‘I Am Not Of This World’

Then Jesus said to them again, “I am going away, and you will seek Me, and will die in your sin. Where I go you cannot come.”
So the Jews said, “Will He kill Himself, because He says, ‘Where I go you cannot come’?”
And He said to them, “You are from beneath; I am from above. You are of this world; I am not of this world. Therefore I said to you that you will die in your sins; for if you do not believe that I am He, you will die in your sins.”
Then they said to Him, “Who are You?”
And Jesus said to them, “Just what I have been saying to you from the beginning. I have many things to say and to judge concerning you, but He who sent Me is true; and I speak to the world those things which I heard from Him.”
They did not understand that He spoke to them of the Father.
[John 8:21-27 NKJV]

What we see over and over again in John’s Gospel are the words ‘They did not understand that ...’ And often we do not understand at first. The message Jesus brings into the world is one that few, at the time or now, readily understands.

Why would we? This is new, undiscovered territory; a landscape never before encountered. Just imagine if someone came up to you in the street where you live and said to you ‘I have many things to say and to judge concerning you’. I’d be concerned and not a little upset. ‘Who does this man think he is?’ Jesus always speaks from a place diametrically opposed to what we know from our experience, and His purpose is to show us where we are heading and convince us to turn around and go the other way with Him.

If we think of the enormity of the task that Jesus had on His shoulders — declaring the truth of the government of God (Unto us a Son is given; And the government will be upon His shoulder. [Isaiah 9:6a NKJV]) — it is plain that He had no time to waste smoothing egos or formulating a marketing strategy.

Jesus spoke truth, knowing that He was the seed from another world — the eternal realm — that was being planted in the hearts of men to be nurtured into new and everlasting life.

Just as the disposition of sin entered into the human race by one man, so the Holy Spirit entered the race by another Man, and Redemption means that I can be delivered from the heredity of sin, and through Jesus Christ can receive an unsullied heredity, viz.; the Holy Spirit.

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