The Gospel of John

Truth

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Conversations, Panels and Sermons

Lesson: 58- 70

Genre:

Track: 058

Dictation Name: RR197AF60

Location/Venue:

Year:

Let us worship God. Serve the Lord with gladness, come before His presence with singing, enter into His gates with thanksgiving and into His courts with praise, be thankful unto Him and bless His name for the Lord is good, His mercy is everlasting and His truth endureth to all generations. Let us pray.

Oh Lord our God unto whom judgment, mercy and grace belong. We come into Thy presence mindful that ll things do come from Thee and Thou in Thy sovereign wisdom knowest best what we have need of. Give us grace therefore to take all things as Thine hand, to know that Thy purposes for us are all together righteous and holy and give us grace to take Thy providence rejoice in it, grow in terms of it and serve Thee with wisdom and understanding. Bless us as we give ourselves to the study of Thy word, in Christ’s name, Amen.

Our scripture is John 17:6-19, our subject: Truth. John 17:6-19.

“I have manifested thy name unto the men which thou gavest me out of the world: thine they were, and thou gavest them me; and they have kept thy word.

7 Now they have known that all things whatsoever thou hast given me are of thee.

8 For I have given unto them the words which thou gavest me; and they have received them, and have known surely that I came out from thee, and they have believed that thou didst send me.

9 I pray for them: I pray not for the world, but for them which thou hast given me; for they are thine.

10 And all mine are thine, and thine are mine; and I am glorified in them.

11 And now I am no more in the world, but these are in the world, and I come to thee. Holy Father, keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given me, that they may be one, as we are.

12 While I was with them in the world, I kept them in thy name: those that thou gavest me I have kept, and none of them is lost, but the son of perdition; that the scripture might be fulfilled.

13 And now come I to thee; and these things I speak in the world, that they might have my joy fulfilled in themselves.

14 I have given them thy word; and the world hath hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.

15 I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil.

16 They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.

17 Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth.

18 As thou hast sent me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world.

19 And for their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also might be sanctified through the truth.”

In verses six through nineteen our Lord prays for His disciples. He knows that the trial and the crucifixion will have a shattering effect on them and while personally facing the supreme agony of the cross it was for them He prayed. His first statement in this prayer is:

“I have manifested thy name unto the men which thou gavest me out of the world”

The name of God is really no name, Jehovah or Yahweh meaning I am that I am, or He who is as Exodus 3:14 tells us. Names are limitations, when you name someone you say this is what you are, you’re Tom, you’re not Dick or Harry or Joseph, you are Tom. It’s a limitation and God is above limits. He is the eternally existent one and that is why when Moses acts God ‘what is Thy name so I know who you are, define yourself’, God says I have no name, I am that I am, I am HE who is, I am known only by my revelation, I am the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, I have revealed myself in my dealings with them. Jesus had manifested the meaning of that name because he had made clear that God’s purpose could not be equated with mans nor could God’s concerns be reduced to man centered ones. It is man’s obligation to believe, serve and obey God, not God to serve man. The religious leaders had understood this clearly and therefore they rejected Jesus. The disciples had not understood this but they were ready to die for them, for Jesus. Our Lord continues in His prayer:

“thine they were, and thou gavest them me; and they have kept thy word.”

The disciples came to know Jesus as Lord because God had ordained their coming and their believing. They had been faithful to God’s word while not fully understanding it. In verse seven our Lord continues further:

“7 Now they have known that all things whatsoever thou hast given me are of thee.”

Although there was much that the disciples did not understand they did recognize that Jesus came from God and that in some way He and God were one. Verse eight stresses this fact:

“8 For I have given unto them the words which thou gavest me; and they have received them, and have known surely that I came out from thee, and they have believed that thou didst send me.”

The disciples had received the specific utterances of Jesus Christ as the very words of God. Whatever their failings in grasping the meaning of Christ’s coming they knew that He came from God. On this they were steadfast although they failed to grasp the purpose of His coming. Our Lord is emphatic in stressing the fact that the disciples knew that Jesus came out from God and had been sent by God. In verse nine our Lord says:

“9 I pray for them: I pray not for the world, but for them which thou hast given me; for they are thine.”

First our Lord tells us that He prays for His disciples, not for the fallen and hostile world around them, the world is at war with God. It needs converting, this will be done by the disciples later on, it’s their task, their calling. Second, our Lord says the disciples are God given, they are God’s property. They belong to God who made them and redeemed them which tells us of course that we are God’s property. In verse ten:

“10 And all mine are thine, and thine are mine; and I am glorified in them.”

Because the disciples are God’s possession they are also Christ’s and with Pentecost they are also the Spirits. The disciples are told of the unity of the Godhead and their relationship to the triune God. They are His possession, they are not in a possession of command, God is. It is God the Son who before His ascension tells them ‘go yea into all the world’. We are God’s possession and He therefore can command us and everything that we have freely. Then in verses ten and eleven we read:

“10 And all mine are thine, and thine are mine; and I am glorified in them.

11 And now I am no more in the world, but these are in the world, and I come to thee. Holy Father, keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given me, that they may be one, as we are.”

Our Lord’s prayer here calls for the unity fo the disciples. The prayer for the church follows, beginning in verse twenty, now it is the unity of His immediate followers which is our Lord’s concern. He knows that despite some differences a great unity did prevail among them. Some scholars often with a will to create false divisions have posited centers of apostolic disharmony, they have said that Peter and Paul and James and the others were at odds one with another. However what we do have in reality according to the New Testament is a readiness always on the part of the disciples to come to a common understanding in Christ. Our Lord looks forward to going to the Father, He commits His disciples into the hands of the Father, they are the property of both of them. Moreover, Christ says I am glorified in them. Their faithfulness will soon gain wisdom and understanding and then their witness will glorify the Son even as their faith now does glorify Him.

Jesus Christ’s departure from the world is virtually present. He will soon go to the Father and He asks the Father to keep them through Thine own name. Those who Thou hast given me that they may be one as we are. Jesus Christ is the revelation of the name of God. History and time cannot comprehend Him for He is their maker. To keep the disciples in the name means to keep them centered in all their being on the transcendent trinity, on the nature of God as the focus of our lives and our work. It meant going beyond the messianic hope and a Jewish world ruler to the kingdom of God, it required moving from a man centered to a God centered faith. Theology must replace anthropology, being God centered must replace being man centered, or worse, self-centered. To being kept in the name of God is to be preserved from an anthropocentric, a man centered perspective. Only so could the disciples be one as God is one. Our Lord continues:

“12 While I was with them in the world, I kept them in thy name: those that thou gavest me I have kept, and none of them is lost, but the son of perdition; that the scripture might be fulfilled. 13 And now come I to thee; and these things I speak in the world, that they might have my joy fulfilled in themselves.”

Our Lord declares that He has kept the disciples in God’s name, in the reality of God’s being, nature and power. They had understood him less with respect to His mission less than the religious leaders did but they had known Him to be God’s presence on earth in some sense and they rejoiced in that. Their knowledge was faulty but it was morally sound. Only Judas the son of perdition is lost as he was predestined to be. Now as the Lord faces the end He rejoices at the prospect of soon being in heaven with the Father.

“14 I have given them thy word; and the world hath hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. 15 I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil.”

Our Lord has given to the disciples the necessary revelation of Himself in His message. The fallen humanity of Adam recognized our Lord’s followers as their enemies despite their limited understanding of Him. The followers were obviously not members of this fallen humanity and were resented and hated even as Christ was and is. Our lord does not pray for the removal of His followers from this world because their calling is to conquer it and to make it God’s kingdom. He prays therefore that God would keep them from the evil or literally, the evil one. Evil in abstraction does not exist. Murder, adultery, theft, and other sins are things that people do. Evil is a personal act, there is no such thing as murder in the abstraction, it doesn’t exist. It exists when one person kills another. It is a concrete thing, the sins describe actions of people and evil is a personal act. Sin is an offense committed by sinners, by fallen mane. The reference here is to Satan who first set the promise of sin, that every man is his own god determining for himself what is good and evil, becoming his own source of law and morality. Greek philosophy reduced everything to abstractions ,to forms or ideas, whereas biblical revelation declares the absolute person, God ,and mankind is made in His image as persons. Now consider what this means.

Socrates around a banquet table could indulge in homosexual acts openly as were others and at the same time talk about virtue. He saw himself as a virtuous man, he saw sin as something out there, outside of Himself, he might get involved in it but he himself could walk past that bit of mud or that swamp. Now, with that ancient Greek perspective which is still very much with us a person could say yes I was involved in that robbery but I myself am a decent person. I just somehow got involved in that swamp out there. But in the biblical person you cannot say any particular sin is something out there that you touched on and got briefly into that mud hole, no. It is you, it is what you and I do, it is a personal act. And that is why our Lord says preserve them from the evil one. Then in verses eighteen and nineteen our Lord ends this section of His prayer and this prayer was for His immediate disciples, saying:

“18 As thou hast sent me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world.

19 And for their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also might be sanctified through the truth.”

Our Lord sets forth a remarkable doctrine of sanctification, that is, of separation to holiness. God the Father sent the son into the world to redeem fallen mankind and to create thereby a new human race. The kingdom of God is to be created out of the members of the kingdom of man. Our Lord became man to redeem and sanctify us, this requires His disciples to carry on the Lord’s work by sanctifying themselves to the task of bringing in all peoples and nations. They are to be sanctified by the truth. Sin is rebellion against God, it is madness and death.

The truth, the reality of God, separates Christ’s disciples from the world of lies, from the madness and unreality of sin, of acting as though God the Lord does not exist. It delivers them from the suicidal blindness of sin into the reality of God. It brings men into salvation. The more the truth of God, of the reality of His being and the truth of His word possesses us the more we are strong and effective in His service. Our Lord in brief does not pray that we be taken out of the world but that we be empowered to go into the world and confront whatever we must confront and be more than conquerors through Christ our Lord. Let us pray.

Our Father we thank Thee for this Thy word. Teach us to sanctify ourselves by confronting those burdens, those tasks, those problems that are ours and triumphing by Thy grace. Teach us always to remember that sin is a personal act and that we are to walk in terms of Thy law word, not our way, for we are sons of Adam, but by Thy grace are sons of Thy kingdom. Bless us in Thy service, in Christ’s name, Amen.

Are there any questions now about our lesson?

[Question] Love the sinner but hate the sin come from?

[Rushdoony] Love the…?

[Unintelligible Question]

[Rushdoony] That’s pure Greek thinking because what it does is to say that sin is something apart from the person.

[Unintelligible Question]

[Rushdoony] It goes back to the Greek philosophers and Greek thought as a whole. Its saying well, I didn’t sin because sin is like a pitfall out there, it’s a booby trap that got me. You may remember as children we often had games, we’d spin something and you had to go so many steps and you hoped you didn’t fall into something that meant you had to go back ten places. Well, that is a Greek idea, that in the course of life you often through no fault of your own normally through no fault of your own you just fall into these booby traps. And therefore the sinner is really to be pitied and to be loved because he didn’t mean to, sin was out there like a bit of quicksand he didn’t know was there. It’s a very evil idea and the sad fact is that is so prevalent in the churches. Love the sinner and hate the sin. It’s nonsense, absolute nonsense because the sin cannot be separated from the sinner.

[Unintelligible Question]

[Rushdoony] Very good point, exceptionally important because you see we tend to want to make holiness or sanctification an end in itself, now this has had a very, very bad history over the centuries in the church. In both Russian orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism you withdraw from the world into a convent or a monastery really to seek holiness or you go on a retreat. Well in Protestantism we have the same thing so that many evangelical churches are like convents or monasteries, you withdraw from the world and you pursue holiness and we’ve even had movements like the Keswick movement of the last century, the influence of which is still very prevalent, whereby the goal of the Christian life is not serving the Lord, its withdrawing from everything and trying to become super holy in yourself which means you are of no earthly good. So this false idea of sanctification has plagued every branch of Christendom. There have been areas where it’s been less popular, the one clear cut area has been Scotland, even though Rome prevailed there a long time I think at the time of the Reformation there were only about nineteen men in all of Scotland who thought it worthwhile to try and become a monk. So it was not a country with a disposition to monasticism and it has an unusual place in church history because of that, nobody has bothered to go into the history of the church of Scotland in any detail but it has been a different history and it clung longer to biblical law than any of the other churches.

Any other questions or comments? If not...yes?

[Unintelligible Question]

[Rushdoony] When our Lord sent out the disciples to go throughout all the land and proclaim Christ what he told them was if they will not hear you, shake the dust off your feet and move on. Don’t stay and make a martyr of yourself trying to witness to people who hate you for what you are. So when you see there is no reaction move out. Go to the next place. So we’re not asked to make martyrs of ourselves, there’s no holiness in setting ourselves up to be killed. Now on occasion many an occasion this has happened but we are not to court it by staying where we’re not wanted and where there is nothing but hostility. Well if there are no further comments or questions let us conclude with prayer.

Our Father we give thanks unto Thee for Thy word, for its relevance, its practicality and its power. We thank Thee that Thou hast by Thy spirit and by Thy word make us more than conquerors in Christ. Make us effectual day by day in all that we are and all that we do. Bless us protect us and prosper us. And now go in peace, God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost, bless you and keep you, guide and protect you, this day and always, Amen.