Peter SmytheDecidedly Unprofessional

In the past twenty years in America, Christianity has become the plaything of poor exegesis and good ‘ole American marketing muscle. “Abundant life” has been transmogrified into a kind of upper middle-class economic group and corporations with their Gospel meeting sponsorships and “faith-based” divisions stand ever-ready to cater to an I-can’t-wait-to-be-titillated audience. This institutional marketing of the Gospel, where priorities remain earthy, sensual, and sometimes even devilish, has sullied our soul consciousness of the high vision of Christ and His ultimate mission.

In the book of Revelation, we see that the Apostle John is exiled on the small island of Patmos in the Aegean Sea. Domitian, the Roman emperor, had tried to boil him in oil, but he just would not die. So he was exiled on a tiny island to live out the rest of his life in abject obscurity. Though he had already penned the Gospel of John and his three epistles, Jesus Christ again sought out John to demarcate His own high vision of what He accomplished.

While John was sitting in a cave on the small island, he was taken away in the Spirit and brought before the throne of God Almighty Himself:

Immediately I was in the Spirit; and behold, a throne was standing in heaven, and One sitting on the throne. And He who was sitting was like a jasper stone and a sardius in appearance; and there was a rainbow around the throne, like an emerald in appearance. Around the throne were twenty-four thrones; and upon the thrones I saw twenty-four elders sitting, clothed in white garments, and golden crowns on their heads. Out from the throne come flashes of lightning and sounds and peals of thunder. And there were seven lamps of fire burning before the throne, which are the seven Spirits of God; and before the throne there was something like a sea of glass, like crystal; and in the center and around the throne, four living creatures full of eyes in front and behind. The first creature was like a lion, and the second creature like a calf, and the third creature had a face like that of a man, and the fourth creature was like a flying eagle. And the four living creatures, each one of them having six wings, are full of eyes around and within; and day and night they do not cease to say,

“HOLY, HOLY, HOLY is THE LORD GOD, THE ALMIGHTY, WHO WAS AND WHO IS AND WHO IS TO COME.”

And when the living creatures give glory and honor and thanks to Him who sits on the throne, to Him who lives forever and ever, the twenty-four elders will fall down before Him who sits on the throne, and will worship Him who lives forever and ever, and will cast their crowns before the throne, saying, “Worthy are You, our Lord and our God, to receive glory and honor and power; for You created all things, and because of Your will they existed, and were created.” (Revelation 4.2-11, NASB)

While other prophets had also seen the throne, what is so striking about John’s God-breathed description is the purity of God’s own nature. John sees prism-like colors of precious stones that emanate from a being that is so pure, so white, and so holy that these strange, but lovely living creatures can’t help but cry out incessantly, “Holy! Holy! Holy!” It is the grand vision of the Apostle who began his Gospel by writing:

In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. (John 1.1-2, NASB)

By showing John the very throne of God, the meaning of Jesus’s mission comes full circle. In the beginning, before there was ever even the thought of the creation of man, there was Jesus as the Word. As that wonderful second person of the Godhead, He was “with” the Father - He stood face-to-face with Him - identically the same in nature, character, and substance. The Father was God and He was God. Even after His work of redemption, we glimpse His own resemblance to the Father’s nature:

I saw one like a son of man, clothed in a robe reaching to the feet, and girded across His chest with a golden sash. His head and His hair were white like wool, like snow; and His eyes ere like a flame of fire. His feet were like burnished bronze, when it has been made to glow in a furnace, and His voice was like the sound of many waters. In His right hand He held seven stars, and out of His mouth came a sharp two-edged sword; and His face was like the sun shining in its strength. (Revelation 1.13b-16, NASB)

In his Gospel, the Holy Ghost breathed through John one all-inclusive word to describe this phenomenal God-nature: zoe.

In Him was life [zoe] … (John 1.4a, NASB)

And by this small little phrase we see the high vision of Christ Jesus and just how radical our Gospel is.

In John 8.44, Jesus was speaking to Jewish Pharisees, God’s holy people, when He said to them, “You are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father.” By that statement, we understand that man’s dilemma has much more to do than a batch of sins. He is, by nature, not only corrupt, but he is throttled by God’s own enemy to dish out death. Consequently, he can act out things so disgusting and so heinous that even his fellow man, as corrupt as he is, will kill him for it.

To these Pharisees, Jesus makes the provocative statement that He came so that we “might possess zoe” - that very God-nature that He possessed before time even began. His mission, therefore, was not just for God to legally forgive sins or move folks to a higher tax bracket, but to pave the way for an unredeemed man to come into the conscious possession of the very life and power that God Himself possesses. This was Jesus’s aim - “Christ in you, the hope of glory” - the redeemed man whose entire being is filled with the zoe-life of God - a man who possesses Christ in his spirit, Christ in his soul, and Christ in his body. This is “abundant life.”