Solving the God Problem: John for Today

By Brian K. Smith

Solving the God Problem is a commentary on the gospel of John, designed for those with little or no Biblical background. The vocabulary Brian uses is that of everyday English. Technical terms and phrases have been avoided. The sentence structure is simple rather than complex, thus making for ease of reading and understanding. The overall style is conversational. All imagery and illustration by way of commentary comes from present day culture. Former theological students of Brian, may remember this in its original form "Xerox Equation". Andrew Gamman and Caroline Bindon of Kereru Publishing have both used the commentary in various ministry settings and are excited to publish it and make it available for wide use. While those who are involved in ministry will find it useful, it is also easily accessible for Christians of every stage of faith and explains profoundly and simply the Good News.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kereru Publishing Ltd
• Release date: Feb 27, 2016
• ISBN: 9780473322557

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Solving_the_God_Problem_Cover.jpg

Solving

the

God problem

John for today

*********

Brian K Smith

Copyright Page

All scripture quotations in this publication are from the Good News Translation in Today’s English Version - Second Edition, Copyright © 1992 by American Bible Society. Used by Permission.

‘SOLVING THE GOD PROBLEM’

‘John for Today’

First published in New Zealand 2015 by Brian K. Smith.

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Text Copyright © Brian K Smith 2015

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A note from Kereru Publishing

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Preface

This commentary on the gospel of John is designed for those with little or no Biblical background. It has several special features.

Language

The vocabulary is that of everyday English. Technical terms and phrases have been avoided. The sentence structure is simple rather than complex, thus making for ease of reading and understanding. The overall style is conversational.

Imagery and illustration

All imagery and illustration by way of commentary comes from present day culture. The so-called high-priestly prayer in John 17, for instance, is recast as Special Agent Jesus making his last radio transmission to High Command from enemy occupied territory.

Cross references

There are no cross-references to other parts of the Bible that require looking up. Where another part of Scripture is essential for understanding, the matter at issue is explained in the commentary.

The Bible text used throughout is that of the Good News Translation: Today’s English Version. Direct quotations from that text are woven into the commentary and are highlighted in bold. Where Jesus gives his own emphasis to a saying (I am telling you the truth) the quotation is in bold italics.

Brian K Smith

Pentecost, 2014

Introduction

The story before the story

So you picked up John’s gospel and thought you were going to read the story of Jesus. But now, after the first paragraph you’re starting to wonder. Take that first sentence for example:

In the beginning the Word already existed.

What on earth has that got to do with Jesus? Who is the Word? And what is meant by in the beginning? The beginning of what?

Before you decide that the crossword puzzle would be easier, let’s give it another try. Suppose we start with something like this:

A long time ago in the land of Israel, there lived a man called John. This John was a preacher. This is what he said: You people are expecting a coming king, and you’ve been waiting ages for him to arrive. Well, you won’t have to wait much longer. He’s going to turn up at any moment. You’d better start getting ready for him. One day John saw Jesus coming towards him…

Does that sound better? It does, doesn’t it? It’s much more story-like. And in fact, if you start at verse 19 of chapter 1 and read on, you’ll find that’s exactly how the story of Jesus does begin.

But when gospel writer John sat down to write his story of Jesus, he found he had a special challenge. When you and I write the story of somebody’s life, that somebody comes into the story only when he’s born. Of course, you can mention that his grandparents lived all their lives in Tootlingham-on-sea. Or you can explain how his father was a daring young man in a flying machine, and married the barmaid from The Dog and Duck. But all that is background. You can’t talk about your somebody until he’s born. Before that he doesn’t exist. He isn’t until he is. But with Jesus of Nazareth it was different. He existed before he was born. He was there before his story began. That’s why this gospel has such an unusual opening. It begins with Jesus before he was Jesus.

The galope challenge

One day you meet a galope. There you are quietly going about your business, when you come across a full-sized one. You’ve never seen a galope before. Neither has anyone else. So before you can tell anyone about your galope you have to make head or tail of it. And the only way of doing that is to ask what it’s like. Is it cabbage-looking? Some kind of plant perhaps? Does it have six legs and wings? An insect maybe? Does it walk on two legs and talk? A little green man from Planet X? What you’re looking for is some kind of a slot into which you can fit your galope. Only then can you say what kind of a thing it is.

When John and his friends met Jesus of Nazareth they found that they had a galope challenge on their hands. They lived with Jesus for three years. They heard what he said. They watched what he did. Finally they saw him die. Then, to their great astonishment they saw him alive again. And not only alive, but alive in a new kind of way. All this was galope-like. From beginning to end it was brand new. They’d never seen anything like it before. But how to describe it? Who was this Jesus? Where did he fit? What slot do you put him into? Man? Superman? Extra-terrestial? Angel? No, they decided, if you put him into any of those categories, he doesn’t fit. You have to leave bits sticking out at the edges. The only slot that will do for Jesus is the God slot. That’s where he belongs.

So when John sat down to write about Jesus before he was Jesus, he knew that he belonged to the God slot. But the God slot was already occupied. It contained God. How could Jesus be part of that? There was the challenge.

Chapter One

1.1 My word!

Ask any teacher. When you have a difficult idea to get across, the best way is to start with something people already know. Which is all very well, said John to himself, but to get across the story of Jesus before he was Jesus, just what do I start with? Three cups of coffee and a well-sucked pencil later, John came up with the answer. Jesus, he said, was the Word.

Now as an entry in the Explain Jesus competition that may not strike you as a winner. But then perhaps you haven’t thought a great deal about words. The people of John’s world had, and they’d noticed some strange things about them. Anna and Logan had noticed them too.

There was Anna talking away quite happily, when suddenly she put her hand over her mouth. Oh, she gasped, I didn’t mean to say that. It just slipped out. But, of course, it was too late. The word was out. There was no way she could bring it back. Later, when Anna thought about it, she realized how strange that was. The word had come from her. It was her word. But it had turned into something separate from her, something existing on its own.

Here she was ANNA and over there was ANNA’s WORD

Anna and her word were two different things.

Logan found out something else about words. He was sick and tired of the way Bob left the dirty jobs for him to do. If Bob does it again, he muttered, I’ll give him a piece of my mind. Later, Logan got to thinking about what he’d said. That’s funny, he said to himself. When I said ‘a piece of my mind’, I didn’t mean that I was going to cut my head open. What I meant was that I would tell Bob a thing or two. My word would tell him what I was thinking and feeling. My word is what I’m like inside. In fact, you could say that my word is ‘me’ again, a sort of copy of me.

If we put together what Anna and Logan discovered about words we get this:

This idea of your word being the same as you, but different from you, gave John the answer to his question. If you want to understand Jesus before he was Jesus, he said, think of him as the Word of God. As the Word he was with God. Which means he was different from God, just as Anna’s word is different from Anna. Not that Jesus was some kind of accident like Anna’s word. Far from it!

But then again, the Word was God. Just as Logan’s word is Logan again, so the Word is God again. Everything that God is, the Word is – he’s the same, but different.

The Photocopy Equation

With this idea of the Word John overcame the difficulty of including Jesus in the God slot. The situation now looks like this. There’s God who was there all along, God (original), and there’s Jesus, who is God’s Word. The Word is different from God (original), but because he’s the same as God, he’s God again, or God (copy). So we can write:

God (copy) = God (original)

Now this has a familiar look about it. It’s what happens every time you make a photocopy. You put your original in position and press the button. Whrrr…click, and there’s the copy. Whatever the original is, the copy is too. But the copy isn’t the original. It’s the same, but different.

In practice we may find it more useful to write the Photocopy Equation using the more familiar names. If we do that, it will look like this:

Jesus = God (photocopically)

Solving the God problem

For all our human talk about God, we really have no idea of what God is like. John puts his finger on the problem in just six words. "No one, he says in verse 18 of chapter 1, has ever seen God." And since you can’t know what someone is truly like unless you’ve seen them, how on earth can we know what God is like?

But, continues John, although no one has ever seen God, we can know what God is like. This is because the only Son who is the same as God and is at the Father’s side, he has made him known.

What this means is that the solution to the God problem is the Photocopy Equation. True, no one has ever seen God, but here in John’s gospel we can see Jesus who is God (copy). In this way we can know what God is like. And in fact the Photocopy Equation is what John’s gospel is all about. It’s the story of God (copy) who makes God (original) known.

Of course, John wasn’t writing about photocopiers and pieces of paper. He uses personal words instead — Father for original and Son for copy. But the idea is the same. In family relationships we say: Like father, like son. See the son and you know what the father is like. So here – see God the Son and you know what God the Father is like.

So important is the Son-Father equivalence that in various forms the Photocopy Equation turns up seven times in the gospel. Here’s the list:

1.2 As old as God

How old is God? asks 7 year old Belinda. He must be very old, older than anyone else, even Grandpa. What Belinda means is that God must have been there first, before anyone or anything else. He was there on his own. Belinda is right, but she’s also wrong. God was there first, but he was never on his own. From the very beginning, says John, the Word was with God. The Word is as old as God is. You can’t point to a time and say: Before that there was no Word, there was only God. We already know that what God was the Word was. But now we find that when God was the Word was too. God (copy) has been there as long as God (original).

1.3 The Word at work

From the very first the Word was with God, but he wasn’t just sitting around. He was hard at work. If you want to see a word at work just listen to yourself some time. Hey, Prakash, you call out to a friend. Come back, you’ve forgotten your cell phone. And back Prakash comes. What brought him back? Your word. It was like a long arm reaching out and bringing him back. Your word was you at work.

A word can not only do ordinary things like bringing someone back. It can sometimes do extraordinary things. It can even create a world. Lights! calls the director to the movie studio, and lights there are. Camera! he says, and the camera starts to roll. Action! and the actors spring to life.

With his word the director brings a whole new world into being. And it was like that