye shall see me: and, Because I go to the Father? They said therefore, What is this that he saith, A little while? we cannot tell what he saith” (John 16:17-18). We should see here the difficulty in their understanding; these men were with Him and in His teaching and could not grasp what He said. We have the benefit of the books and of time; do we understand any better? “I go to the Father” to the same place that He tells us we can go now; to the Kingdom of God and to His Presence. Jesus was and is always there in the Presence of God and with the Father. He says this to make the disciples aware of what is happening, that they will no longer see Him. He continues to tell them then that “ye shall see me, because I go to the Father“. And what does this say? To us today this is still a mystery and the churches can only surmise what the Master means; no wonder the disciples are confused and talk of this thing among themselves.
Continuing the dialogue, the Master, knowing what they were saying asks them: “…. Do ye enquire among yourselves of that I said , A little while, and ye shall not see me: and again, a little while, and ye shall see me?” (John 16:19) and without waiting for a answer He goes into an example in parable form before telling them about asking things of the Father in His Name. Now this idea of asking in His Name has become in the churches an idea that is much used to tell us that whatever we want we can get if we ask in His Name. Was this the Master’s intent in His saying to us: “And in that day ye shall ask me nothing. Verily, verily, I say unto you , Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, he will give it you. Hitherto have ye asked nothing in my name: ask , and ye shall receive , that your joy may be full” (John 16:23-24). We should believe that He is speaking about the deeper things of Life here and not of the insignificance of the things that we may want in this personality life. Seems most all prayers that are asking for material reward (reward for what we cannot say) or just the granting of one’s desires, ends with the words ‘in Jesus name’. From here Jesus gives them and us a clearer understanding of our lack of understanding by telling us that ” These things have I spoken unto you in proverbs: but the time cometh, when I shall no more speak unto you in proverbs, but I shall shew you plainly of the Father” (John 16:25). Vincent says that the word proverb should be understood as parable**** and many think that He is referring to the story He just told of the woman in travail and the teaching on the idea of Him being the Vine; but is this so? The word translated as proverb is the Greek word paroimia while the Greek word translated as parable is parobole and each has its own distinct meaning. Taking the two words we find that a parable is, in our context, an example by which a doctrine or precept is illustrated; a narrative, fictitious but agreeable to the laws and usages of human life, by which either the duties of men or the things of God, particularly the nature and history of God’s kingdom are figuratively portrayed; a parable: an earthly story with a heavenly meaning**. A proverb is defined as a saying out of the usual course or deviating from the usual manner of speaking; a current or trite saying, a proverb; any dark saying which shadows forth some didactic truth, esp. a symbolic or figurative saying; speech or discourse in which a thing is illustrated by the use of similes and comparisons**.
The teaching on the Vine is comprehensible and engendered no questions. The story of the woman was just a simple example of joy. These are surrounded by much teaching that is difficult to understand. What do we call the proverb then? The teaching on the nature of God and our relationship to Him and the teaching on the Master’s leaving and not being seen then again being seen; or the simple story of the woman and the idea of the Vine. Of course, we should choose to see it as the former, the complex teaching on God, as did the disciples as we can see from their answer to the Master’s final statement here when He says: “At that day ye shall ask in my name: and I say not unto you, that I will pray the Father for you: For the Father himself loveth you, because ye have loved me, and have believed that I came out from God. I came forth from the Father, and am come into the world: again, I leave the world, and go to the Father. His disciples said unto him, Lo, now speakest thou plainly, and speakest no proverb. Now are we sure that thou knowest all things, and needest not that any man should ask thee: by this we believe that thou camest forth from God” (John 16:26-30). Can it be that this statement of the Master, which is just saying again much of what He had said before, now suddenly results in the disciples ability to understand Him and to believe? It does certainly seem so and results in the Master’s reply “…Do ye now believe?” (John 16:31).
We need to see here that all this teaching is in proverb form. It was for the disciples and it is for us as well. We can only understand these spiritual things by looking at them spiritually and not through the eyes of the flesh and this is what the Master has always told us is true with His sayings like: “Having eyes, see ye not? and having ears, hear ye not? and do ye not remember?” (Mark 8:18). This He said regarding the disciples’ forgetting all that they had seen and heard and not understanding the Masters proverb saying “Take heed , beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, and of the leaven of Herod” (Mark 8:15). They related His saying to the things of the Earth and not to the Spiritual intention in which it was spoken. How often do we do this same thing? We read and relate what we read to the things of this world thinking somehow that the Master came to teach us how to get things or to feel good about ourselves and our possessions in this life. His real message is quite to the contrary; it needs to be understood as instruction and direction to the Kingdom of God and His Presence and He gives to us the necessary understanding of our relationship to the Father, to the Son and to the Holy Spirit so that we can better understand our relationship to all others and to all in His Creation.
Note on the Quote of the Day
This daily blog also has a Quote of the Day which may not be in any way related to the essay. Many of these will be from the Bible and some just prayers or meditations that may have an influence on you and are in line with the subject matter of this blog. As the quote will change daily and will not store with the post, it is repeated in this section with the book reference and comment.
A Repeat of a prior Quote of the Day is in order here as it is relevant to the proper understanding of all the Master’s sayings in the gospels. There is only one Way.
If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him (John 14:23).
Everything that we need to know about our relationship with God is in this simple statement and it is all that we have to understand. Everything else is icing on the cake so to speak! This is true on all levels of understanding and belief.
