Kept & Guarded + the Danger of a Half-Gospel
John 17:11-12 are some of the most hope-giving and shocking verses in the High Priestly Prayer, let alone the Bible.
Hope giving: We are guarded by Christ, and what he is guarding cannot be lost. this is why this verse is hope giving, it isn’t that I white knuckle my salvation. I am not baptized into something and then left to pull myself up by my bootstraps.
If Jesus’s yoke is easy and his burden is light then his redemption is complete and lacking nothing. If Jesus is the one guarding his people then there is nothing that can take us out of his hand. Jesus’s people will not be lost for it is Jesus who is guarding them.
Shocking: the Son of Destruction and our easy belief in a half-gospel.
Dorthy Sayers in Creeds or Chaos wrote, “Then Judas, [who] had betrayed Him, when he saw that Jesus was condemned [and dead]… cast down the pieces of silver in the temple, and departed, and went and hanged himself. And [so] Judas committed the final, the fatal, the most pitiful error of all; for he despaired of God and himself, and never waited to see the Resurrection. Had he done so, there [could] have been an encounter, and an opportunity, [like Peter experienced]; but unhappily for [Judas], he did not. [Judas] saw dreadful payment made, and never knew what victory had been purchased with the price.” …
There is something of the story of Judas in all of us.
By the betrayal of Judas Jesus was killed.
By my own sin Jesus died.
We are no better than Judas, for either by Judas’s betrayal or my sins, Jesus would die.
The difference is whether we look to the resurrection of Jesus.
As Sayer says elsewhere, “When Judas sinned, Jesus paid.”
“[Jesus] brought good from this evil. He led out [triumphant] from the gates of Hell and brought [us] out with Him; but the suffering of Jesus and the sin of Judas [or us] remain a reality. God did not abolish the fact of evil; [no] He transformed it. He did not stop the crucifixion: He rose from the dead.”
Where are you in this story? Are you looking beyond the death of Jesus to his resurrection, or are you stuck on the reality of what your sin has done to Jesus - causing his death?
This is an important distinction to understand. As Christians we are not half-gospel people. We are full-gospel people.
The half-gospel is that your sin caused Jesus to go to the cross, and too often we do not take the advantage of the full gospel.
We are bogged down by the truth, that our sin has caused Jesus to go through the horrors of the cross, and we let the story stop there.
But this is not the story of the Scriptures, and it is not the reality of the gospel.
The gospel does not, can not, and will not stop with the death of Jesus! It moves on to his resurrection.
So we must not believe a half gospel and let your gospel stop with the death of God. We must carry it through to his resurrection and know, like Peter, there is reconciliation, peace, and joy in the resurrection of Jesus!
It is only in knowing the full gospel that we are able to see the third part of Jesus’ request fulfilled, that we would have joy in the world.
