quote:
1. Every Jewish person in the last 2000 years has not chosen to try and follow Gods will.
2. Jesus is not from God, meaning his statements are not necessarily divine and true.
John 7
14Not until halfway through the Feast did Jesus go up to the temple courts and begin to teach. 15The Jews were amazed and asked, "How did this man get such learning without having studied?"
16Jesus answered, "My teaching is not my own. It comes from him who sent me. 17If anyone chooses to do God's will, he will find out whether my teaching comes from God or whether I speak on my own. 18He who speaks on his own does so to gain honor for himself, but he who works for the honor of the one who sent him is a man of truth; there is nothing false about him. 19Has not Moses given you the law? Yet not one of you keeps the law. Why are you trying to kill me?"
Going strictly with writers in the Bible, I'm not sure how you came to your two choices.
The estimated range of dating for the
Book of John is 90-150CE. Christianity was no longer a sect of Judaism. According to
Edgar Goodspeed the manuscript was written to meet the needs of the Greek public of the early second century.
To meet the needs of this Greek public some adjustment had to be made. Christianity was addressing it in Jewish terms. A Greek who felt like becoming a Christian was called upon to accept Jesus as the Christ, the Messiah. He would naturally ask what this meant and would have to be given a short course in Jewish apocalyptic messianic thought. Was there no way in which he might be introduced directly to the values of the Christian salvation without being forever routed, we might even say detoured, through Judaism? Must Christianity always speak in a Jewish vocabulary?
The writers of the OT make it clear that God's will is to follow his commands.
Deuteronomy 13
1. If a prophet, or one who foretells by dreams, appears among you and announces to you a miraculous sign or wonder,
2. and if the sign or wonder of which he has spoken takes place, and he says, "Let us follow other gods" (gods you have not known) "and let us worship them,"
3. you must not listen to the words of that prophet or dreamer. The LORD your God is testing you to find out whether you love him with all your heart and with all your soul.
4. It is the LORD your God you must follow, and him you must revere. Keep his commands and obey him; serve him and hold fast to him.
So those who are following God's will or commands will know if Jesus is presenting an incorrect teaching. What little we have of Jesus' teachings in the synoptic gospels, don't show that he taught contrary to Mosaic/Jewish Law.
Oddly enough, the Book of John was written for Greeks who probably didn't know the OT or the Mosaic/Jewish Laws. They wouldn't really know if the Jesus character in the Book of John was teaching God's will or not.
quote:
Note: In Context, the Will of God can't simply mean to follow Jesus, because that would make the entire statement logically flawed. It would read as "choose to believe in me and you will find out if you should believe in me.". Logically, it should be that someone should be making a choice to try and discern God's will.
This being taken to mean that anyone choosing to do Gods will will known if Jesus is telling the truth. Now, the problem here is people attempt to do God's will who both believe and disbelieve in Jesus. Now, the Jewish people certainly believe they are doing Gods will, they have chosen to do so and they think the Jesus does not exist. This creates somewhat of a predicament with the last line. Either
I assume you're still in the Book of John and referring to verse 37-39.
37 On the last and greatest day of the Feast, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, "If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. 38 Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him." 39 By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive. Up to that time the Spirit had not been given, since Jesus had not yet been glorified.
Since he is standing in front of the people he wasn't asking them to believe in his existence. He's was asking the people to put their trust in him. The next step is to see if the scripture does say that. It isn't in the OT that I can find.
The Jews who currently follow the laws of God as given through the
Tanakh and Oral Laws according to tradition have chosen to follow God's will.
The Jesus in this Gospel doesn't necessarily teach about the Kingdom or behavior as pointed out by Goodspeed.
The new narrative differed from the older ones in many details. In it Jesus' ministry falls almost wholly in Judea instead of in Galilee and seems to cover three years instead of one. The cleansing of the Temple stands at the beginning instead of at the end of his work. Nothing is said of his baptism, temptation, or agony in the garden. His human qualities disappear, and he moves through the successive scenes of the gospel perfect master of every situation, until at the end he goes of his own accord to his crucifixion and death. He does not teach in parables, and his teaching deals, not as in the earlier gospels with the Kingdom of God, but with his own nature and his inward relation to God.
Claiming divinity in front of Jews would have put Jesus at odds with the Mosaic/Jewish Laws or God's will.
The author of John probably wasn't quoting Jesus.
Excerpt from Goodspeed
The Gospel of John is a charter of Christian experience. For the evangelist, to know Christ through inner experience matters more than to have seen him face to face in Galilee. "Blessed be those who believe without having seen me," 20:29. What supremely matters in religion is not so much what men said or did, here or there, but the power of the Christian experience to create itself anew in the human heart, no matter where or when. Without that what would all the dogmas, all the liturgies, and all the literatures be worth to us?
Edited by purpledawn, : Fix Link
"Peshat is what I say and derash is what you say." --Nehama Leibowitz