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The UK Bible Students Website Christian Biblical Studies
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Part One
By
L.N.
All Scripture references are to the King James (Authorised) Version, unless noted otherwise.
— John 16: 12
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THE WORDS OF our heading text (John 16: 12) were uttered by Jesus
to his eleven disciples shortly after the Last Supper (Judas had departed).
Knowing he would be arrested that same night, Jesus sought to comfort them. In
his ‘high priestly prayer’ of chapter 17, he addresses his Father on their
behalf in the most touching terms.
We can only guess at the heaviness in the air on that occasion. Did the disciples know they were on the cusp of history’s most important event? Certainly they were bewildered and frightened, filled with trepidation, for reasons they perhaps did not fully understand. Jesus knew, but nothing even he could say to them would fully calm their anxiety nor prepare them for what would and must happen.
In the particular instance of Jesus’ arrest, he at least did know this was imminent. How? For one thing he studied the Scriptures from boyhood, and understood the prophecies pertaining to his mission. He had read and inwardly digested them, leading his hearers to marvel (John 7: 15): ‘How knoweth this man letters [scholarly knowledge], having never learned?’
Jesus would have been intimately acquainted with such passages as Gen. 49: 10: ‘‘The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come; and unto him shall the gathering of the people be.’ Perhaps from such a text he knew, as recorded in John 12: 32, 33: ‘I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me. This he said, signifying what death he should die [emphasis added].’ He would have known about Isa. 53, and the prediction in v. 3 that the suffering servant would be ‘despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief’, and the prediction of v. 12 that by his death he ‘bare the sin of many and made intercession for the transgressors’,
Jesus could also read people’s thoughts, and knew the who, what and why of those who plotted to destroy him (John 2: 24, 25). He knew the character of Nathanael, ‘an Israelite indeed’, and knew he had been sitting under a fig tree far off, before he met him (John 1: 47-51). In his encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well, he told her details of her personal life, causing her to declare him a prophet (John 4: 16-19).
He undoubtedly knew
when his ‘hour had come’ and what it might entail. Compare and contrast
Matt. 26: 45 and Mark 14: 41 with John 2: 4. In the Garden of
Gethsemane he prayed to the Father to sustain him during the coming trial, and
expressed his willingness to drink the cup of bitter sorrow which the Father had
prepared for him (Matt. 26: 39; Mark 14: 36; Luke 23: 42; John 18:
11).
However, he could not be sure he would be victorious in laying down his life. This is apparent from his cry from the cross (drawing on Psa. 22: 1): ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’ (Matt. 27: 46 and Mark 15: 34). This abandonment apparently caught him by surprise. But, faithful to the end, Jesus soon adjusted to this fright, just as young Isaac (a type of Jesus) resigned himself to the revelation that his father, Abraham, intended to kill him on the altar. The singular difference between Isaac and Jesus in this cameo is that Isaac did not die, but Jesus did (Heb. 11: 17-19; ‘received Isaac in a figure . . .’). Before he expired Jesus apparently understood the full import of his abandonment: that is, he had to die as in the sinner’s place, as if he were himself the sinner. Having restored his composure he addresses God: ‘Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit’ (Luke 22: 46).
On one occasion during his ministry, Jesus hinted at the restrictions put upon his understanding when he predicted his return, adding, ‘But of that day and that hour, knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father.’ (Mark 13: 30-33; see also Matt. 24: 34-36.)
They argue that although Jesus was ‘one-hundred-percent God’, he was also ‘one-hundred-percent man’, and that, as a man, he was not all-knowing. This line of reasoning implies that the First Person God either can hide information from the Second Person God; or that the Second Person God can, in effect, choose to not know something. Such a conclusion evades the clear implication of Jesus’ own admission. And by including himself with the angels, Jesus distinguishes himself from the all-mighty and all-knowing God, in the same way that the angels are distinguished from God.
Others claim that although Jesus did not know the day of his return at that point in time, he did know it later, especially after his resurrection to the divine nature. This is a reasonable assumption. However, on the basis that all Scripture is recorded for our edification and learning, one must enquire why the statement was recorded in the first place, for it soon became redundant so far as Jesus himself was concerned. (We will elaborate on this curious detail in a later instalment; but see Endnote in this instalment.)
In sum, these observations lead to the conclusion that God operates on a ‘need to know’ basis. He conceals information when concealment is a benefit to his people and, secondarily, to the world.
In the next
instalment, we examine the long-range implications of God’s concealing of truths
until the appropriate time to reveal them has
arrived.
Continues . . .
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Endnote:
In Acts 1: 7, which relates to events after Jesus’ resurrection, he
informs his followers that, ‘It is not for you to know the times or the seasons
which the father hath put in his own power [competency].’ There is here
no mention of Jesus himself not knowing the ‘times and seasons’, from
which we might infer that he was by now apprised of information he didn’t have
earlier. But just how much load this detail will carry is unclear. For there is
no mention of angels either, an omission which does not necessarily imply that
they, too, had been enlightened on the matter of times and seasons. To the
contrary, the Apostle Peter informs us that, at the time of his composing his
epistle (1 Peter 1: 10-12), ‘the angels desire to look into’ such
things that is, matters pertaining to the development of the Gospel-age Church
the calling, justification, sanctification, and eventual glorification of this
special ‘Christ’ class, through whom the risen Jesus carried forward his work of
salvation, most of which was then future.
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August 2015. Author asserts standard rights, but you are free to reproduce or reprint this article without express permission. Please acknowledge the source.
