Superfluousity in the New Testament

Or communion. Common Union. a synthesis...a completion.

I get it. Still not exactly superfluous, just arbitrary...could have been water to oil, dead lambs to living?Or, they could have just flat out said Jesus was here for that purpose, so the whole story is unnecessary unless it was a fact?Edited by anastasia, : No reason given.

I don't understand what you are asking?

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Jar writes: I don't see it that way at all. Jesus turning the water into wine at the wedding in Cana is not a superfluous detail. It is rather a basic opening sign which governs the interpretation of the rest of the signs done by Jesus in that gospel.The ground I have to say this starts with John's comment:"This beginning of signs Jesus performed in Cana of Galilee and manifested His glory, and His disciples believed into Him" (John 2:11)This work marks the beginning of signs Jesus performed to manifest His glory to His disciples. The word used is not miracles but "signs" which are acts with a symbolic significance of some type.So the turning of water into wine was a symbolic sign manifesting Christ's glory.Other factors which lead some of us to regard this sign of changing water to wine as basic and symbolic:The sign was performed on "the third day" (2:1): "And the third day a wedding took place in Cana of Galilee ..."The reader is welcomed to try to figure out what John means. Count the days of events recorded before this day and it is difficult to ascertain from what John is speaking about "the third day". My suspicion is that "the third day" is suggestion in typology of the resurrection of Christ on the third day.On the third day after Jesus was crucified He turned DEATH into LIFE. This I believe is the underlying significance of Jesus turning water into wine. Throughout the gospel Jesus says that He is the life. He is the life of God. He is the bread of life. And He is the resurrection and the life. Jesus is the One who can turn death into divine life. Jesus can turn man's spiritual death into life.The turning of water into wine signifies that Jesus is the One who can turn death into life.The timing of the "sign" is also significant. When all of man's wine runs out the inferior beverage is given. This is a picture of man's worldly enjoyment which runs out, runs dry, extinguished.You got a job. At first it was enjoyable. In the end it is the same old same old. YOu may find that after 40 years you only get a lot of back stabbing and a lousy watch for your years of toil. The worldly enjoyment runs out. The worldly wine is good at first. After enough time the inferior product is all that is left.Man's fallen life becomes old. Man's marriages become old. Man's ambitions and dreams become old and problematic. All things run out. All things eventually reveal their inferior side.Jesus comes to turn man's death into eternal life. Jesus turns man's dying natural life into the uncreated divine life which is God Himself. And this first sign of John two lays the foundation for this principle in the gospel of John. Jesus Christ turns death into life.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.

You're entitled to your view, jaywill. But it's dirty pool to quote someone out of context to create a foil for the speech.

In everything do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets.

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Yeshua

double double post post
What's with this What's with this
software, anyway? software, anyway?___Edited by Archer Opterix, : seeing double.

Impartation... sharing... Interesting. Thanks, Phat.Sounds good to me. ___

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

Aw shucks. Really ? Thanks Archer Opterex. I like speeches, especially about how Jesus turns death into life in the gospel of John. What I would like is for someone to give me a nice speech concerning the significance of Christ who is the life of God performing the sign of turning water into wine.So I do to others what I would want done to me.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.

I did in Message 51 and Message 60.Of course we need to remember that what we are dealing with is the story written by the author of the Gospel of John. What was his significance? Why did he tell that story?The author of John was presenting a much different picture of Jesus than we see in the other Gospels. In the Gospel of John, the author concentrates almost totally on some cosmic mission, and totally ignores Jesus the Man, Jesus the Teacher and Jesus the Healer.The Christology presented in John contributes, IMHO, to a loss of the message from GOD. The Jesus the author of John creates subsumes God. We lose the message of behavior, of our own responsibilities, of the need to follow the Great Commandments. In fact the Great Commandments only get one passing mention in John 13:34 and in the passage it is totally changed both in format and in meaning. The feeling I get reading John is that the author started with the conclusion. Everything before that was then written to support, to lead to, that finale.The story of the wedding is just that, a prologue and story plot device designed to move the reader inexorably towards the conclusion.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

That is right. Different in some ways. In other ways not that much different. I don't know of John totally ignores Jesus the Man. We see that He wept in chapter 11. We see that He was thirsty in chapter 4. We see that Mary Magdelene was very close to Him in chapter 19.The term Son of Man appears in John's gospel.John's prologue does establish that John is going to stress that Christ is God. But I think your generalization that John "totally ignores Jesus the Man" would not be agreed upon by many expositors of the Gospel of John, I don't think.How can John ignore Jesus the Man when his prologue tells us of the underlying significance of incarnation in John 1:14 - "And the Word became flesh"? I could not possible disagree more strongly.Christ is the Word. The Word defines God. The Word explains God. The Word is the manifestation of God. The Word is God declared."No one has ever seen God; the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, HE HAS DECLARED HIM" (John 1:18 my emphasis).John neither "totally ignores Jesus the Man" nor distract us from the declaration of the nature of God. I don't agree with this either. The contrast between the law and the grace of God is seen in the first chapter:"For the law was given through Moses; grace and reality came through Jesus Christ." (John 1:17)The law was something given. Grace is a Person who came. Christ as the True Vine is the one man is to abide in and allow Him to abide in us - "Abide in Me and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me" (JOhn 15:4)Man's responsibility in John's gospel is to believe into the realm of a living Person who is the grace of God coming to us. He is the empowering. He is the enabling. He is the supporting power and the bountiful supply. Grace is just the enjoyment of God as our ability.The law was given. But grace is a living Person, the true Vine, who came. And we are allow Him and His Father to come into our beings and make an abode with us. We abide in Him as a living realm. And He is to abide in us:"Jesus answered and said to him, If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word, and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make an abode with him" (John 14:23).The responsibility is John's gospel is that we open our hearts. We open our spirits. We open up and let the living divine "We" of the Father and the Son come to make His abode with us. This is God becoming the inner life of man.Grafting is a good example. If you graft a weak branch into a strong and healthy tree, the life in the healthy tree will invade the grafted branch and heal and supply it with life.He is the true vine. His believers are the branches. The divine life of Christ flows from the Vine Christ into the attached branches to bear fruit for God. And without this abiding in Him we can do nothing.We can do a lot without Him. But for God's eternal purpose it will all amount to nothing. So apart from Him, He says, we can do nothing.Besides, none of the gospels are really to be isolated and taken by themselves. The gospels compliment each other. They do not fight against each other.Matthew is heavy.
Mark is simple.
Luke is beautiful.
John is profound, deep.The four gospels are like four snapshots of a person from four different angles. This is for the purpose of getting a well rounded view from all angles of this Wonderful person Jesus Christ.He is a King. Yet He is a Slave. He is a Man. Yet He is God.
Four angles for a well rounded panorama of this Wonderful person.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.

That is a very good thought. But remember to John LOVE is the expression of Divine Life.Again, Love is the evidence of Divine Life (caps for emphasis here, sorry).The Apostle writes: The sign that the disciples have passed out of spiritual death and into divine life which is Christ is that they love the brethren in Christ. Life preceeds Love. First divine life is imparted into the sinner causing her to pass out of spiritual death into eternal life. The evidence of this passage from death into life is love of the brotherhood.So life impartation comes first. And then growth, maturity, and its evidence of loving the brotherhood. It is not our natural love that counts. Even the athiest can love. It is the love which is the result of Christ abiding in the saved person who has become a branch abiding in the true vine of Christ: Make no mistake about it. The "Me" who is the true vine is the living and resurrected Jesus. It is not the Jesus of doctrine. It is not the Jesus of sentimentality. It is not the Jesus of Humanism - just a good moral example Jesus.The true vine is the Person Christ Who is alive here and now in His resurrected state as Lord. Apart from Him we can do nothing. We may do a lot of things, including loving, apart from Him. But in the end it will all amount to nothing. It will mean nothing to the accomplishing of God's plan.The love is that Agape love which results from men and women having been transfered from the death of unbelief and sin to the life of having received the resurrected Christ into them as the life giving Spirit: Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.

Yeah, I know there are lots of Christians who see it that way.They are of course free to believe anything.But I really believe that it misses the point and totally misrepresents Jesus message and in fact GOD's message.The Jews thought they were GOD's Chosen People.Now lots of Christians think they are the chosen ones.Lots of Christians go on about stuff like Divine Life that quite frankly, don't mean a thing.The Bible is filled with examples of GOD giving those who think they are special a royal dope slap. Jesus Himself did so on a number of occasions, most notably when he returned home to Nazareth and INTENTIONALLY pissed off the folk.The point is that you can do it and you are expected to try your best to do it.It's simple.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Sure jar. God's message is "Keep doing whatever you're doing." Yea. Perish the thought that God "chooses" people anyway.
I mean, what's there for God to "choose" anyway?!? Sheeesh! Elitists. Snobs. Yea, as if there was any difference between the words BIOS, PSEUCHE, and ZOE in the Greek. They all just translate to English life. Sheeesh! Yea. I feel like slappin em myself. That's my Jesus boy. Piss off those religious guys, Love it! Right. "Having begun in the Spirit are you now being perfected in the flesh?" I mean what on earth did Paul mean by that anyway? Sure is. I love to hang around here and remind Christians how simple it always is.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.

I entirely agree with your support of John, and will do so in the face of any ridicule presented.John does not detract from the message of God; he goes to the next step.He does not tell us we need not behave well or follow the commandments but rather gives us a beautiful reason to want to do so.Being a little, mere human myself, I happen to love the transition from law to love. They both speak to different parts of my soul, and to different types of people.Sometimes I wonder what would happen if the Bible were continued. We would see this same transition in thought and focus which would ultimately lead us to where we are now with the Trinity and such. The Bible is still a living history.

Or, 'third day' could mean three days after the last event. Seeing as the last significant event was Jesus' baptism, and in John 1:29 it says "on the next day", and then again in 1:43 "the day following", I'd say it is logical to assume the third day means what is sounds like - day 3 following the baptism of Jesus.Then again, this contradicts what Mark 1:12-13 says happened after Christ's baptism: "And immediately the spirit driveth him into the wilderness. And he was there in the wilderness forty days, tempted of Satan."I don't know...

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"Der Mensch kann was er will; er kann aber nicht wollen was er will." (Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills.) - Arthur Schopenhauer