John 7 - Where is the Third Temple?

So just recapping, John 1, right, sets in both Greek and Hebrew discourse, the thing that comes first governs everything that comes afterwards, right? So we just keep that idea in mind.

It's called... a topic structure, like, grammatically.

So the thing that's said first governs what comes next.

It's expecting you to remember the kind of terms of engagement.

It's like setting the table out.

What's our conversation? So in the prologue, we've had John's taken us back to creation.

He's taken us back to the story of Genesis, and he's shown us what's going on behind the curtain.

So Genesis 1 tells us what God did.

John 1 tells us what was going on in the mind of God when he did it.

And he says it's the Word, the divine Logos, is face-to-face with God, and the Word is God.

So the oneness relationship that the Father and the Son have in the Spirit, the Trinity, that's there from the beginning.

John's showing us, like the Wizard of Oz, but kind of in a good way, what's behind the curtain, what's the real truth of what's happening.

What has this whole world been created out of? We're not just seeing the phenomena of creation.

We're seeing what is in the mind and the intention of God.

And we see that in that face-to-faceness that other-focused self-giving love is the truth and the way of being of the Trinity.

John is later on going to say in the first epistle, God is love.

Not God is loving, but God is love.

That the essential nature of God is love.

And all other things we see as properties or attributes of God are extensions, therefore, of his love.

So God is holy.

Yes, he's holy, but that's an attribute.

The way in which he's holy is as love.

He is holy because he is love.

And because so much of what is operating in the world system doesn't look like that, therefore the holiness is a cut above.

God is just.