Welcome to the Follow Up and Summary of the 21 Days to Knowing Jesus Christ Bible Study. I hope that you enjoy this study and that it will be helpful to you in building a daily Bible study habit.
Listen to the audio version of today’s study HERE on Soundcloud.
We have spent a good amount of time studying the Gospel of John, chapter by chapter, and then reviewing the key concepts presented in the apostle John’s historical narrative. The message conveyed in this book is, by far, the most important message that there is. It is, without a doubt, the most important message you will ever hear because it is a message of eternal significance. It is a question of how one will spend all of eternity.
The format of today’s Bible study is a bit different from the rest of the ones we have done in this series. It is my desire to bring the teachings together from John’s Gospel and, after having read and reviewed the information contained in it, ask you the simple question:
“Who is Jesus Christ to You?”
In other words, after having heard the claims about Jesus and the words that He said about Himself in the pages of the Bible, who do you believe Jesus Christ to be?
There is a good chance that, if you have hung with me for the last twenty-eight daily sessions studying and reviewing the Gospel of John, you have already made up your mind about who Jesus Christ is. However, if you haven’t, I invite you to consider the following discussion as a summary to this study. Thank you so much for joining me in it.
Jesus Christ made some extraordinary, exclusive truth claims. Not least among them was the claim that He is THE way to God. Jesus did not say that He was one of many ways to God. He said that He was THE way. If He is THE way, then there is no other way. In John 14:6 He declares:
“I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.”
Jesus goes on to tell those who do not believe in Him, that they will die in their sins and that they are condemned.
John 8:23-24 “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.”
John 3:18-19 “He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.”
He makes it clear that one must be born again (spiritually) in order to see the kingdom of God.
John 3:3 “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.”
John 3:5-7 “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’”
He declares that He has come to save the world.
John 3:16-17 “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.”
He goes on to explain that, not only is He THE way to the Father but, He is ONE with the Father. The Father, Jesus and the Holy Spirit are ONE in the Holy Trinity. In this sense, Jesus IS GOD, in that He is ONE with God. In John 10:30, among other places, He says:
“I and my Father are one.”
He demonstrated His power by His miraculous resurrection from the dead. In John 10:17, He says that He will take His life up again by the power given Him by His Father:
“Therefore My Father loves Me, because I lay down My life that I may take it again. No one takes it from Me, but I lay it down of Myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again.”
Jesus tells us HOW we can have eternal life and an eternal relationship with Him:
John 5:24 “Most assuredly, I say to you, he who hears My word and believes in Him who sent Me has everlasting life, and shall not come into judgment, but has passed from death into life.”
Jesus tells His followers how to live.
John 8:31-32 “If you abide in My word, you are My disciples indeed. And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”
Jesus tells us that we cannot lose our relationship with Him.
John 10:27-29 “My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me. And I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; neither shall anyone snatch them out of My hand. My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all; and no one is able to snatch them out of My Father’s hand.”
Many today hear of Jesus Christ, reject His claim of deity, and will say that He is simply a wise philosopher or a profoundly good moral teacher. However, He has not given us that option. In the words of C.S. Lewis in his book “Mere Christianity”,
“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him [that is, Christ]: ‘I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.’ That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic–on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg–or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse…. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come up with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”
The Gospel of John is not just a chapter of a book, but it is a historical eyewitness account of the life and earthly ministry of Jesus Christ. It was written specifically for the purpose that by reading it we might “…believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing you might have life through His name.”
As Lee Stroebel documents in his book “The Case for Christ”,
As prominent British theologian Michael Green said, “The appearances of Jesus are as well authenticated as anything in antiquity… There can be no rational doubt that they occurred, and that the main reason why Christians became sure of the resurrection in the earliest days was just this. They could say with assurance, ‘We have seen the Lord.’ They knew it was he.”
I intend to dig deeper into the reasons that we can trust the Bible and the historical accounts contained within it with the ongoing work of the Mars Hill Institute ministry.
My prayer for you is that you will 1) get to know Jesus Christ intimately through the words of the Bible, 2) that you will develop a deep saving personal relationship with Him and 3) that you will live your life in a way that He would be able to call you a true disciple.
Thank you again for joining us in this study and do continue to study along with us so that, in the words of the Apostle Paul to Timothy in II Timothy 2:15, we might “Be diligent to present yourself approved to God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.”
Do feel free to comment on the post if you are being impacted by this study or have questions. You can also contact the Mars Hill Institute by direct messaging the Facebook page or by the email address below.
Thank you so much for joining me in this 21 day study of the Gospel of John. I hope that it has been as encouraging and enlightening to you as it has to me. Please follow the ministry of the Mars Hill Institute on our Facebook page at HERE. There will be at least one or two follow up posts on this series, so continue to follow for that discussion. You can go back and visit the daily posts at any time on the website or Facebook page. Make sure to SUBSCRIBE by email so that you can be directly notified when new posts or materials become available.
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What are some key take-aways for you from the Chapter we reviewed today? Feel free to dig further on your own if you have time. Have a GREAT and Blessed Day!
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