The Great Gospel of John
Volume 1
Jesus' Precepts and Deeds through His Three Years of Teaching
First day in Sychar
- Chapter 50 -
At Sychar. About the honouring of the Sabbath. What God wants men to do. Work day and Sabbath. God's constant activity. Moses' teaching about the Sabbath. 'Be ye perfect even as your Father in heaven is perfect.' Promise of answered prayers.
The Lord: 'The most appropriate honouring of the Sabbath however is that you should be more actively engaged in doing good than on any other day!
2
Only the servants' work, being work for wages and reward from the world, you should henceforth perform neither on a normal week day and just as little on a Sabbath. Because from now on, every day shall be a Sabbath and every Sabbath a full work day! In this, My friend, you now have a complete rule on how you are to serve God in the future! - At that let us leave it!'
3
Says the high priest: 'I now clearly recognise the holy truth of this rule, which I am happy to take as a Commandment; but with the entrenched Jews it will take much before this rule, gone forth from the purely divine will, shall become comprehensible to them in its fullest truth! I fear that very many shall not accept this rule before the end of the world. Because men already are accustomed to the Sabbath from antiquity and will not have it taken from them. Oh, the effort and work this shall take!'
4
Say I: 'It is not strictly necessary that the Sabbath be completely dropped, but only its follies! God the Lord does not require your services and honouring; for He has created the world and man without anyone's help and is only asking men to acknowledge and love Him with all their strength, and this not only on the Sabbath but every day ceaselessly!
5
What kind of divine service is it that makes you remember God only on a Sabbath yet never during the week?! Is not God the same, unchanging God every day? Does not He on every day let the sun go up and pour light over the just and unjust, of whom there always are more than the just?
6
Does not God Himself work the same on every day? If however God Himself takes no holidays, why should men keep, holidays just for idleness? Because nothing do they regard more on a Sabbath than idling! But with this they give God the worst possible service!
7
For it is God's will that men shall get more and more used to love-activity, so that once in the other life they will be capable of much work and effort and able to seek and find only in such activity true and supreme bliss. Would men ever be able to achieve this within themselves through idleness? I tell you: never!
8
On workdays, although he does work, man only practices selfishness, for then he works for his flesh and calls what he gains his own. Whoever wishes to obtain that from him must buy it through work or with money, or he would not get anything of significance from anyone. Therefore, if on workdays men cultivate only their selfishness and spend the Sabbath, as the only day on which they should practice love-activity, in the most inflexible idleness, the very serious question arises: When should or would people practice the only true divine service, which consists in loving service to the fellowman?
9
God Himself is not even for a moment idle, but constantly active for mankind and never for Himself. He does not need an earth for Himself, nor a sun, a moon, all the stars nor anything contained therein or going forth from same. God does not need all that. But all the created spirits and men do need it, and for their sake the Lord is continually active.
10
If the Lord, whose work goes on every day and who is continually active for mankind, wishes men as His children to be like Him in everything, how can it ever have been His will that after six selfishly spent days men should on the seventh serve Him satisfactorily by absolute idleness and honour Him, the eternally active One, through indolence?
11
I tell you, the high priest, this now quite clearly, so that you may in future - well aware who the One is who has told you this - show your flock the Sabbath in a better light than it has been the case from Moses until now. For in the same way as I have now explained the Sabbath to you it had been given also to Moses, but the people only too soon perverted it into a heathen day of idleness, believing to render a good service to God through inaction and the punishing of those who at times dared to perform also on the Sabbath some small task or give some beneficial help to a sick person. O for the great blindness and the grossest foolishness!'
12
Says the high priest, quite subdued by the truth: 'Oh for the holiest truth of Your mouth! Yes, now all is clear to me! Only now have You oh Lord taken away Moses's threefold veil from my eyes! Now Lord there is no need of further signs; because here just Your holy Word suffices! And I maintain from fullest conviction that in future those who believe on You only on account of the signs but not Your eminently true Word shall not possess a true living faith but be instead mere idle, mechanistic followers of Your teaching and holy will; but with us it shall be otherwise! Not the signs which Your presence has provided but only your holy and most true Word shall bring forth and awaken the true, living faith and fullest love for You in our hearts, and out of Yourself and solely on Your account also towards all men in the right measure. And thus Your will be done for evermore, which You oh Lord have now made so abundantly clear to us forever.'
13
Say I: 'Amen! Yes, dear friend and brother, thus it is right and good. Because only in this way shall you become perfect even as the Father in heaven is perfect. When however you are perfect like that then you are also true children of God, and can at all times call out to Him: 'Abba, dear Father'. And whatever you shall, as His true children ask Him, that shall He also give you; because the Father is exceedingly good and gives His children all He has! But eat and drink now; because the food here is not of this earth, but the Father sends it to you from the heavens and is now Himself among you!'