RebeccaMallinson

The miraculous healing of the son caused them all to believe. It is impossible to judge the maturity of the family’s faith. New converts to a faith are often a great deal more passionate than cradle Christians. On the other hand, they, like everyone else around Jesus, had a lot to learn. Once Jesus came to Capernaum the family would be able to nurture and grow their faith.

He is persistent, both by making an arduous journey to find Jesus and then by not taking ‘no’ for an answer. Then finally he accepts Jesus’ word that his son is cured without question, returns home and becomes a follower of Christ along with his whole household.

I think although miracles had a big effect on the Galileans, they would be less likely to work today on such a level. They might draw people, but it can be for all the wrong reasons and become a show. This is why they will not build a mature faith. However the miracles of Jesus were ones which demonstrated compassion, forgiveness of sins and love rather than just ‘wonders’. In that way they can be built on with corresponding teachings. Jesus rebuked the Galileans because they were just seeking wonders.

He was invited to stay. Elsewhere when he instructs his disciples on how to conduct themselves when they go on their own missions, he makes it plain that they should go where they are welcomed. I think it is irrelevant that it is a Samaritan town. He was breaking his disciples in gently, by easy degrees. By the end of His time on Earth he was asking them to make disciples of all the nations, but only with the help of the Holy Spirit. Christ himself had no need to start small. Jesus is the Saviour of the whole world because he came to save all sinners, not just a select few. The implications for all Christians is that we have to follow this instruction and not to be exclusive.

In two words, Eternal Life.

The extraordinary testimony of the Samaritan Woman was the cause. I suspect it would make a very big impact in a small place where everyone knows each other and are likely to be related. It is less likely in a big city. The Holy Spirit gives our words inspiration. Without that, anything we say can fall flat or make little impact. I think Jesus was talking literally here of the swarms of people heading their way. The disciples were so focussed on their concern for Jesus and trying to puzzle out what he meant that they didn’t see them coming.

Jesus means spiritual sustenance, but in this case, not our own sustenance, but His own. I can’t think of another instance where the roles are reversed in this way. His passion (in this context) is to save souls and lead sinners back to righteousness. My passion is to see the children who are my responsibility flourish. I believe this is also the Father’s work. When we do a job well, we have a great sense of satisfaction and contentment. This is rather similar to the feeling at the end of a really good meal.

God is spirit, just that. He does not have a physical body. He is all around us, unseen. When we worship we are in communion with this amazing spirit who created us. This is the truth. What we see around us in the material world is the untruth. Sometimes I have lost concentration and gone off into random and totally irrelevant thoughts when I should have been praying. I try to bring myself up sharply when this happens. It is very hard to say categorically what would be more pleasing because we are all individual and have our own individual relationships with God. For myself, I find it very helpful to visualise God sitting right next to me. I believe that he understands me.

I expect she was uncomfortable with having such an intense religious conversation with someone who she had been taught was ‘wrong’. I think she is trying to work things out for herself. Motives for religious discussion between believers and non-believers can vary. The non-believer may genuinely be searching (spiritual thirst). They may also be scoffers who want to laugh at those who believe in things that are not of this world. We must give them the benefit of the doubt.

The effect of Jesus’s knowledge was to demonstrate to her that he was special, ‘a prophet’ in her words. This clearly made her take him more seriously than previously. I think the conversation up to that point shows her scoffing at him in disbelief at his power to produce such miraculous water. I can only tell you of the gift that I have seen, the gift of speech. When somebody truly speaks to one with words inspired by the Holy Spirit, the listener will be very much moved and it will have a real effect on their spiritual lives.

I think the gift of God is the gift of faith in Jesus and the living water is eternal life. As with the previous lesson, water and the Holy Spirit have a very close relationship, but I am not sure that that is what Jesus is talking about at the moment. On another occasion Jesus said ‘I am the Bread of Life, he who comes to me shall not hunger, he who believes in me shall not thirst, no one shall come to me unless the Father draws him.’ I think there is a direct link between what he says here about living water and what he later says about the bread of life.

I passed from an unreasoning faith as a child, to a rebellious adolescence and early twenties when I actually left the Church for a time, reasoning that God did not need me to attend. Then I suffered a lot in my personal life and returned to the Church. It was the most wonderful experience to return and realise how hungry I was. I think, like me, this woman did not realise that she was spiritually thirsty, but Jesus knew. If people judged her on her unsavoury behaviour, she, I am sure, judged herself even more harshly and was in sore need of God’s help and spiritual growth. This teaches us not to judge, but to allow people to come to us freely.

Jesus is above social norms as He is the Creator of us all, whatever our social position. This type of behaviour did cause him problems with the scribes and Pharisees. Similarly, the norms of western society are not to give offence by talking about either religion or politics to those you don’t know well. It is very hard to go against our norms and be a true ‘soldier of Christ’. I never did manage to achieve the balance when I was still in my own country (UK). I managed to alienate a lot of people including my own family. I am now in a very different situation, where the taboo of not discussing religion does not exist. There are still problems, but they are different ones.

I think the point of ‘the wrath of God’ is the rejection of His Son and His message of love for us. What does rejection feel like? When we are rejected we are angry and badly hurt, especially when we love that person very much. I have had that experience with my own children, and it was extremely traumatic, although by the grace of God I have now reached a point where I have forgiven them. God created us with tender love, each one of us individually, and we sin against Him. We humans have had chance after chance offered to us by a Father who loves us and forgives us so much. He must be so frustrated with us all. There are those who have sinned seriously but repent and struggle hard against their previous sinful lives. As described in the parable of the Prodigal Son, God welcomes repentant sinners home with delight. Sincere repentance is the key to salvation. He is a loving God who really wants the best for His children. There are others who turn a consistently deaf ear to their consciences and to God’s call. There must come a point where He must judge and reject. This is a terrible thought when we ourselves love those people and pray that they will have a ‘Damascus moment’. God sacrificed His own Son for the sins of the world. What more powerful love can there be? If we do not have faith in Christ in spite of all His huge love for us, we are as bad as those that crucified Him. Most Christians, including me, come from gentile ancestry and would never have heard the Good News if He had not taken that action. There is a danger with the substitutionary atonement theology that it can be taken to mean that we are all redeemed already. I do not believe that there is any room for complacency. As Jesus said, the way to Eternal Life is narrow, but the way to hell is broad.

We must decrease in our worldliness and become more focussed on the things of the Spirit. We can facilitate the shift by taking it one step at a time. Firstly drawing a line under our sinful lives and promising a reformed life, then finding ways to serve others and thereby serving God, at the same time taking every opportunity to study the Gospels and other religious writings, ancient and modern. I have found these steps essential in my spiritual growth.

John the Baptist finds joy in Jesus’s success because it is the fulfilment of his own mission. As mentioned in my previous answer, I am not in the position of a minister so there is no competition. I think if pastors compete with each other it is a sure sign that they are false shepherds with their eyes of the things of this world, not the next.

I am not a pastor or priest so I am not in this position. I am an ordinary member of the Catholic laity. As a Catholic I am expected to attend my local Catholic Church if there is one. If that is not possible I am expected to attend the nearest equivalent, for example, a church rather than a synagogue or mosque. There is no question of being ‘attracted’ elsewhere. It is wrong to feel this type of possessiveness for more than one reason. Christ called for Christian unity (John 17) and also condemned false shepherds who scattered the sheep. Equally, he was very specific that his disciples should not jockey for position and said that they should be as small children. I don’t think it is self-pity, I think it is a lack of humility.

It was very important for Jesus to spend time with his disciples. They were complete novices and were still expecting him to be a Messiah in a very material sense. By spending time with them he was demonstrating not only his teachings but also his love. His strategy was one of love and togetherness, in other words ‘agape’. We are taught by Jesus’s teachings to love and serve each other. We make disciples when we demonstrate this teaching ourselves. Our time with the Discipler is in prayer and meditation as well as in reading the Gospels. I was taught Christian Meditation, which is a very good way in which to come close to Jesus as well as to unwind. On first reading this question I thought it was irrelevant to me as I am not a church leader, but thinking about it I realise that this is not the case. In fact my time as a discipler is central to my life as I work full time as a volunteer in an orphanage. The children come to me for education but also for individual togetherness and motherly love. I also teach them from the Bible. It is a very fulfilling life and I wouldn’t change it for the world.

This verse is so famous because it encapsulates the whole of the Gospel story in one sentence as well as the purpose of Christ’s mission to us. It teaches us that God is extremely patient and loving in spite of our sins. It teaches us that God really wants to save us to the extent that he was willing to cause great suffering and death to his beloved Son. He really, really wants us to go to Heaven. Our destiny, assuming we are found worthy, is to inherit everlasting life.

Water and the Spirit is a complex idea and I have more than one way of thinking about it, both of which I believe. Water and the Spirit are mentioned at the very beginning of the Bible: ‘and the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.’ (Genesis 1, verse 2) This shows the link right from the start of the Holy Spirit and water. Jesus talks about the Everlasting Water when he speaks to the Samaritan woman at the well. This shows the huge importance of water, not just as the physical substance that is necessary to sustain life on Earth, but eternally. I also think it refers to two sacraments. The sacrament of Baptism (water) and what is referred to in the Catholic Church as Confirmation, where the emphasis is on receiving the Holy Spirit and on our mission to go out to spread the Good News. Baptism is the start of our new life as Christians and when we join the family of Christ. We attempt to lead a Christian life and put away sin. When we are confirmed, we become fully-fledged members of the Church. I disagree with Dr Ralph on this, as I believe that our sacraments are divinely inspired and that earthly time is irrelevant to God. He knows the past, present and future of our world. I hope that what I say does not cause offence to anybody. If so it is quite unintentional. I have come to believe that in churches where there is adult baptism, these two sacraments are combined as one. This is also fitting when one considers the link between water and the spirit mentioned previously. When young people are confirmed, the imagery is of the first Pentecost and the candidates are told to receive the Holy Spirit and go out and spread the word. In the next verse, verse 8, Jesus says, ‘The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.’ To me this is very reminiscent both of the beginning of Genesis and of the first Pentecost. We must remember the huge effect Pentecost had on the disciples. I think this is what Jesus must mean by being born of the Spirit. Perhaps the phrase ‘born of water and the Spirit’ could be paraphrased, but it would become considerably less succinct. I can’t think of a way to do it without still having the problems of getting such a complex meaning into a few words.

My personal understanding of being ‘born anew’ or ‘born again’ is an awakening of mature and powerful faith. I was brought up in a Catholic church-going family, attended Sunday School and received all the sacraments according to my age. I did have faith, but it was a childish, ‘taught’ faith, not based on personal experience. This must be a common experience for most children brought up in Christian families. It cannot be called ‘born again’. It is a weak, untested faith. I don’t think if children die they are ‘going to hell’ but I think they will go to Heaven through their innocence. As an adult I have had difficult times and as a direct result, religious experiences which changed my life radically. I was born anew into a new and very focussed religious vocation. I am still a Catholic, but a very different one to the one I was before my experiences. From my reading of the Gospels, it is necessary to have a strong faith to enter the Kingdom of God. This takes a mature rather than a blind faith. There are many paths to faith but it is often a remarkable spiritual experience, a rebirth. I don’t have a real preference for the terminology. I think all three are fine. I worry about tinkering too much with translations and adding our own interpretations, as these can start to contain our own blinkered views, rather than the original..

Jesus teaches that it is hard to enter the Kingdom of God and can only be done through spiritual means. I interpret this as through baptism in water and the Holy Spirit. I think that the miracles that Nicodemus saw were a revelation to him, which is why he wanted to talk to Jesus. I think that Nicodemus did not understand at first, but he persisted as he truly believed that the miracles were from God. If at that early stage he had been put off and ceased to believe that they were the work of God, he might well have joined the rest of the Pharisees in their condemnation. His understanding must have grown, otherwise he would not have remained faithful to the end of Jesus’ ministry and stuck his neck out for him to the Pharisees.

The problem with faith that rests on miracles is that the miracles are seen as a type of magic and can distract from the true message of Christ. On a different occasion when Jesus was asked to perform a sign as though he were a performing conjurer, he accused the people of being hypocrites. There is no religious message in a miracle and Jesus’s mission was a living message, to turn us from sin and towards salvation. Miracles will not improve our moral character, but faith in Christ and attempting to follow his instructions will. Church history tells us that miracles can guide people towards faith. However, they should not be stand-alone. They should not be a stunt. Here in South Sudan, there are pastors who perform healings every Sunday to order and hold crusades where miracles are guaranteed. I have yet to hear one of them say ‘Your faith has saved you’, as Jesus did. Jesus seems to have faced these problems on a case-by-case basis. Sometimes he agreed, sometimes he refused, at other times there were spontaneous miracles. Sometimes he asked people to keep silent about the miracle, which I think was partially to stop himself being followed purely as a miracle-worker (although also to allow him to prolong his ministry). What we need always to bear in mind is his frequent caveat, ‘Your faith has saved you. Go and sin no more.’

Yes, his anger was justified. It was a desecration of a holy place. Anger is good when it is ‘righteous’. This means for the 'right' reasons, not for selfish reasons. If you are angry at a great injustice against vulnerable people, this is correct. To become angry during a personal disagreement is wrong. Anger gets us into trouble because we often start to behave irrationally (as I know to my own cost). It also creates enmity instead of peace.

The temple was being used for commercial purposes. Jesus was offended because this is not the right use of the temple. The temple is the visible and tangible house of God in our world. It should be used for meeting God through prayer. Jesus drove the merchants out of the temple with violence.