some thoughts

If you’re like me, verses like these have plagued you for hours (if not years!):

“I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. ” (John 16:12-13, ESV)

And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. … Yet among the mature we do impart wisdom, although it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to pass away. But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory… (1 Cor. 2, ESV - basically the whole chapter)

Therefore let us leave the elementary doctrine of Christ and go on to maturity, not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God, and of instruction about washings, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment. And this we will do if God permits. (Heb. 6:1-3, ESV)

Verses like these frustrate me, because I agree with something Derek Webb said: “…I have a desperate need for the Gospel. You’re never going to get over the Gospel, to move on to something deeper. There isn’t anything deeper.” (source; emphasis mine.) I think most of us would agree that that’s true; so how does this fit with the (frustrating!) verses above?

I think it fits in perfectly; we just need to realize that the “more,” the “deeper” isn’t outside, or above, or beyond the gospel–it’s deeper within. It’s like ‘moving on’ from pure white light into its many colors, perhaps by way of a prism. It’s like camping out for a few months on just the blue region of the color-spectrum in order to explore the different nuances between the violets, navys, and royals. It’s not as though we set down the Scriptures, and turn our eyes up and away from them to something beyond and outside; instead we take them up, and buckle up–fixing our eyes on Christ as presented in the Word, praying for the Spirit’s illumination–and we dig deeper into, linger longer over, and thoroughly taste each flavor of, the Creator’s story of all things that were, are, and shall forever be. There may have been a beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ (Mark 1:1, ESV), but there shall be no end of it (Rev. 14:6, KJV).

Think, perhaps, of fractals (e. g., the Mandelbrodt Set [large w/music; small]): we never leave the original design–never leave its ‘boundary,’ instead we just go deeper in - infinitely. There is one theme, with many variations, colors, proportions, perspectives, and yet with no end. This is like the “more” of the gospel.

It doesn’t get any deeper than the Gospel because the Gospel is that “of God, concerning his Son, Jesus Christ” and He is infinitely deep1. We will never reach the bottom of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ; it is He “…in whom are hidden all the riches of wisdom and knowledge.” And so, that His glory and our joy may be full, we dare not look away.

And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself. (Luke 24:27, ESV)

“More,” therefore, is deeper within–not above, beyond, or without.

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1. Notice, too, that the Hebrews passage above could be interpreted “let us move on from the elementary doctrine of Christ to an even deeper and more mature doctrine of Christ.”