Jesus Announced The Time For Straight Talk

What Did Jesus Do?

“The hour is coming when I will tell you plainly about the Father.”
John 16.25

Throughout the time they had known him, pretty much all that the disciples heard from Jesus was in the form of allegorical speech, proverb, and simile. The Lord openly admitted that he had been speaking to his followers using “figures of speech” (John 16.25a). Most of what Christ had spoken up to this point had been veiled, so to speak. But the time was approaching when the veil would be removed, torn in two actually (see Matthew 27.51); Jesus announced that the time for straight talk was coming.

In the days between his resurrection and ascension Jesus would talk plainly with his followers about the Father. Even more, with the veil removed the Lord would teach his disciples that they had direct and personal access to the Father (John 16.26). Believers would not have to ask the Son to go to the Father on their behalf, but through the agency of the Holy Spirit could go right to the Father themselves in the name of the Jesus. This was a huge leap forward for those who had come to rely upon the priestly caste to go “behind the veil” and intercede for them.

Christians do not have to rely solely on the Father's love for the Son, but know that in and through the Son the Father loves them with the very same love (John 16.27). While he had been with them, Jesus had prayed for his followers. But with his return to the Father the disciples would in effect lose their intercessor. Not to worry though, for every believer in Christ has direct, up-close and personal, access to the Father.

The straight talk would move disciples from hearing what the kingdom was like, to personally experiencing the kingdom in and through the risen Lord, and to personally receiving the kingdom in the person of the Holy Spirit, who would dwell within them (see Luke 17.21; Ezekiel 36.27; Romans 8.9-11). This would radically set them apart from the world which would rejoice over the death of Jesus and reject the kingdom Christ came to inaugurate (John 16.20).

Here's the question we need to address in light of these words of Jesus: Has the time for straight talk come and gone? In other words, are we to replace the veil, to return to the use of allegory, proverb, and simile to represent the kingdom of God? Or are we, in the power of the risen Lord through the presence and activity of the Holy Spirit within us, to talk straight about the kingdom? Even more, are we to exhibit the kingdom plainly to the world? I believe the answer is quite clear, and not at all open to debate—in and through the risen Christ the kingdom has come, and by the power of the Spirit the kingdom is manifest in the Church, the Body of Christ. Or at least it should be.

To know, rather than to merely know about, the love of the Father in and through the Son, is to know and experience the kingdom. It is the Father's intention that the world should know him in and through a Church that loves the world like the Son loved the world. Now is the time for us to talk, and to walk, straight. That's what Jesus did.

S.D.G.

Jim
www.jimwilkenministries.org
Marion, NC
PS 37.4