Failure to Communicate

So much of Jesus communication with those of His time was misunderstood because He was speaking on one plain and they were listening on another. In John 8 Jesus refers to his judgment concerning His identity to be in sync with His Father. Jesus was not alone in His judgment. His Father backed Him up in everything. If God said it, Jesus said "Amen." If Jesus said it God said "Amen." There was no division between them. They spoke as one. So in the current discussion about where Jesus came from, whether He was born in Galilee or elsewhere, and where He might be going, Jesus kept referring to His Father. We hear that and immediately think of God as Jesus' Father. But, these Jewish leaders did not think that at first. They thought He was referring to His earthly father. They thought it might be a good idea to question His father to see if their stories matched. They did something like this in John 9 regarding the healed blind man. They called his parents to testify about the healing. So if they could get Jesus' dad to come in and give his testimony perhaps they could understand what was going on. When Jesus said Father, they heard father. John tells us this in John 8:27, "They did not realize that He had been speaking to them about the Father."

This seems like a fairly simple matter but the failure to communicate was huge. In this case the failure was on the part of the Jewish leaders who were so bent on discrediting Jesus that they were slow in their understanding. They were set in worldly interpretations just as Nicodemus was in John 3. Jesus said "born again" and he heard "born by going back into your mother." Spiritual language is hard for some to understand. Sometimes we need to tell people "Now we are going to have a spiritual conversation. Do not interpret what I say physically. Listen with spiritual ears." The language of spiritual truth must be learned. Our job is orient the hearers to this new language, which is in fact the language of their hearts. We all were created to speak the language of the spirit, but we live so long in the land of the earth that we lose it. It is sad when someone who was born in another land forgets the language of their birth. The job of evangelism is reteach people the language of the spirit so they can spiritually discern the message of the gospel. And, once the person is born again, the Spirit begins a tutoring process within us in connection with our text book, the Bible, to train us in our native language (1 Cor.2).

Jesus was absolutely fluent in the language of the Spirit. He was absolutely in sync with the Father, and spoke the language of the Father perfectly. (Take a look at John 16:23-31.) If we are to know the mind of Christ we must learn to speak His language, and learn to teach it to others lest we have a failure to communicate with Him.