The Mother of the Son

 

The Wedding at Cana

The prologue lays the groundwork for the Fourth Gospel’s presentation of Jesus as both the covenant Lord and the covenant sacrifice. As the divine Word of creation he is the covenant Lord, but his becoming ‘flesh’ sets the stage for his role as the covenant sacrifice. When Jesus becomes the covenant sacrifice, he most brilliantly displays the glory of the covenant Lord, the divine ‘I am.’ Therein lies the unique beauty of John’s Gospel. Stephen Voorwinde, Jesus’ Emotions in the Gospels (London; New York: T&T Clark, 2011), 211.

He Has Come to Raise Us to Adoption

John 8:12; 9:5; 14:6; Romans 8:29; Colossians 1:15; 3:16; Hebrews 2:11; James 1:21

"He who is the first principle and pattern of all things came to be the beginning and pattern of humankind, the firstborn of the whole creation. He, who is the everlasting Light became the Light of men. He, who is the Life from eternity, became the Life of a race dead in sin. He, who is the Word of God, came to be a spiritual Word, “dwelling richly in our hearts,” an “engrafted Word, which is able to save our souls.” He, who is the co-equal Son of the Father, came to be the Son of God in our flesh, that He might raise us also to the adoption of sons, and might be first among many brothers." JOHN HENRY NEWMAN

Elliot Ritzema, ed., 300 Quotations and Prayers for Christmas, Pastorum Series (Lexham Press, 2013).

When the time came for their purification according to the law of Moses, they brought him up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord  (as it is written in the law of the Lord, “Every firstborn male shall be designated as holy to the Lord”), and they offered a sacrifice according to what is stated in the law of the Lord, “a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons.” Lk.2:22–24 

There are seven references to the firstborn in the New Testament. They are Matthew 1:25 (paralleled in Luke 2:7; Romans 8:29; Colossians 1:15 and 18; Hebrews 1:6; 12:23; and Revelation 1:5.) 

Being a very Jewish story for the Jewish church, it is clearly marking Jesus as the Lord’s firstborn. Every Jewish listener of the story of Matthew would instinctively know that this is the Lord’s redeemer, the one who will save his people from their sins. Jesus is being introduced as the child born to die, the king, the firstborn, whose destiny is suffering to bring salvation to his people.

Why do Joseph and Mary take the baby Jesus to the temple? It was next to the palace of Herod, the very seat of his government, and they knew that he sought the life of the child. It was not that they had to do it in order to fulfil the law. Simply paying the prescribed half shekel to a scribe could redeem the firstborn child. In fact, despite saying that everything was done according to the requirement of the law, it is clearly limited to the purification of Mary, for that is what the sacrifice of the doves was to achieve. 

What is not mentioned, and this is incredible considering it would be the most important thing that every Jewish couple had to do on the birth of their firstborn, is that they never redeemed the child. The child was no longer Joseph and Mary’s, for he was the Lord’s firstborn, for they failed to redeem him. 

This makes sense of Mary singing Hannah’s song (1 Sam. 2:1–10; Luke 1:46–55), for she too gave her son to the Lord. It also explains why Jesus was surprised that Joseph and Mary had not expected him to be in the temple when he was found to be missing from the returning pilgrim party (Luke 2:49). The reply, ‘Did you not know that I must be about my Father’s business?’, and his presence in the temple was part of his preparation, and suggests that Jesus was conscious of a priestly calling from his youth.

Again, it explains why he should say that Mary was not his mother (Luke 8:19–21). The natural ties had been severed because they had not redeemed him.

He reproves his parents because they had erred and had sought him among earthly and human affairs, among friends and acquaintances.

 He will not permit himself to be found in anything outside of his Word... all comfort not based on the Word, but on flesh and blood, on men and all other creatures, must inevitably fail

Martin Luther and John Sander, Devotional Readings from Luther’s Works for Every Day of the Year (Rock Island, IL: Augustana Book Concern, 1915), 35. 

 Since all firstborn were God’s possession, it was necessary for the family to redeem, or buy back, that firstborn infant from God. The redemption price was five shekels of silver, given to the priests when the child was one month old (Num. 18:15–16). Scripture doesn’t tell us about the redemption ceremony itself, but by rabbinic times the following procedure had been established.

The priest asked the father, “Do you wish to redeem the child or do you want to leave him with me?” 

J.I. Packer, Merrill Chapin Tenney, and William White Jr., Nelson’s Illustrated Manners and Customs of the Bible (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 1997), 450. 

The rationale for the consecration is affirmed. It is tied to the slaying of the firstborn of Pharaoh and the Egyptians in Egypt, a theological motive. If Yahweh was forced to slay the firstborn of the Egyptians in order to redeem Israel, the Israelites were to give their firstborn to Yahweh in thanks and worship for that mighty act on their behalf.

 The parallel with Abraham’s deliverance of his son Isaac to Yahweh is evident (Gen. 22). The faith and gratitude of the Israelites for their exodus could hardly be less than Abraham’s gratitude and faith toward Yahweh for calling him from beyond the Euphrates where he had served other gods (Gen. 12:1–2; Josh 24:1–4).(Eugene Carpenter, Exodus, vol. 1, Evangelical Exegetical Commentary (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2016), 490.) 

The Song of Hannah begins on a note of grateful exuberance: “Heart, strength, mouth—all that she thinks and does and says is centered in the great act of God on her behalf” 

Ronald F. Youngblood, “1, 2 Samuel,” in The Expositor’s Bible Commentary: Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Ruth, 1 & 2 Samuel, ed. Frank E. Gaebelein, vol. 3 (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1992), 579.

The sequence of heart > horn > mouth is significant: Hannah’s heart was right in that she channeled her sorrow into a productive and God-honoring prayer, which led to her “horn” being lifted up (the birth of her son Samuel), which in turn led to her “mouth” giving utterance to this psalm of praise, thanksgiving, and prophecy.

 Distant echoes of this sequence are found in Jesus’ words: “Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks” (Matt. 12:34). Paul’s statement in Romans also reflects this sequence: “For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved” (Rom. 10:10). (Harry A. Hoffner Jr., 1 & 2 Samuel, Evangelical Exegetical Commentary (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2015), 1 Sa 2:1.)

Rom.8:29 The meaning of this verse is normally interpreted as Paul saying nothing more than that Christ is the elder brother in the family of God. This, however, misses the flow of the Roman letter. Once it has been accepted that Rom.3:21ff. is Paschal, and that Christ is the Passover sacrifice, then the term ‘firstborn’ takes on a soteriological significance. We saw earlier that one of the roles of the redeemer, who ideally was the firstborn, was to restore to the family their lost inheritance. 

This is the theme of the preceding verses. The whole creation, in bondage through the fall, has been redeemed. It waits for the final display of the redemption of the sons of God. It groans, waiting for its own liberation. This will happen when man is reestablished as Lord of creation. 

Christ is the firstborn of many brethren in that he has acted on their behalf, to restore them not only to fellowship with God, but also to the dignity for which they were created. This is possible only because in the context of the Passover sacrifice, Rom.3:21ff., he has died as the ‘firstborn of all creation’.(Tom Holland, Contours of Pauline Theology: A Radical New Survey of the Influences on Paul’s Biblical Writings (Scotland, UK: Christian Focus Publications, 2004), 270–271.)

The redemption of the firstborn is a marvelous expression of the grace of God. Never since the story of the binding of Isaac (Gen. 22) has God demanded the firstborn son of any of his people as a sacrifice to his majesty. Nor does God demand that his people enslave themselves to him (cf. Rom. 12:1–2).

 Nevertheless, the firstborn sons are the special possession of the Lord. God does not demand the life of these sons; such would be abhorrent to the Hebrew faith. God does not demand their enslavement; such would be a slight on his mercy. But he does demand their redemption—and provides the means for bringing that to pass.  

 Christians cannot but have their thoughts directed to the NT and the Savior who has brought about the redemption for his people. There it was, not by the payment of silver and gold, but with his own precious blood. And there we have been redeemed.(Ronald B. Allen, “Numbers,” in The Expositor’s Bible Commentary: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, ed. Frank E. Gaebelein, vol. 2 (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1990), 731.)

Paul does not speak of Christ appeasing an unloving God on our behalf, but of a God who redeems humanity in his own Son.

Mark A. Seifrid, Christ, Our Righteousness: Paul’s Theology of Justification, ed. D. A. Carson, vol. 9, New Studies in Biblical Theology (England: Apollos, 2000).

Episcopal minister Francis Wharton...  characterized fatalism “as a distinct scheme of unbelief” because it failed to recognize the personality and action of a loving God.

Ronald C. White Jr, “War and the Will of God,” Christian History Magazine-Issue 99: Faith & the American Presidency (Carol Stream, IL: Christianity Today, 2008).

The heart of the evangelist’s message does not have to do with the problem and existence of evil or explaining humanity’s present condition; it concerns the miracle of its transformation, the gift of salvation, of good wine, of truth, of faith, and of the authentic knowledge of God in the midst of falsity, darkness, unbelief, and anxiety. 

Paul W. Meyer, The Word in This World: Essays in New Testament Exegesis and Theology, ed. C. Clifton Black, John T. Carroll, and Beverly Roberts Gaventa, First Edition., The New Testament Library (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2004), 270.

Revelation pictures the messianic consummation in terms of a wedding (Rev. 19:9). In our Gospel, the wedding at Cana symbolizes the presence of the messianic salvation; wine symbolizes the joy of the messianic feast (see Mk. 2:19); the six stone jars used for Jewish rites of purification symbolize the Old Testament era that is now ending; and Mary’s statement, “they have no wine,” becomes a pregnant reflection on the barrenness of Jewish purification, much in the vein of Mark 7:1–24.(Ladd, G. E. (1993). A Theology of the New Testament (D. A. Hagner, Ed.; Rev. ed., p. 267). William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.)

There can be little doubt but that many of the events related by John have a symbolical significance that places Jesus’ ministry in the stream of redemptive history. The first miracle—the changing of water at the wedding in Cana—is a sign (Jn.2:11). A wedding is a symbol of the messianic days (Isa. 54:4–8; 62:4–5), and both a wedding and a banquet appear in the Synoptics as symbols of the messianic era (Mt. 8:11; 22:1–14; Lk. 22:16–18). 

Though John and Isaiah do not describe the same thing, the theology of time implicit in the two visions is identical. When the new heavens and new earth come, Isaiah 65:17 says, “[T]he former things will not be remembered or come to mind.”

 Later is better. The end surpasses the beginning: Last Adam is better than the first, and the new Eve of heavenly Jerusalem is better than our first mother.

Like the days of creation, which move from evening to morning, biblical history moves from darkness to light, from the darkness, emptiness, and formlessness of the original creation (Gen. 1:2) to the lighted and teeming city of Revelation. Jesus’s first “sign” in John’s gospel (Jn 2:1–11) is a symbolic announcement of the same reality.

 The wedding guests are perfect classicists who think that things must get worse as the wedding feast stretches toward its conclusion. Reversing common practice, Jesus gives better wine at the end. History moves toward day. Later is better, and last is best of all.

Peter J. Leithart, Revelation, ed. Michael Allen and Scott R. Swain, vol. 2, The International Theological Commentary on the Holy Scripture of the Old and New Testaments (London; Oxford; New York; New Delhi; Sydney: Bloomsbury; Bloomsbury T&T Clark: An Imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2018), 344.

One of the most striking features of the Fourth Gospel’s picture is the evangelist’s avoidance of the personal name of the mother of Jesus. She is, throughout, precisely that: the mother of Jesus (Jn.2:1, 3) or his mother (Jn.2:4, 12; 19:25)—a silence not always maintained by those who comment on it.

 On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.” And Jesus said to her, “Woman, what concern is that to me and to you? My hour has not yet come.” John 2:1–4

The force of the rebuke comes from the natural assumption that there were mutual obligations, and it implies too that these have been violated by the person addressed (cf.Similarly 2 Kgs 3:13 and in a different way Jer. 2:18; Josh 22:24; but Judg. 11:12 and 2 Chr. 35:21 use the phrase in a hostile setting.). In these cases the words do not signal the end of the relationship, although in others they reject it as an empty claim (Josh. 22:24; 2 Chr.35:21). 

There is little support here for those optimistic interpretations that take the words as uniting the two in faith and insight over against the material demands of “the world,” “What has this to do with me and you?” Yet the ambiguity that is created by the tension between the context and the words is surely deliberate and is part of the wider play of irony in the Gospel.

This is the first that we have heard of “the hour” of Jesus; we shall be told again that it has not yet come (ἐληλύθει-to come to pass or arrive.) in (Jn.7:30 and 8:20), when attempts to seize Jesus fail. Only in Jn.13:1 and again, in Jesus’ words, in Jn.17:1 is it finally said to have come.

 All these point to the hour of Jesus’ death; in Jesus’ own words it is equally the hour of his glory (Jn.12:23: “the hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified”; so, Jn.12:27; 17:1). 

This theme too is anticipated in Jn.2:11 in the notice that in this sign Jesus manifested his glory; the reader has been led to expect this glory ever since the affirmation of the prologue, “we beheld his glory” (Jn.1:14), but after this verse (Jn.2:11) it disappears again only to reemerge as a central theme in the final chapters before Jesus’ death. In the interim “glory” is a matter of contention (Jn.5:41, 44; 7:18; 8:50, 54) until, perhaps because of its anticipation of Jesus’ death, Lazarus’s sickness is declared “for the glory of God” (Jn.11:4).

He who seeks not the Cross of Christ, seeks not the glory of Christ. 

JOHN OF THE CROSS

Elliot Ritzema, 300 Quotations for Preachers from the Reformation, Pastorum Series (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2013).

Again Jesus responds negatively in words redolent of and yet different from those to his mother: “my time is not yet present” (Jn.7:6, 8). Again Jesus did apparently accede to their request.

 Here, however, there is a stronger sense of distancing: he went up in secret and not “manifestly” as they had demanded. Moreover, attention is drawn to the failure of even his brothers to believe in him (Jn.7:5).

 The “not even” sets them alongside the disciples who fell back at the end of the previous chapter (Jn.6:60, 66); it does not indicate an active hostility, but it does lead to a separation. 

The absence of Jesus’ mother from the withdrawal of his brothers in chap.Jn.7: underlines this contrast as well as maintaining the sense that the narrative of the wedding at Cana has not yet reached a resolution. 

This resolution comes only in Jn.19:25–27 in the scene at the cross. The link between the two narratives has often been noted and needs no careful demonstration; it is evident in the reappearance of “the mother of Jesus,” again in a leading position, in Jesus’ address to her as γύναι-woman, and in the final appearance of ὥρα-hour-time (Jn.19:27; 2:4 was the first distinctive use). 

It is difficult to avoid the dramatic impact of the scene. Again, the mother of Jesus is there in first place, but the contrast with the scene at Cana is marked.

 This time Jesus takes the initiative; his mother is passive, neither saying nor doing anything. This passivity is even stronger than in Mark, where the women at least watch; here they only stand.

But all they who were acquainted with him were standing afar off...Lk 23:49. cf.( Ps. 88:8; 38:11.) Joseph Bryant Rotherham, The Emphasized Bible

[Jesus takes the initiative in these deeds. In fact, the Johannine narratives also repeatedly show Jesus as taking the initiative in healing. Where someone approaches him with a request to act or to heal (John 2:3, 4:47, 11:30) he first distances himself from the petitioner (John 2:4, 4:48, 11:4–5), showing that he acts only in his own hour and only at his Father’s bidding. 

In all other narratives, Jesus takes the initiative in acting (John 5:6; 6:5–6; 9:3–7). 

The theme of Jesus’ spontaneity and sovereignty in initiating the signs is a corollary to the belief that God alone is the source of all life, and that life is a gift to be received from the gracious and sovereign hand of God. 

Marianne Meye Thompson, “Signs and Faith in the Fourth Gospel,” ed. Bruce Chilton, Bulletin for Biblical Research, Vol. 1 (1991): 103.] 

 Now his mother and the sister of his mother, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene were standing near the cross of Jesus. So Jesus, seeing his [Literally “the”] mother and the disciple whom he loved standing there, said to his [Literally “the”] mother, “Woman, behold your son!” Then he said to the disciple, “Behold your mother!” And from that hour the disciple took her into his own home. John 19:25–27 (LEB)

As Jesus intervenes in the scene, she becomes no longer “his mother” as in Jn. 19:25 but only “the mother” (Jn. 19:26 LEB). By her stands the disciple whom Jesus loved, the two characters who are defined in terms of their relationship with Jesus.

 This disciple was introduced for the first time at Jesus’ last meal with his disciples (John 13:23) and has not explicitly appeared since. His anonymity has also invited speculation, but the narrative so far has done nothing to encourage a solution.

[Others have suggested that it was Lazarus, whom Jesus loved so tenderly (Jn. 11:33–5). This Beloved Disciple appears altogether four times in the gospel, at the Last Supper, at the foot of the Cross, at the Empty Tomb and at the lakeside in Jn. 21:  

It has been suggested that this is the picture of the ideal disciple, who is close to Jesus at the Eucharist, who participates in the Passion, who believes in the Resurrection and who is the source of witness and tradition, that is, the disciple whom Jesus loves. Henry Wansbrough, Introducing the New Testament (London; New Delhi; New York; Sydney: Bloomsbury, 2015), 114.]  

As before, Jesus says to “the mother”—again there is no personal pronoun—“γύναι-Woman” but now he adds “behold your son.” The question of John 2:4, τί ἐμοὶ καὶ σοί, has now been answered. She is no longer the mother of Jesus but the mother of the disciple whom he loved; Jesus himself reaffirms this with the parallel words, “Behold your mother”—the personal pronoun reappears and thus effects the transformation

We already know that Jesus’ hour has now come, and it is from that hour that the disciple takes her “to his own.” Jesus too had “his own,” those to whom he came and who failed to accept him (John 1:11), but more significantly his own whom he loved (John 13:1; cf. 10:3, 4, 12). Is the mother now no longer his own?

‘Under the cross we all stand empty-handed. We have nothing to offer except the burden of our guilt and the emptiness of our hearts. We do not stand under the cross as Protestants, as Catholics, or as adherents to Orthodoxy.

 Here, rather, is where the godless are justified, enemies are reconciled, prisoners are set free, the poor are enriched, and the sad are filled with hope.

 We discover ourselves, therefore, under the cross both as children of the same freedom of Christ and as friends in the same fellowship of the Spirit.’

 (Jürgen Moltmann, A Broad Place: An Autobiography, trans. Margaret Kohl (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2009), 209.)

for in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith. Ga 3:26

God, for whom and through whom everything was made, chose to bring many children into glory. And it was only right that he should make Jesus, through his suffering, a perfect leader, fit to bring them into their salvation. So now Jesus and the ones he makes holy have the same Father. That is why Jesus is not ashamed to call them his brothers and sisters. 

For he said to God, “I will proclaim your name to my brothers and sisters. I will praise you among your assembled people.”  Psalm 22:22

He also said, “I will put my trust in him,” that is, “I and the children God has given me.”  Hebrews 2:10–13 NLT  Isaiah 8:17–18

 The Beloved Disciple was entrusted with the care of Jesus’ mother, which suggests that he became a brother of Jesus. Earlier the term brother was used for those who were apparently related to Jesus by blood but not by faith (Jn.2:12; 7:3, 5). 

After the resurrection, however, “brother” was used in the opposite way, for those who were related to Jesus by faith but not necessarily by kinship...The designation “brother” became common among those who accepted the Beloved Disciple’s testimony.

 If this disciple became Jesus’ brother at the cross, he was the first of many brethren. cf. Mat.12:48–49, Rom.8:29 (Craig R. Koester, Symbolism in the Fourth Gospel: Meaning, Mystery, Community, Second Edition. (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2003), 243.)

Woe to those who strive with their Maker,
earthen vessels with the potter!
Does the clay say to the one who fashions it, “What are you making”?
or “Your work has no handles”?
Woe to anyone who says to a father, “What are you fathering?”
or to a woman, “With what are you in labor?”
Thus says the LORD,
the Holy One of Israel and its Maker:
Will you question me about my children
or command me concerning the work of my hands?
I made the earth
and created humankind upon it;
it was my hands that stretched out the heavens,
and I commanded all their host. Isa. 45:9–12

It comes as no surprise, then, that “after this, Jesus, knowing that everything had now been completed, in order that scripture might be completed, said, ‘I thirst’ ” (John 19:28). John’s use of μετά may not allow us to read too much into that initial “after this” (μετὰ τοῦτο) as if there were a causal link between the two, but that does not detract from the climactic position of the preceding scene. 

The mother of Jesus, therefore, marks the ending of the earthly story of Jesus, as she had also marked its beginning. In other words, the scene at the cross effects a closure in several ways to what was initiated by the first scene at Cana. The one gives meaning to the other, and together they signal the completion, perhaps the boundaries of the drama.

This suggests that we should treat with extreme skepticism interpretations that see Jn.19:25–27 as establishing a new relationship between Jesus and his mother. This has been the line taken by those Mariological interpretations that see here the basis for “Mary’s” future intercession with Jesus—especially now that his hour has come. Yet it is also implied by interpretations that see here the new family for the children of God. 

So, for example, Alan Culpepper in his generally perceptive Anatomy of the Fourth Gospel speaks of “the man and ‘woman,’ the ideal disciple and the mother he is called to receive, standing under the cross of the giver of life,” and describes this new relationship as making all believers children of God. Yet such a meaning would require the disciple to be addressed as “man,” and them to be given to each other as brother and sister, not as mother and son.

Barrett objects that their lack of faith (Jn.7:5) ‘could not annul their legal claim’. True enough, but this is not a legal scene.

If a symbolic reading is to be sanctioned, it must be constrained by the themes of the Fourth Gospel, and perhaps secondarily by possible parallels in the Synoptics. The suggestion of Gourgues is attractive. In John 2:1–11, Mary approaches Jesus as a mother and is somewhat rebuffed. If she demonstrates the first signs of faith, it must be the faith of a disciple, not a mother. 

Here she stands near the cross with other disciples, and once she has assumed that stance she may again be assigned a role as mother—but not as mother of Jesus, but of another fellow-disciple. The blessing she receives is a peculiar manifestation of a truth articulated elsewhere: 

‘And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or fields for my sake will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life’ (Mt. 19:29). (D. A. Carson, The Gospel according to John, The Pillar New Testament Commentary (Leicester, England; Grand Rapids, MI: Inter-Varsity Press; W.B. Eerdmans, 1991), 617,618.)

In this Gospel the children of God are such only by God’s gift in response to their acceptance of Jesus (John 1:13 cf. Jn. 3:5, 6; Jas. 1:18; 1 Pet. 1:23). Similarly, to suggest that “beneath the cross the family of faith and the physical family can be reconciled” is to draw on a Synoptic idea that, as we have already seen, is not part of the Johannine use of the mother of Jesus. To see them as the archetypal disciples, male and female, is to introduce elements into the scene that are nowhere present, and also to introduce a concern for gender matching that is not apparent elsewhere in this Gospel.

When, in the following chapter, Jesus instructs Mary Magdalene to give the message to “my brothers … I am ascending to my father and your father, to my God and your God” (Jn.20:17), it is clear that the disciples and not Jesus’ physical brothers are to be understood; yet equally clearly this new relationship has been established not by the scene beneath the cross but by the new relationship effected by Jesus’ return to God.  

Her presence at the cross and her inclusion among His female followers from Galilee indicate that she becomes a disciple before He dies (John 19:25). There, her sacrifice includes a redefinition of her role: Priority is given to her identity as a disciple of Christ and servant of God, and not to her status as Jesus’ mother. Michael R. Grigoni et al., Mary: Devoted to God’s Plan (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2012), Mk 3:20–Jn 2:12. cf. Mk.3:31–35, Mat.12:46–50 

The Jesus movement, following Jesus (Mark 3:31–35), saw itself as a fictive family (fictive in the sense that it was not a blood family) that took precedence over the blood family. Thus we have practices such as the “holy kiss” (normally one kisses only blood relatives and perhaps very close friends), the terminology of “brother” and “sister,” and the transfer of the authority of the head of the family to Jesus (one does not obey the head of one’s blood family when he conflicts with the directives of Jesus, although, following the practice of Jesus, one tries to be a peacemaker when such peacemaking does not conflict with the directives of Jesus). 

“Fictive” does not mean “not real” or “imaginary” but is rather a sociological term for “not blood.” For the early Jesus movement one’s fictive family was more real, not less real, than one’s blood family. (Peter H. Davids, The Letters of 2 Peter and Jude, The Pillar New Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 2006).

That the woman of Jn.16:21 recalls in particular Eve accords with John’s repeated use of motifs from the opening chapters of Genesis. Genesis 1 is echoed by the prologue; in John 20:22 Jesus will breathe into his disciples as God did into Adam to give him life (Gen 2:7). The Cain narratives of Genesis 4 lie behind the picture of the Jews in John 8:44. 

What is perhaps most pertinent, it seems likely that the garden, which links betrayal, cross, burial, and resurrection in this Gospel alone, is intended to recall the garden of Genesis 2–3. Thus, the relationship between beginning and ending mediated by this woman reaches yet deeper. She experiences again the λύπη-pain of the woman of Gen 3:16, but the pattern is now broken in the ἄνθρωπος-man who is born.

This does not, however, make her a new Eve; in the Christological focus of this Gospel only Jesus represents the new, and even he is not the new Moses or Adam, but the one from heaven, while the children are not a new humanity born from Eve but are born of God (John 1:13, Jn.3:5, Rom. 9:8, Gal.4:22–23,26) 

Faith Is an Effect of the Death of Christ   Eph. 1:3–5;  Phil. 1:29

Christ did not die for any upon condition, if they do believe; but he died for all God’s elect, that they should believe, and believing have eternal life. Faith itself is among the principal effects and fruits of the death of Christ. JOHN OWEN

Elliot Ritzema and Elizabeth Vince, eds., 300 Quotations for Preachers from the Puritans, Pastorum Series (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2013).

As often noted, the background of the image of birth from above is notoriously elusive. The pagan parallels claimed by earlier scholarship fail by date and by dissimilarity of language and concept. It might be better, therefore, to start not from the composite “birth from above” but from “birth” (cf. Jn.1:13), and not from the pagan world but from the Hebrew scriptures, which inform so much of John’s thought.

The passage that comes closest is Deut. 32:18, “You were unmindful of the rock that bore you, you forgot the God who gave you birth” (MT), (NETS LXX: You abandoned God who bore you, and you forgot God who nurtures you.), a passage that belongs to the tradition of the maternal God of prophecy and psalmody (Hos. 11:1–4; Isa. 42:14; Ps. 139:13). So understood, God is already the one who has carried you “from the womb” (κοιλία: Isa. 46:3; see also Ps. 22:9), and is already the one who has given birth to those who are called to recognize it.

The mother of the son forces us to ask, but does not answer, how the son both is bound by his story and transcends it, both is restrained by the story of humanity and transcends it, his birthing a dying, his dying a birth. 

Judith M. Lieu, “The Mother of the Son in the Fourth Gospel,” Journal of Biblical Literature 117 (1998): 62–77.

He can share in all these benefits only in the fellowship with Christ who is the Image of God (2 Cor. 4:4 and Col. 1:15) and to whose image we must be conformed (Rom. 8:29). The new man, accordingly, who is put in the fellowship with Christ through faith, is created in accordance with God’s will in true righteousness and holiness (Eph. 4:24) and is constantly renewed in knowledge after the image of Him that created him (Col. 3:10). 

The knowledge, righteousness, and holiness, which the believer obtains through the fellowship with Christ, have their origin, and example, and final purpose in God and they cause man again to share in the Divine nature (2 Peter 1:4).Herman Bavinck, Our Reasonable Faith, trans. Henry Zylstra (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2016), 190.

Peter writes of being “partakers of the divine nature” when speaking of gaining virtue, godliness, and love (2 Pet. 1:2–7) i.e. —the moral image of God, not participation in his inherent glory.

The work through which Jesus glorified the Father and was himself glorified culminated in the crucifixion, but it did not end there. The Johannine portrayal of Jesus’ death expands the horizon to include the continued glorification of the Father and the Son within the community of faith that had its inception at the cross.

 The community was the “fruit” borne of Jesus’ glorification (John 12:23–24, 32), and the cross gave shape to its corporate life. Jesus had glorified God by being obedient unto death and by abiding in God’s love; the disciples would glorify God by expressing the love of Jesus through obedience to his commandment to love one another, even to the point of giving up their lives (John 15:8–13). 

God had glorified Jesus by restoring to him his preexistent glory; the disciples would glorify Jesus by recognizing his singular relationship with the Father (John 17:9–10) and by reflecting the glory of the mutual love shared by the Father and the Son in their own community (John 17:22–23). -Craig R. Koester, Symbolism in the Fourth Gospel: Meaning, Mystery, Community, Second Edition. (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2003), 239–240.

The first words of the Lord’s Prayer, then— “Our Father in heaven”—are remarkable because Jesus calls God “Father,” expressing a breathtaking intimacy with the One who had rescued Israel from Egypt. Those first words of the prayer are even more remarkable because with them, we are invited to address God in the same way that Jesus does. God is Father eternally, and Israel, too, in its memory of God’s saving acts on its behalf, had known God by that name. 

But Jesus’ words—His use of the plural possessive pronoun “our” is the key—beckon us to take our place alongside Him, looking up to Him as our older brother (Heb. 2:10–18), entering into, partaking in, and emulating His relationship to God. For Him, that relationship has always been. He has never not enjoyed the privilege of communion with His Father. But for us, even those of us who have been born into God’s covenant people, that relationship happens by enticement, as we are wooed into a new redemptive closeness with God through Jesus. 

“Our Father, you who are in heaven.… With these words God wants to entice us, so that we come to believe he is truly our Father, and we are truly his children, in order that we may ask him boldly and with complete confidence, just as loving children ask their loving father” (Martin Luther, The Small Catechism).

As Karl Barth puts it,

  Jesus Christ, who is the Son of God, who has made himself our brother and makes us his brothers and sisters … takes us with him in order to associate us with himself, to place us beside him so that we may live and act as his family and as the members of his body.… Jesus Christ invites us, commands us, and allows us to speak with him to God, to pray with him his own prayer, to be united with him in the Lord’s Prayer. Therefore, he invites us to adore God, pray to God, and praise God with one mouth and one soul, with him, united to him. (Wesley Hill, The Lord’s Prayer: A Guide to Praying to Our Father, Christian Essentials (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2019), 13–14.)

The truth is, adoptive families are born from pain, just as the church family was born from the pain of the cross. Pharaoh’s daughter and Eli and Joseph are not the only adoptive parents of the Bible. So is the most praised “biological” mother of all, Mary, the lady of sorrows, who had to relinquish the son of her flesh, her boy Jesus, to his death on the cross. 

She loses this son, but she gains, she adopts, another—the disciple whom Jesus loved. And in so doing she is only mirroring the act of the Father in heaven, who gave his only Son to Mary in the first place, so that the sons and daughters of this world might not perish, but have eternal life, and become the church of his adopted children. 

Sarah Hinlicky Wilson, “The Kingdom of God Springs Forth from the Empty Womb,” Christianity Today (Carol Stream, IL: Christianity Today International, 2007), 28.