Behold What Manner of Love – John

He was known as the ‘disciple whom Jesus loved’ (John 13:23; 21:20), so this author apparently was in intimate contact with the Divine One whom he treasured, and who caused him to exclaim ‘Behold What Manner of Love!” (1 John 3:1), a transformative phrase that 20^th Century musicians like Patricia Van Tine (1978) and Reid Lancaster (1993) have adapted for song. (See the beloved apostle – John – reclining against Jesus in this 17^th Century artwork by an anonymous painter, a depiction of the scene in John 13:25.) He’d had several decades to ponder what this unique individual meant to him, and his heart still effervesced when he reasoned with others about Him. That’s a special kind of bond, when someone can write about himself in the third person, as this Son of Thunder named John did on two occasions in his remembrance, and then to describe his extraordinary relationship with Jesus with confidence. How would John know that Jesus loved him so? After three years walking and talking and watching Jesus, John had had lots of evidence upon which to make such a buoyant assertion.  

 

Historical evidences and opinions suggest that John wrote this bold statement in the middle of a letter sometime in the latter portion of the 1^st Century, perhaps between 85 and 95 A.D. By this time, it is apparent that John, with a former reputation as one who desired to punish Jesus’ doubters (Luke 9:51-56), and who sought His exclusive heavenly favor over the other Apostles (Matthew 20:20–22 and Mark 10:35–45) that caused sparks of anger, had matured. Perhaps these two incidents, among probably others in which John’s impudence earned him Jesus’ rebuke, had actually compelled John to reflect and later marvel at the patience and grace of this God who appeared to him. Certainly, part of Jesus’ personal value for John was the capture and control of his inner self. And later, it was no longer about himself, once he lived with and ultimately saw the extent of Jesus’ commitment to not just himself, but to all mankind. Jesus was the immortal Creator – though in-the-flesh -- so John probably reasoned earlier in this three-year journey that what this God-Man suffered would have been too much for any mere human like himself to mimic. Watching Jesus as the Arisen One, and then learning that he himself would live longer for some yet undefined reason (John 21:22-23) must have put some question marks in John’s head; but these did not forestall John’s trust in Him as the True One (John 21:24). His mission of love and rescue remained clear and distinct. For John, it was a personal and poignant encounter – particularly when Jesus asked John to take care of His earthly mother (John 19:26-27) – but also a relationship in which John would suffer a brutal empire’s exile and imprisonment in a lonely penal colony (Patmos) because of his affiliation with Jesus. This was some love that propelled John!

 

It is in perhaps the last decade of John’s life that he wrote to others this letter, to extol the Godly love that he’d taken inward. Check out your bible search software, and you will discover the extent of John’s discussion of love in that letter, perhaps written while he was in Ephesus and addressed to Asia Minor churches at the time to counter an early form of Gnosticism. Love appears some 26 (or 27, depending on how you count) times therein, second only in the bible (in the New International Version translation) to its usage in Deuteronomy, which has love 29 times.  Given the much more compact nature of 1 John compared to Deuteronomy (25,494 words in Deuteronomy, and 2,141 words in 1 John), one would have to say John was really overflowing with love, wouldn’t you? Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God! Therefore, the world does not know us, because it did not know Him (1 John 3:1, in the New King James Version). John really was looking to stop some heretics (see the link to a description of Gnosticism below), by telling them they had not seen the true God-Man as he and the others had, and therefore could not possibly understand others like himself either, after they had ingested Him. John’s message? Take in God, and get in touch with real love. It might not make earthly sense, but if you want more than what this terra firma offers, is it not wiser to aim at another plane of existence?         

 

Read about the heresy that John was apparently countering with this article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnosticism

 

Bible commentary is from the NIV Study Bible, general editor Kenneth Barker, and associate editors Donald Burdick, John Stek, Walter Wessel, and Ronald Youngblood; Zondervan Bible Publishers, 1985.

 

See information about the image here: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:An%C3%B4nimo_-_A_%C3%9Altima_Ceia.jpg … This work is in the public domain in its country of origin and other countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 100 years or fewer… {{PD-1996}} – public domain in its source country on January 1, 1996 and in the United States….found inside this document  -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_the_Apostle

 

God Has Smiled on Me – Isaiah Jones, Jr.

 

Can you picture God smiling? Perhaps it would not be hard to imagine such an expression on His face if we saw Him in the presence of children (see the artwork, Jesus and the children [1846], by Francisco Metrass), as we can read in some episodes (like in Matthew 19:13-14). Perhaps it was not unlike what Isaiah Jones, Jr. was thinking when he said “God Has Smiled on Me” in 1973, when he was a 33-year-old college graduate and in the midst of adulthood – hardly a child at that point. But lest any of us forget, we are all children to Him, despite how many years we’ve lived. So, it’s not something that ever grows irrelevant – this sense that His mercy and grace, His ‘smile’ on me, is imperative -- and indeed it becomes ever more important as I come closer to mortality’s end. Just imagine the alternative, if you dare. No one ever responds positively to a frown or a look of anger, do they?

 

Isaiah was probably somewhere in California, perhaps still near Los Angeles where he had received his college degree in 1972. Although we don’t know precisely what stirred his musical juices at the time, Isaiah’s declaration about God’s benevolence was evidently something about which he felt strongly and which would be something like his life’s motivating theme, such that he produced a songbook with that song title over 30 years later (see the reference to it below). To Isaiah, experiencing the freedom God provided was the result of God’s smile, and thus he voices some key phrases in connection to God’s goodness repeatedly throughout his musical testimony. Isaiah relates God’s goodness no less than 18 times; seven times he refers to God’s smile; and six times he sings of being free. It was obviously not so complicated for Isaiah to figure out, but maybe his own experience and that of his family, friends, and others convinced him that this simple message was one that would be best for daily living. Indeed, ‘a lamp unto my path’ was one of Isaiah’s lyrics that showed he knew of the psalmist’s recommendation for life guidance (Psalm 119:105). Get deep into His word, as the psalmist said, and so Isaiah turned one of that ancient songwriter’s most well-known expressions into one of his own in ‘God Has Smiled…’. The results of the psalmist’s application to Isaiah’s life would be ‘joy’ and ‘love’ directly from God, as well as ‘bread on my table’. Isaiah said goodbye to feeling ‘hungry’ and ‘lonely’ because of this Divine smile washing over him. When you watch or listen to Isaiah and others sing his song, there is no anxiety remaining, just deep contentment and a desire to sing these words and phrases over and over again. That communicates something – that His smile never departs.  

 

Wouldn’t it be great if we were all able to smile continually? It is something we do not experience, obviously, because existence here is difficult so often. Stuff happens, and it lingers. Jesus knew this too, for ‘He wept’ (John 11:35). That is comforting, in a way, to know that He wasn’t wearing rose-colored glasses while he walked here. In fact, Jesus’ life story, as told through artistic depictions of Him, rarely show Him wearing a grin; His life was filled with somber moments, so the gravitas we associate with Him is therefore appropriate. But should I, as His image-bearer and recipient of so much from Him, communicate only solemnity, particularly if it leans toward sullenness? Jesus had good moods too, like when a child was on His knee. And, I have to think that He’s pleased when I reflect Him to others and help them see the pleasure that He brings. The smile that creases His lips comes over anyone who can admit that they want what comes with His smile. Isaiah has told us what those are – freedom, hunger fulfillment, community (absence of lonesomeness), Godly love, and a direction for life. What other smile gives you all of that?      

 

The site indicates who is the author of the song in the year 1973: https://hymnary.org/text/he_is_the_source_of_all_my_joy

 

Read about the author here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaiah_Jones_Jr.

 

Listen to a rendition of the song here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZKO8363pFQ

 

See the book the author produced >> Jones, Isaiah (2005). God Has Smiled on Me: An Isaiah Jones Songbook. Westminster John Knox Press. p. 112. ISBN 0-664-22879-8.

 

Information on the image is here: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jesus_acolhendo_as_criancinhas_(1846)_-_Francisco_Metrass_(Museu_de_Aveiro,_dep.%C2%BA).png... The author died in 1861, so this work is in the public domain in its country of origin and other countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 100 years or fewer. This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published (or registered with the U.S. Copyright Office) before January 1, 1931.

Sweet Peace – Peter P. Bilhorn

Sometimes, a song is born through various episodes over an extended period, and such is the case of Peter Philip Bilhorn’s “Sweet Peace (The Gift of God’s Love)” in 1887. The two incidents that bookended Peter’s hymn began with one that we would readily say was sweetly suggested to Peter, but the second one that transpired months later was at the opposite end of the spectrum, something so horrible that it would cause nightmares. Evidently, the second one was what Peter really needed to prompt his hymn’s conclusion, a work that was inspired by his thoughts of Christ shedding blood (and shown in the painting Penitent, also known as Christ Bearing the Cross, by Niccolo Frangipane, in 1574). Does the nightmarish reality of what Jesus experienced really hit us the way He intended, and does that spur us devotionally forward? My response to Him is submission and sacrifice, but mine – unlike His – is on the other side of the crucifixion event. I need not die and endure the horrible as He did, and as my sin would otherwise cost me. He did it for me, and that great divine heart of His transports me into His own sacrifice and then onto a joyous, eternal plane – an upending of death into life.

 

Peter began this musical journey in New Jersey and then completed it in Illinois. He took part in a camp singing event that ended one evening with a friend suggesting that he write a song to suit her voice better; she casually remarked that ‘any sweet piece’ would do, a phrase that Peter copied down, intending to indeed meet her request by respelling piece into peace. Only the music and the new hymn’s title emerged following that episode, however. Months later, as Peter accompanied Dwight Moody and others on a train ride in Illinois, the train tragically hit and killed an old woman, whose blood covered a ditch alongside the tracks. As Peter and one of his companions (Daniel Whittle) considered what they’d just witnessed, thoughts of Jesus’ last hours crossed their minds, and how His death gave us ‘sweet peace’, an atonement that no human could acquire on his own. With these thoughts in mind, Peter wrote the words to this hymn on the concluding phase of the train trip. Peter’s thoughts in his hymn’s verse two are of Christ’s ‘death’, with ‘cross’ juxtaposed to ‘peace’. It’s not just peace, but sweet peace, a two-word expression that comes from deep within the soul that has first viewed the bloodied Messiah and realized His sacrifice’s import. Not even the horror of such a scene – crucifixion is often called one of the most gruesome methods of execution ever inflicted on humanity -- can blot out the thrill and the rapture of what He did three days later. Mangled bodies can be regenerated, even if flogged and nailed to a piece of wood, or hit by a train. 

 

Perhaps those two otherwise unrelated incidents that Peter beheld in New Jersey and in Illinois were not so inconsistent after all, but rather necessary to remind Peter of what Jesus did at Calvary and then later at the tomb of Arimathea. We don’t know what might have been said at the funeral of the woman hit by the train near Wheaton, Illinois in 1887, but perhaps it could have helped grief-stricken family to compare her death to the Lord’s, and then to be reminded that He rose in glory. One’s exit from life doesn’t have the last word. He does. Indeed, Jesus gave Himself up (Matthew 27:50/John 19:30), showing that He was in control of that episode. Sickness and pain and even death won’t trample my hope. His path to Golgotha had to be awful, so that His rising could demonstrate Divinity’s superiority over even the vilest penalty that could be imagined. Death cannot ever hold you and me, because our God has muted its evil voice. What more needs to be said? 

 

See more information on the song story in these sources: The Complete Book of Hymns – Inspiring Stories About 600 Hymns and Praise Songs by William J. Petersen and Ardythe Petersen, Tyndale House Publishers, 2006; Amazing Grace: 366 Inspiring Hymn Stories for Daily Devotions by Kenneth W. Osbeck, Kregel Publications, 1990; and 101 More Hymn Stories, by Kenneth W. Osbeck, Kregel Publications, 1985.

 

See here for brief information about song’s story background: http://www.hymntime.com/tch/htm/s/w/e/e/t/p/sweetpgg.htm

 

See information on the author here: http://www.hymntime.com/tch/bio/b/i/l/h/bilhorn_pp.htm

 

See information on the picture here: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Niccol%C3%B2_Frangipane_Penitent.jpg …The author died in 1600, so this work is in the public domain in its country of origin and other countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 100 years or fewer. This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published (or registered with the U.S. Copyright Office) before January 1, 1931. …found inside this document -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crucifixion_of_Jesus