I Was There

John 19:28-42

“He who saw it has born witness – his testimony is true, and he knows that he is telling the truth - that you also may believe.” John 19:35

Sometimes I’ll hear people say that all this stuff about Jesus is made up. I don’t know what to do with statements like those. I suppose if you completely disregard the things that were written about Him by people who lived in His day, then I guess you could continue to think that this was all a fairy tale. Besides these – people who actually knew Him, people who were there – who do you expect would have written about Him? Seriously.

Let’s think about the context of John’s words. We are reading about a Jewish carpenter in the region of Judea, under the occupation and dominion of the Roman Empire. He led no revolt against Rome. He held no public office and neither did He have any known political ambitions or affiliations. He had a few large gatherings, but as best I can tell, he only had a hundred or so devoted followers here at the very end of His 3 ½ year earthly calling. In His time, few in Roman or Jewish culture would have given such a person even a footnote in their writings. Historians occupy themselves with events of greater significance such as war, politics, catastrophe and such; not the antics of a Jewish carpenter whose ministry lasted all of 3 ½ years.

When we read John, we aren’t reading a news report. We are listening to a man who had firsthand knowledge of the life and death of Jesus. He tells us, “I was there. I saw it with my own eyes and I know what I saw.” He’s not a teacher asking us to believe things that happened billions of years ago. We are sitting in on the words of a person who was there on this very day. If that doesn’t do it for you, nothing will. Will it?

If we accuse John of being a liar, what could we suppose his motivation would have been? Was it an elaborate setup designed to help establish America’s political system? If you watch enough conspiracy videos on YouTube, you might have heard such. There was nothing for John to profit from taking the time to write His account for us. Because of His devotion to Jesus, he spent his later years being exiled on the island of Patmos. With no reward other than persecution and isolation, I don’t see what would motivate him to contrive a Christ-hoax.

The very things that John describes to us here give us cause to lend him some credibility, some consideration that he was in fact on the scene. He tells us that when the soldiers pierced His side, blood and water flowed out. In our modern day, we know that blood is largely made up of water and that it can separate over time. One would not expect a man in the first century like John to know the science of it well enough to make up such a tale. So there is little room to conclude that what he tells us is anything BUT personal observation.

I have little control over what you really believe. Can I ask you a favour though? If you aren’t willing to listen to the man who was there, would you please give that same level of criticism to everything else that you read? It’s only fair.