The Balance of Salvation Part I
“The Balance of Salvation Part I”
John 1:36-43
This evening if we can capture a title out of the narrative, perhaps the title might be the balance of salvation. Salvation is both an historic fact, and historic event that happens in time and at the same time an eternal choice that happened before time began. Often in Scripture we read about the human side of salvation, the idea that whoever wants to come to Christ may, and that is true. For Jesus said, "Him that cometh unto Me I will in no wise cast out." But more often in Scripture we read of the divine side, elect before the world began. "All that the Father gives to Me shall come to Me," is the other side of the verse I just quoted, John 6:37. And so, salvation is a beautiful balance between the will of God and the will of man. Salvation is the will of God in action, bringing about a response from the will of man.
Now salvation is a divine act. Salvation demanded a divine initiative. Man could not design to die himself for his own sin, God had to do that. The love that initiated salvation came from God. The grace, the mercy, the forgiveness, all of that was divine. And so, salvation in the truest sense is a divine act yet it demands a human response. Salvation is the work of God and at the same time it is the activity of man as he responds to the work of God in his heart. And we cannot understand it from a purely divine standpoint, we can't grasp divine truth, we can't hold on to the sovereignty of God in our small little brains, it's too great a thought for us. And so God has reduced it to simplicity. We simply understand that we are saved by the sovereign act of God, we are also saved by the act of our will. We don't attempt to justify the two; we accept them because they are biblical.
Maybe I can illustrate this and I hope you won't mind if I do this. Tom, would you just raise your right hand for me for a second? Now whose will caused Tom to raise his hand? His will, he didn't have to raise his hand, I hold no threat over him. Not only his will, my will. He exercised his will in response to my will and apart from my will he wouldn't have raised his hand. And that is exactly in a very mundane sense what salvation is. It is my will responding to the will of God. And that's the two sides of salvation. That's the balance. And I do not of my own will seek God, says Paul, until God has sought me. Augustine said, "We should never seek Christ unless God had already found us." And so salvation is my will in response to the will of God.
And so, Scripture presents two sides to salvation, the balance between the seeking soul and the seeking Savior. And we shall see it as we examine our text for in verses 38 to 42 we have the seeking soul and in verses 43 to 51, the seeking Savior. The human side is in verses 38 to 42, although the divine is there the human side is emphasized. And the divine side is emphasized in 43 to 51 although the human is there, it is the divine that is emphasized.
Now, we are entering the public ministry of Jesus Christ. And as we enter it we see Him in our section four this morning calling out two groups of disciples. These are the first two groups of disciples that He ever called and there are six in all. And we'll meet them in a moment as we go through the text. But I want you to get the picture of where we are now.
Remember that the Apostle John is writing this gospel. And that his purpose is to present Christ as the Son of God. So everybody that John can find who will testify that Christ is God, John will use him to do that. So when John talks about somebody being...becoming a Christian and believing in Christ, he doesn't just say, "Well, So-and-so believed in Christ," and then goes to the next thing. No. He takes that person and says, "No So-and-so said Christ is God," see, because he wants everybody that he can get to testify that Christ is God. That's his point in this book, to get us to see that Christ is the Son of God, indeed God in a body. So he gathers together this first group of disciples and before John the Apostle leaves them he has them testify as to who Christ is. So he's adding witnesses upon witnesses to build a case to prove that Christ is the Son of God.
And so, we see the first group of disciples that Jesus picks out. And they are really just the first of many countless millions who have come down through history, even to today. And every disciple that Christ calls out becomes a witness, becomes a living declaration that Christ is God. And whether he issues it out of his mouth or not, that's another story. He is a witness by the very fact of his salvation.
Now we've already met one witness, we've met John the Baptist who gave his witness, right? He said, "Behold the Lamb of God who take away the sin of the world." When he met Christ he witnessed to who He was. Now we are about to meet the next two disciples of Christ and we see them introduced in verse 35. We'll back up to verse 35 and meet them.
"Again the next day John stood and two of his disciples," two of the disciples of John the Baptist, remember who had built a little following for himself, not because he desired to but because people attached themselves to him as a prophet of God. Two of his disciples are there with John. And John looked on Jesus as He was walking about there in that place in Bethany and he said to these disciples, "Behold, the Lamb of God." Now we told you last week what he meant by that. He was saying, "What are you doing hanging around me, there is the Lamb of God, there is the Christ, there is the Savior of the world. Why are you staying here?" And, of course, in verse 37 the two disciples heard him speak and followed Jesus. He said there is the Lamb of God and they went after Jesus Christ. And there were the first two disciples. Now they're not named yet, they shall be named. Well one of them is named in a minute, the other one we know because it's the same one who never names himself, that's John. So it's John and Andrew, these first two who were disciples of John the Baptist. And John says, "There is the Messiah, go after Him."
So at the end of verse 37 they move toward Christ and the whole picture changes. John the Baptist fades from the scene and we begin the narrative of the ministry of Christ at verse 38. Now as we begin our narrative we're going to see the two sides of salvation; the balance of salvation, the seeking soul and the seeking Savior. Notice the seeking soul in verses 38 to 42.
Now here are these two disciples having left John the Baptist, starting after Jesus Christ. In verse 38 we read this, "Then Jesus turned and saw them following and saith unto them," stop right there.
Now here we are introduced to the seeking soul. We have heard nothing about the Father drawing them, yet Jesus says no man comes unto Me except the Father draw him. Nobody comes to Jesus Christ unless he's been convicted by the Holy Spirit of his sin. We don't even hear about that. Did it happen? Certainly it happened, the Father drew them. Certainly they were convicted of their sin and knew they needed a Messiah. They knew all of that. They knew they weren't righteous and they wanted the righteousness that Messiah could provide. They knew all that; that had already happened. But John wants us to see the human side of salvation, the seeking soul. And so we see these two following Christ.
Now maybe they were shy. I mean, after all, if this was Messiah, He would be the greatest person in the universe next to God; them perhaps not understanding that He was God at that point. And they wouldn't sort of walk up to Him and just start a conversation, maybe they were afraid and shy. Maybe they just couldn't believe the wonder of who He was. I don't know what the reason was but they just kind of followed along. And then Jesus did something, He turned around to face them. And He said something to them. And what He was doing was opening the door to their salvation, in effect. And here again you have the divine initiative. A man could follow Jesus Christ forever, if Jesus Christ never turned to talk to him he'd never know salvation. So you have even here the indication of the seeking Savior which is completely developed in verses 43 to 51. Christ did turn and you see a glimpse of divine initiative right there.
And I'll tell you something. This is a very beautiful thought because whenever a soul is an honest soul, Christ will meet that soul. And here's a principle I don't want you to ever forget, we're going to see it in Scripture right here and a couple of other passages that is really a very critical passage. If you don't come to Jesus Christ honestly, He won't meet you. And I'll show you what I mean by that in a moment.
But when the soul of man is really honest, that's why He said to Nathanael, "There is an Israelite in whom there is no deceit." He's honest. Sure he said, "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?" And that wasn't a wise crack, he was honest. But when a man is really honest and when a man comes searching to know who Jesus Christ is, God will reveal it to him because he wouldn't be searching unless God had already drawn him. He wouldn't be coming toward Christ unless there had been some divine initiative to draw him that way because man certainly is bent toward sin and does not seek God, Romans 3, unless God spins him around and turns him toward Himself. And so it is that these two have already been drawn by the Father to Jesus Christ. They have already been convicted by the Holy Spirit of their sin and they're coming after Jesus Christ with sincere hearts. And when a man is honest and when he really says I want to know who I am, I want forgiveness, I want freedom from guilt, I want to repent of my old life, I want peace and love and joy and meaning and he really is honest with Christ, Christ will turn and meet him. And so when somebody comes to me and says, "Well I'm trying, I'd like to give my life to Christ but I can't seem to find it," I'll say, "Well okay, what are you holding back? Level with me cause you're not being honest? If you really want to know Jesus Christ and you really want to repent and be what He wants you to be, He'll meet you in that split second with all your doubts, with all your misunderstanding." When a heart begins to long sincerely, passionately to meet the Christ in a real experience of salvation, He will meet that individual.
And so Jesus didn't leave these two groping, He turned. He knew their hearts were honest. He knew they were prepared by the Father. He knew the Spirit had brought conviction. They were ready. And so He met them in that instant. And just the opposite was true in the next chapter, look at chapter 2 verse 23 and I want you to see what He does with the insincere hearts.
And here were a lot of people who believed but weren't ready to commit. You remember, the devils believed and they tremble. Now 2:23, He was in Jerusalem at the Passover and the feast day, many believed in His name when they saw the miracles which He did. They liked His tricks. They weren't ready to commit themselves to Him, they just believed in who He was because they liked His miracles. There's a difference between believing and receiving. They weren't ready to repent,. they weren't sick of their sin. They said, "Oh, it's terrific, He's got to be the Messiah." And you know what they did? They all followed Him just like those two disciples.
You say, "Were they all following Him believing, surely He turned and met them." No He did not, look at verse 24, "But Jesus did not do what? commit Himself unto them." Why? Because in verse 24, "Because He knew them." He knew them all, pantos, all men, He knew everything that was in their hearts. He knew that they weren't really honest. He didn't need anybody to tell him what a man was thinking, verse 25, He knew what was in a man. You see, Jesus didn't commit Himself to the insincere heart. And if you're searching hypocritically for Jesus Christ and you can't seem to find Him, it's not because He doesn't want you to find Him, it's because if you're not sincere He can't meet you. And so the honest heart is the thing and an honest heart is a prepared heart. That's why Jesus said, "Him that cometh to Me I will in no wise cast out." And before that in the same verse He said, "All the Father gives Me shall come to Me." So when the Father sends somebody whose heart is ready, whose heart is prepared, who is honest and not hypocritical and there's no deceit, when he's coming to Christ completely stripped of his own self design and self will, when he has had it, when he's tired of his sin, when he's ready for Jesus Christ to make him what He wants him to be and he comes in that kind of honesty, even with doubts, Christ will meet him on that ground.
And I've often said to people, if you really want to know Jesus Christ, if you really want to know if He's the Son of God and you've got doubts and you want a life that is changed, you meet Him with all your doubts and in a split second you'll know who He is and you'll know the salvation that He offers. Christ commits Himself to the honest, searching heart. And He knows who is sincere. He said to the Jews, I think it's Luke 6:46, He said, "Why do you call me Lord, Lord and do not the things I say?" He had a lot of hypocrites, they followed Him everywhere. The crowds that went after Him just wanted to see what He did. They never wanted to commit their lives to Him. The same crowd that killed Him. There were a lot of hypocrites on Palm Sunday, as it's called. There were a lot of hypocrites there when He came in, "O Hosanna, hurray for the King," and they were yelling for his blood a few days later. They liked His miracles. Remember the hypocritical leaders that came to Him and they said, "Oh, you know, we'd like to talk to You, give us Your wisdom." And what were they really trying to do? Trap Him in His word and get Him in a position where they could either get Him from the Roman angle or from the Jewish angle.
And not only that, I always remember the indelible thing about the time that He fed the multitude and then He went across the sea and they all followed Him. I heard a preacher say, "Isn't that wonderful? He had given them food, He had met their need and they all followed Him." No they didn't follow Him, they followed Him because they wanted some more food. They didn't care about Him. He said, "You came after Me because your stomachs need food." Oh there were a lot of hypocrites. And Jesus never met the phony, He only met the sincere heart.
And there are a lot of people in a church like that. There are a lot of people to them the church is sort of a glorified security blanket. They like to put their thumbs in their mouths and tickle their nose with the church. They like to think of the church as kind of a facility where they can have friends and parties and just think, it doesn't even cost as much as the Y, and that way they can sprinkle little divine salt on their human activity. And they wonder why nothing ever happens to change their lives. They're not meeting Jesus Christ honestly. If all you want out of the church is entertainment and friends and parties, then you've got the wrong idea of what the church is all about. No, Jesus Christ knows who the honest seekers are. He knows the real searching soul because that searching soul has already been prompted by God the Father and convicted by the Holy Spirit and Jesus knows that.
So he says to them in verse 38, "What seek ye?" And that's a lot of introduction but you need to understand that. What seek ye? You say, "Well if He knows everybody what's He asking them that for?" Well He's not asking them for His benefit, He's asking them for their own benefit. What are you coming after Me for? Think about it. It's a good thing to ask because John was one of the two, I'm sure John would have said, "Oh," in his own heart he would have been very honest and said, "We want forgiveness, we want to know if You're Messiah, we want to know what You've got to give us, we want You." That's the same John who a little while later sent his mother to see Jesus and said, "Say, could my two boys sit beside You in the Kingdom?" See, mood is changed pretty fast, don't they? You see, initially what he wanted was probably all legitimate, it got a little twisted as time went on.
I don't know if Jesus asked that question of Judas or not, but Judas was in it for the money. He was in it for the money. He didn't end too well. Never very successful when you go into the ministry for money. But He wanted them to really consider their motives. He wanted them to consider their own motives. What were their motives? Were they Pharisees who wanted to get into some subtle dialogue about the law and play games with their minds? Or maybe they were Sadducees who wanted a lot of pomp and had a lot of ambition and wanted to be big mucky-mucks in the operation. Or maybe they were Zealots and maybe these Zealots decided that this might be a good military commander that could lead an insurrection against Rome. I don't think they were those, but I just think Jesus wanted them to examine what their motives were.
You know what I think they were? I think they were a couple of simple bewildered puzzled guys trying to figure out if this was really Messiah, and if He was they wanted to give Him everything they were. You see, they had doubts. Isn't that a beautiful thing? You'll never know all about Jesus Christ till you meet Him. I've met people who say, "Well once I get rid of all the complications and I really understand it, then I'll meet Christ." You'll never meet Him. They were puzzled but they knew that if this was Messiah they were ready to give their lives to Him.
Have you ever asked yourself, "What are you seeking?" What do you want? What do you want out of Jesus Christ? What do you want from Him? Or do you want anything? What do you want in life? Do you want self-glory, self-will, prestige, power, popularity, money, health? Sorry, Christ doesn’t guarantee you any of those commodities in spite of what Christian Science says. You might not be healthy. In spite of what some of the other cults say, you might not have enough money. What does Christ guarantee? Oh, a few things like love, peace, joy, meaning, purpose, hope. It all depends on what you want. What do you want? If you want what Christ can offer, He's there if you're honest.
I want you to see a beautiful thing. They said to Christ, "Where do You dwell?" And the Greek scholars take this sentence and kind of tear it apart a little bit and they think that maybe what was in their minds was this, they could have said, "Could we go with You?" But they didn't. Evidently they still didn't want to bother Jesus and I think it's Godae(?) makes a very interesting point of this, he says that evidently they were just going to find out His address and come and see Him at a later time, make an appointment, see. But I love this thing, they said, "Where are You?" You know, like we don't want to bother You but if we just knew where Your place was we'd come and see You in a couple of days when You get kind of relaxed. And look what He says to them in verse 39, fantastic. He says unto them, what? I'll have an appointment next Tuesday at three. What does He say? "Come on, come on, today is the day of, salvation." Jesus never put anybody off. That's a beautiful thought. I would to God that were always true in our ministry. Christ never put anybody off. I always remember when He walked in the city and you remember Zacchaeus? He went up in a tree because he couldn't see because of the crowd. And he climbed up in a tree and I'll never forget what Christ said to him. Christ walked along, saw him up there and said, "Hey, Zacchaeus, get down from that tree, I'm coming to your house, today." And you better believe he got down off that tree.
Christ never put anybody off. He never was too busy. You never have to worry about Christ having time for you. He stood over Jerusalem and cried because they wouldn't come to Him. That's a beautiful thing about Jesus Christ, He's only got the whole universe to worry about but He's got every second of every day for me. Fantastic thought, isn't it? Come and see. Listen, you can stand around and wonder who Messiah is, you can have a lot of theological discourse about it but finally you just better go and see who He is. How do you do that? You sit down with Him and you have some time.
You say, "Well how can you sit down with Him and have some time with Him to find out who He is?" Simple, Revelation 3:20, "Behold, I stand at the door and knock, if any man hear My voice and open the door, I'll come in and sup with Him and he with Me." You want to get to know Him, meet Him. You can stand on the outside looking in and you miss the whole point. Come with your doubts and invite Christ to be real to you and He will be.
And so, He said come and see and they came and they saw. Verse 39, they saw where He dwelt but they also saw it was spiritualized, didn't they? They saw a lot more than the house that He happened to be using for that day because the next day He left the country. It's a good thing they went that day. You'll see not only physically but spiritually. And then I just love this next statement. It's just really fantastic. At the end of verse 39 and you just pass over it, and I began to think about this and what is this saying? "For it was about the tenth hour," well what is that? So who cares what time it is? So you know who wrote this chapter? John. So you know who was one of these two disciples? John. So you know who cares what time it was? John does. Why? Because ten o'clock one January afternoon in a Galilean, on a Galilean day his life got transformed. John is 60 years ahead of this. He's writing this 60 years later and he says ten o'clock...ten o'clock. What happened at ten o'clock, John? Everything happened. Ten o'clock January Galilean day the dividing line in my life.
I imagine many of you remember, don't you? When it was? Maybe you don't, maybe you do. John remembered and he went and stayed all day with Jesus and it all began at ten o'clock. You know what that tells me? Listen to this. Salvation is no religious process. It is a historical event. It may take time for the Spirit of God to bring you to that point but when it happens it happens, ten o'clock in the morning.
I don't know what went on but I can imagine. Oh, I mean, just unbelievable. Spending the whole day with the Messiah that every Jew since the beginning of Jews had been dreaming about. And here are His first two and I could just see them sitting there hanging on every word, the expression of His person. You know what's really exciting? Just grab this thought. What they had waited centuries to experience in one afternoon, you and I have every moment of every day. Constant communion with Jesus Christ. I tell you, that's exciting. I get blessed.
Verse 40 tells us who they were or who one of them was. "One of the two who heard John speak and followed him," that is John the Baptist speak, "and followed Him was Andrew, Simon Peter's brother." So we automatically know the other one is John cause he never mentions his name. He never even mentions his brother's name. And when he's got a chance to introduce his mother, he doesn't even mention her name. He never brings up anybody in his family. But we know it's John. And there's another dimension to this that's really interesting, but before we consider just that dimension, let's look at Andrew. Now Andrew was Simon Peter's brother, poor Andrew. If we didn't qualify his name by calling him Peter's brother, he might not be too well known. But everybody knows Peter. Andrew was just kind of there, you know. You say, "Oh, yeah, not too much of a guy." You know there's something fantastic about Andrew, you know what he...every time we meet him in the Bible, three times, he's always doing the same thing; he's three times in the New Testament and three times he's doing the same thing. You know what he's doing? Bringing somebody to Jesus. Isn't that fantastic? Here he goes and gets Peter, loud-mouth rash Peter. You know, I call Peter the Apostle with the foot-shaped mouth. He was always saying the wrong thing.
So Andrew, here he goes and gets Simon Peter his brother and brings him to Jesus. In John chapter 6 he goes and gets a little boy with the fishes and he brings him to Jesus. Later on in John 12 verse 22 he gets some Gentiles and brings them to Jesus. You know what he spent his life doing? Bringing people to Jesus. Oh he wasn't a great orator. He never gave a speech, never gave a big sermon. There's not any in the Bible. He wasn't a great logician like Paul. And I don't think he ever wrote a book, at least not a canonical book that's in the New Testament, I don't think he ever wrote anything. What did he do? Nothing much, just spent his life bringing people to Jesus. What a beautiful character, what a beautiful character...and what a commendation. And I love his mode of evangelism.
Watch this, verse 41, terrific. He goes and gets Simon and he says unto him, "Simon, we're taking a religious survey" No, he's rather adept at the direct method. He says, "Simon, what, what does he say?, we have found the Messiah." He doesn't beat around the bush. No, there's sometimes when the indirect method is necessary obviously, but not with Andrew. "Hey, Simon," he says, "we found the Messiah. I mean, let's not dinker around with it, here it is. This is what I want you to know, the Messiah is here. We found the Messiah." What a tremendous statement. Just imagine, the anointed one, the Mashiah of the Old Testament Hebrew, the Meshiha of Aramaic, the Christos of Greek, the anointed one of God. And we read it in Psalm 2:2 at the beginning of our service. God's anointed Son, the King of Israel, we've found Him, we've found Him. The search is over. We found the wonderful, the counselor, the mighty God, the Father of eternity, the Prince of Peace, we found the seed of Genesis 3:15, we found the Son of Psalm 2:2, we found the King of 2 Samuel 7, we found the Lamb, the branch, the root, we found Him. You see, that's the human side, who really found who? The Son of Man is come to seek. But, you see, John's showing us the human side. We found Him. And the human reaction. Centuries of waiting for David's greater Son are over, He's here.
You say, "Well, what happens when the seeking soul finds the object of his search?" Well you know what happens, he doesn't stop searching, he stops searching for the object that he was searching for and starts searching for another object. As soon as Andrew found the object of his search, he didn't stop searching, he just started searching out others to bring them to Christ, didn't he? He found Christ and then he found his brother.
Now I want you to notice something that's very interesting here. You'll notice that it says in verse 41 that he first finds his own brother. And the word "first" is protos here which is a little different form. Most often the form would be proton and the protos form which is the word "first" implies that there has to be a second. Now watch this because this is a very interesting thing and most commentators agree with this interpretation and it's very interesting. Let me read it to you in a way that might lay it so you can understand it, he first finds his own brother, that implies that secondly John found his own brother. And so, the preponderance of scholarship would agree that not only in that little statement do you have Andrew finding his brother, but unnamed John finding unnamed James. So here we have the conversion of John and James without them ever being mentioned by the use of the Greek words that John chooses to use. And so they are the first four disciples...Andrew and Peter and James and John...the first four all from the same location, Bethsaida.
And notice in verse 42 just the beginning this thought, he brought him to Jesus. And as we said, this is what he spent his life doing. But notice in verse 42 it says, "And when Jesus beheld him He said, Thou art Simon the son of Jonah." I know you, I know you, and there's a little tinge of sovereignty again in there. I know you. You're that hot-headed impulsive rash vacillating unstable guy, you're Simon. I imagine Simon had kind of a reputation. He couldn't have missed, you know, must have had a reputation. What good could this guy do the Messiah? So He says to him, "You are Simon but you are going to become Cephas," that's the Aramaic word for rock or stone. And being interpreted it says a stone, which is petras or Peter. You're going to become Peter, a stone. He says it in Aramaic and also in Greek. He says, "Peter, you may be a marshmallow but you're going to become a stone." Now it didn't happen easy. It took a long time for Peter to become a stone. He tripped all through his life with Christ. He was always making ridiculous suggestions. "Let's stay up on this temple and build booths," at the transfiguration. "Lord, You're not going away." "Get thee behind Me, Satan." "I'll defend You, Lord," and he whacked off the ear of Malchus. He was always doing...he was still soft for a long time. But here you have a prophetic statement, Jesus says you are going to be called stone. Some day you'll be one. And the constant reminder that every time somebody called Peter's name he was reminded that he was supposed to be a rock must have been a challenge. But eventually Peter became a rock. After the Holy Spirit came on the day of Pentecost, you see him and you see a rock. He denied Christ three times, the prior experience. And now he stands up in Jerusalem, preaches a message and indicts the whole population, tells them they killed the Prince of life. And then he goes on from there to preach the person of Christ and 3,000 people were saved. You read his epistles, 1 and 2 Peter and you see the tremendous rock-hard stand he takes on discipline, on discipleship and on sound doctrine. And then you see him at the end of his life being crucified upside down and you say, "Yeah, Peter became a rock," and he did. In fact, he was one of the foundation stones of the Apostles upon which Christ built the church. And so He calls him a rock and we are introduced to Peter.
And we're going to fall in love with Peter as we study throughout the life of Christ. What a change. Christ can change a life, transformation. It didn't happen over night, and that's a good principle to learn. Some people think that salvation is an instant panacea for all your neuroses and all your psychological quirks. It isn't. If you've got a bad temper, you're going to get saved and still have a bad temper, but at least you'll have the resource to begin to work on it. That's why the Christian life is the process of sanctification as God little by little molds you, or chisels, depending on the case, to make you into the image of Christ. It's a process by which you grow into His image. All right, this is what maturity is all about.