Fullness of Life
A sermon on John 10:1-10 by Nathan Nettleton, 28 April 1996
© LaughingBird.net
Message
Jesus’ purpose for us is that we (individually and collectively) have fullness of life.
Sermon
If you want to start a big argument among a group of Christians from different persuasions some time, try asking this question: which one line statement in the Bible best sums up the reason Jesus came? That is, summarise in one sentence what Jesus wanted to accomplish by his time life and ministry.
Some would argue that Jesus came primarily to show us how we can be saved, and so they would perhaps argue for Ephesians 2:8 - “for it is by God’s grace that you have been saved through faith. It is not the result of works, but God’s gift.” Or perhaps Galatians 3:11 - “Only the person who is put right with God through faith shall live.”
Others would argue that first and foremost Jesus came to break the power of sin, and so perhaps they’d vote for Romans 6:6 - “and we know that our old being has been put to death with Christ on his cross, in order that the power of the sinful self might be destroyed, so that we should no longer be slaves of sin.” Perhaps some would go further and even argue that Jesus came to show us what sins must be got rid of, and they’d vote for something like Colossians 3:5 - “You must put to death the earthly desires at work in you, such as sexual immorality, indecency, lust, evil passions, and greed.”
Some people would argue that Jesus was a teacher, and came to explain God’s law to us, and they’d vote for John 13:34 - “And now I give you a new commandment: love one another. As I have loved you so you must love one another,” or perhaps Matthew 22:39 - “Love your neighbour as you love yourself.”
There are people who would take a political and social justice bent and argue that Jesus came to reform society. They might vote for Luke 4:18 - The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has chosen me to bring good news to the poor,” or maybe Luke 18:22 - “Sell all you have and give the money to the poor, and you will have riches in heaven; then come and follow me.”
All of these verses are significant, and I certainly wouldn’t be dismissing any of them, but I wouldn’t really accept any of them as a sufficient summary of Jesus’ overall goal. My vote would probably go with John 10:10, the last verse of our gospel reading just before - “I have come in order that you might have life - life in all its fullness.” I’d also be reasonably open to being talked into John 3:16 - “For God loved the world so much that he gave his only son, so that everyone who believes in him may not die but have eternal life.” My only reservation about that one is that we need to make sure that the words believe and eternal are carefully defined or else it is too easy to misunderstand it. The word believe means more than just signing your name against a doctrinal statement and the word eternal says more about quality than about time span, but once that is made clear, the two verses are saying essentially the same thing. “I have come in order that you might have life - life in all its fullness.” It is the verse we chose to base our church motto on, our one line summary of purpose - seeking and sharing the fullness of life.
“I have come in order that you might have life - life in all its fullness.” All the rest are captured up in that somewhere, personal salvation, breaking the power of sin, loving relationships, renewed human community, religious and social justice. And a lot of them can only be properly understood when you understand them in light of this mission statement. Commandments about doing away with greed and immorality sound very threatening and gloomy until you realise that Jesus sees them as obstacles to your experience of the life’s fullness. Jesus is not obsessed with morality, he’s obsessed with life in all its fullness and morality is merely a means to that end.
Some of you will feel uncomfortable at the spelling out of some of this, because it can sound like I’m down grading the importance of some very important things. You may squirm a bit in your seats if I say fullness of life is more important to Jesus than salvation from sin, or fullness of life is more important to Jesus than social justice. But hear me out. Jesus Christ, and the God we have come to know in Jesus Christ, are not primarily motivated by a desire to fix problems. They did not create the world in order to have a whole bunch of problems to fix so they could keep themselves interested. Salvation, social justice and morality are all about fixing problems. Salvation is only relevant if there is something or someone that needs to be saved from some danger. Something has gone wrong and salvation is about putting it right again. Social justice is only an interesting topic in the face of social injustice. If we had always lived in a completely just world, we would have never even invented the word. Something has gone wrong and social justice is about putting it right again. So to with morality. If we weren’t so frequently faced with the pain and brokenness caused by people’s immoral behaviour we would never have cause to think about morality. Something has gone wrong and morality is about putting it right again. And there can be absolutely no doubt that Jesus is involved in all these causes, but if he’d had his way in the first place, these things would not have gone wrong and therefore they wouldn’t need fixing.
What would Jesus be on about then? Life - life in all its fullness. The world was created because God loves life and loves to bless life and enjoy life. We were created because God wanted to love us and bless us, because that is what God loves doing. We were not created so we could go wrong and need fixing. Jill loves gardening but she does not plant her garden because she is especially passionate about removing snails and pulling out weeds. The aim of the garden is not to attract snails so that she can have fun removing them. She removes snails because she loves the garden and gets great joy from watching it grow and flourish. The removal of snails is to ensure that that flourishing growth is not hindered, it is not the purpose of the exercise in itself.
Christ’s battles with sin and injustice and immorality are like Jill’s battle with the snails. They are simply undertaken to remove any obstacles to all of creation and humanity growing and flourishing in the fullness of life. His primary passion, his primary desire is to see everybody and everything enjoying unhindered, unthreatened fullness of life, here and now.
I think we often have a bit of a false picture of what the world would be like if nothing had gone wrong and everything was as perfect as it was intended to be. We often have this very static, unchanging view of it, nothing much can happen because everything is so perfect, and it all sounds a bit boring really. That is not the biblical image of perfection. The biblical image of perfection is a dynamic growing idea. If we can return to Jill’s garden for a moment, the perfect garden would not be one where the perfect flowers just stayed in bloom all the time and nothing ever happened. The perfect garden would grow and flourish and be born and mature and fade and blossom again in the cycles of nature. The big difference would be that it would maintain a balance in its cycles so that even the snails would have a place and wouldn’t get out of hand. The flourishing of life would be so overflowing and abundant that the demise of one plant would be celebrated as the giving of life of another rather than mourned as the victory of death in the garden.
In the perfected world we won’t be sitting around bored on clouds with harps, but being born and growing and maturing and enjoying all the joys and goodness of life. Love and blessing are not things that have a maximum level called perfection. They are things that grow and mature and flourish, always changing, always evolving. You know that from your relationships with lovers or friends or family. Love is not something that plateaus off at a maximum level and then just becomes boringly static and unchanging. The more love grows the more dynamic and exciting it becomes. The fullness of life that Christ came to open up our access to, is like that. It is a diverse, flourishing, exuberant life in which we are ever increasingly aware and appreciative of the beauty and joy and magical fullness of any given moment.