Riding on the Clouds
6 min read
39 Jesus said, “For judgment I have come into this world, so that the blind will see and those who see will become blind.”
40 Some Pharisees who were with him heard him say this and asked, “What? Are we blind too?”
41 Jesus said, “If you were blind, you would not be guilty of sin; but now that you claim you can see, your guilt remains.”John 9:39-41
When Jesus says, “For judgment I have come into this world,” He is not saying that He has come to judge the world. Jesus came to save the world (John 3:17).
What He means is that His very coming into the world distinguishes those who believe in Him and those who do not. Those who truly believe in Him can see that this world cannot offer life, but ends only in death. Those who truly believe in Jesus can see that truth and life are found in Christ and Christ alone.
Those who think that they know what it means to be saved but choose the world over Christ demonstrate that they are actually blind.
I watched my first “Joe Rogan Experience” all the way through. I watched it because he was interviewing Wesley Huff, a Bible scholar. And when I say “Bible scholar,” I’m talking about someone who studies all the technical details and ancient history of how the Bible came to be what it is today.
But Joe Rogan said something that was on point and a little scary. He said that with all the deep fakes that we see in this world, when Jesus actually does come back, would we even be able to recognize that the second coming had started?
Jesus said,
Then will appear the sign of the Son of Man in heaven. And then all the peoples of the earth will mourn when they see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven, with power and great glory.
Matthew 24:30
When Jesus came the first time, His presence separated those who can see and those who are blind. When Jesus comes the second time, I wonder if His coming would once again separate those who can see and those who are blind.
When Jesus comes, the only thing that I have to help me see Him is to abide in the word of God. The Pharisees had the word of God too. And they had Jesus standing right in front of them. They witnessed His crucifixion first hand. They heard the first-person witness of Jesus’s resurrection first hand.
And if you think about it, we really don’t have that much more information than the Pharisees did with respect to a revelation of the coming of the Christ. We have “Revelation”; They had “Daniel.”
But the Pharisees did not “abide” in the word of God, and so they could not see. They saw their “faith” in terms of human traditions and exclusive membership and not in terms of abiding in the word of God: obedience to BASIC love and global witness.
BASIC love and global witness is what it looks like to abide in Christ. When we abide in Christ, we will see Him, because He will be with us already.
Father, Give me Your love for the lost. Give me Your heart for missions. Use me to proclaim Your gospel in my Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. And show me Your glory, Lord. Let me experience the power of Your resurrection and the joy of Your salvation. In Jesus’s name.
