Lecture 27: The True Vine, the Drawing Father, and the Tests of First John

The lecture, section by section

1. The true Sabbath

   The Sabbath points to the rest given in Jesus Christ: God's seventh-day rest points to Jesus himself. Matthew shows it structurally: come to me, all who are weary, and I will give you rest, and the very next two stories concern the Sabbath. Jesus is the true Sabbath and the true rest, and so the Sabbath as command has passed away; Paul makes clear that observing it is now free, not required, and Hebrews sounds the same rest. Read rightly, the temple points to Jesus, and the Sabbath points to Jesus.

2. True manna, true feast, true vine

   In John 6 the crowd wants what the wilderness generation had, bread every day, and Jesus answers that he himself is the true manna, the true bread from heaven: the food that matters is spiritual, and it is him. At the Feast of Tabernacles, with its water-pouring rite and its lights, Jesus announces the living water and declares, I am the light of the world. And where the Old Testament calls Israel God's vineyard, Jesus says, I am the true vine, which is to say the true Israel. True Son of God, true Israel, true vine, true Sabbath: biblical theology here is simply using the categories the author gives, watching what John himself does with the Old Testament, down to the Good Shepherd who gathers the flock.

3. All that the Father gives

   John is very strong on divine sovereignty and predestination, and John 6 shows it. Coming and believing are complementary descriptions of one reality: whoever comes will not hunger, whoever believes will never thirst. Then the sentence that decides the matter: all that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out, and I will raise him up on the last day, one more future verse Bultmann had to call a gloss, can't-lose to the end. All whom the Father gives believe and come; none who come are lost. Schreiner recalls a bright Arminian student who read the verse through prevenient grace, until the arithmetic was put to him: then everyone given such grace believes. He would not say that, and would not say what the verse did mean, only that Schreiner was wrong. The verse is effectual calling: those the Father gives to the Son come, and are kept.

4. Drawn, taught, gathered

   No one can come to me, Jesus says, unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up on the last day; and the Father does not draw everyone. Behind it stands Isaiah 54:13, all your children will be taught by the LORD, a new covenant promise, the law written on the heart of the elect children. The favorite counter-text, John 12:32's I will draw all people to myself, answers itself in context: Greeks have come asking to see Jesus, and Jesus replies with the grain of wheat that must fall and die. How will the Greeks see him? Through the cross. All people means all without distinction, Jews and Gentiles, not every individual without exception, and John 10 says it plainly: I have other sheep not of this fold; I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. Not maybe. They will.

5. The Paraclete defined by his work

   John's teaching on the Spirit runs from the descent at the baptism to the Father and Son giving the Spirit and new life. Who is the Paraclete? Define him by the context, not the dictionary. Is he a comforter? Yes: he abides with you. A teacher? Yes: he teaches and brings Jesus' words to remembrance. A prosecuting attorney and advocate? Yes: he testifies, and he convicts the world. The portrait is deliberately broad, and the Spirit's particular role gathers it: he is given to glorify Jesus.

6. No Spirit apart from the Son

   That role answers a live proposal in systematic theology, that the Spirit conveys salvation to people who have never heard of the Son. However attractive, Schreiner argues it is contrary to John and the rest of the New Testament: the Spirit is given and poured out when Jesus is exalted, and given precisely to glorify Jesus. The Spirit does not work savingly apart from the knowledge and preaching of Jesus Christ; there is no biblical-theological warrant for splitting the Spirit from the Son.

7. Breathing on them

   What of John 20:22, where the risen Jesus breathes on the disciples and says, receive the Holy Spirit? Some call it the Johannine Pentecost, but Thomas is absent, the disciples shortly go back to fishing, Peter is not yet restored, and no one is clothed with power on the spot. Some call it the disciples' conversion, but they had believed already during the ministry. Schreiner sides with Don Carson's commentary: it is a symbolic anticipation of the reception of the Spirit at Pentecost. And it offers no warrant, he adds, for a doctrine of the second blessing.

8. The conviction that convinces

   When the Spirit comes, Jesus says, he will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment. Schreiner reads the world here as all without distinction, not every individual without exception, and the conviction as effective: to convict is to convince, and the Spirit convinces people of their sin, their lack of righteousness, and the judgment of this world's ruler, and so brings them to faith. The alternative, a universal conviction most people refuse, does not match experience or the text: the hardened unbeliever shows no such persuasion at all.

9. Sovereign at the cross

   In the passion narrative John underlines divine sovereignty everywhere. Jesus knows all that is coming and volunteers himself to his captors: shall I not drink the cup the Father has given me, and the cup is wrath. The trial inverts: Pilate begins interrogating Jesus, and before long Jesus is interrogating Pilate, who is really on trial here?, the same delicious reversal Peter later works in Acts 4, pleading guilty to the crime of healing a sick man. You would have no authority over me, Jesus tells Pilate, unless it were given from above; and at the end, it is finished. Prophecy is fulfilled in the smallest details, not a bone broken, the pierced one beheld: the most important day in history unfolding exactly to plan.

10. Irony that tells the truth

    John's passion is written in double exposure. The soldiers crown and robe Jesus in mockery, and he is in fact the King, the crucified King. Behold the man; behold your king: Pilate means none of it, and, like Caiaphas before him, speaks God's word without knowing it. We have no king but Caesar, say the leaders, not seriously, and more truly than they know. Even the inscription over the cross, this is the King of the Jews, is mockery that happens to be exact. The reader is meant to hear both levels, while every Gospel underlines the injustice of the verdict, and the resurrection answers it.

11. What was from the beginning

    First John addresses a church split by secessionists: opponents who left, founded a rival assembly, and claimed to be the true, indeed the sinless, people of God. John writes to assure those who stayed that they, not the leavers, are the real Christians. So the letter opens in history: what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have observed and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life. The revelation drew nearer step by step, heard, then seen, then touched, and it happened in history; this is no faith like those for which the founder's existence is dispensable. The opponents, docetists, denied that the historical Jesus is the Christ. And the door to God runs through the apostolic testimony: John declares what the apostles saw so that you may have fellowship with us, and our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son. Fellowship here means partnership, salvation itself, not a devotional mood; those who abandoned the apostles' fellowship abandoned God's.

12. Light, love, and the liar's claim

    John's opening announcement about God is that God is light: God is holy, completely good; and later, God is love; and neither sentence reverses. The secessionists claimed to be without sin, perfect since conversion, while, on the letter's evidence, sinning freely and calling everything they did right. John answers on both flanks. Walking in the light is real and necessary, and it is not perfection, for the blood of Jesus keeps on cleansing those who walk in it, and continuing cleansing implies continuing sin; whoever claims to have no sin is a liar. Then how can John also say that no one born of God sins? Not by inventing an elite class, for born of God names every Christian; and not by leaning on disputed Greek verb aspect, but by putting John's two statements together: the born of God do not sin as the characteristic and pattern of their lives. The letter's marks of assurance follow: confessing sin, keeping his commandments, loving the brothers and sisters, refusing the world's love, confessing Jesus as the Christ come in the flesh. Schreiner passes on Francis Schaeffer's summary, that the believer's obedience is substantial, significant, and observable, though never perfect, and C. S. Lewis's caution in the person of the crabby Christian, who may have traveled farther from a harder start than the pleasant person who never moved: we cannot finally judge another's distance, so long as he confesses his sin and seeks the Lord.

13. Born of God, therefore believing

    Does regeneration precede faith? John, Schreiner argues, answers it. Everyone who practices righteousness has been born of God; everyone born of God does not practice sin; everyone who loves has been born of God; and everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God: present-tense participles resting on perfect-tense births. Every evangelical grants the first three: new birth precedes the practicing of righteousness, the break with sin, the loving. The same grammar carries the fourth: new birth precedes believing. Regeneration precedes faith. The escape attempt, that the first act of believing is ours and only afterward flows from new birth, must then say the same of righteousness and love, which no one will; it is special pleading. And none of it makes the fruit perfect: our righteousness, love, and faith remain flawed in this life, and they are truly ours because we have been born of him.

1. Jesus is the true Sabbath. Where is your actual rest coming from these days, and what would it mean this week to rest in him rather than merely from work?

2. First John's assurance has marks: confessing sin, keeping his commands, loving the brothers. Which mark is strongest in your life right now, and which one needs the Spirit's attention?

3. Lewis's crabby Christian may have come farther than the naturally pleasant one. Whom have you been measuring by their starting point instead of their direction, and what would patient love toward them look like?