Table of Contents
The Real Christ: Book by Duncan Heaster
Personality Of God as a personal being
Implications Of The Unity Of God
God Manifestation In Jesus Christ
God's Holy Spirit
Personification Of The Holy Spirit
Genesis 3 Promise In Eden
Jesus In The Promise To Abraham
Jesus In The Promise To David
1-10 Old Testament Prophecies of Jesus
1-11 The Virgin Birth Of Jesus
1-12 Christ’s Place in God’s Plan
Was Jesus creator of earth?
Jesus Didn't Pre-Exist: Practical Implication Of Doctrine
Differences Between Jesus And God
Nature Of Jesus
Humanity Of Jesus Christ
The Victory And Achievment Of Jesus
Blood Of Jesus
Jesus Ending The Law Of Moses
Jesus As Representative Sacrifice
The Meaning Of Christ's Resurrection For Us
Christ Died For Me: So What Should I Do?
The Inspiration Of The Cross In Daily Life
Images Of Jesus
Jesus And Abba Father
The Self-Proclamation Of Jesus
Jesus Christ As A Palestinian Jew
The attitude of Jesus to people
Word Choice Of Jesus
Social status and poverty of Jesus
Finding meaning in everyday experience in the teaching of Jesus
Intellectual ability of Jesus
Naturalness of Jesus Christ
Sensitivity Of Jesus
Jesus As A Radical Revolutionary
Radical demands of Jesus
Radical Language Of Jesus
the authority of Jesus Christ
The Radical Acceptance Of Jesus
The Misunderstood Jesus
Implications of the crucifixion of Christ
Jesus The Same Yesterday And Today
Jesus as He would be in the 21st century
The nature of the humanity of Christ
The Divinity Of Jesus
Being Christ centred
The spirit of Jesus Christ
Unreal elements in parables of Jesus
End stress in parables of Jesus
parable of the sower
Christ's parable of the workers
parable of the two carpenters
shepherd and sheep in Christ's parables
Parables of Jesus about the Jews and Israel
Parables Of The Call Of The Gospel
Christ's parables about judgment day
Parables about Divine delegation to men
Unanswered Questions In The Parables Of Jesus
Christ's parable of the prodigal son and lost brother
Parable of killing fatted calf
Unreality In Luke 15
Good Samaritan parable explained
The Jesus Who Understands Weakness
Sensitivity Of Jesus revealed in His parables
Grace of Jesus revealed in His parables
Demanding nature of the teaching of Jesus
Parables About The Cross
Christ's parables about the Kingdom of God
The Trinity: Accommodation to paganism
The trinity: Genuine Intellectual Failure in doctrine?
The Psychological Attraction Of A Non-Human Jesus
Jewish Influence On The Trinity
Dirty Politics And The Doctrine Of The Trinity
The Trinity: A Desire For Acceptance
How the true understanding of Christ was lost
wrested scriptures about the trinity
In the beginning was the word / logos John 1
The word was with God: Wisdom in proverbs
logos / the word was made flesh John 1
logos the word was God John 1
John 1 all things were made by him / it: The word / Logos
How was the logos made flesh?
Jesus' Raising Up Of Himself (John 2:19-21)
God is a spirit John 4:24
Jesus as bread / manna come down from Heaven in John 6
Jesus as the "I am" in John 8:58
The glory I had with you before the world was Jn. 17:5
The Rock That Followed The Jews (1 Cor. 10)
Philippians 2:6-11 Jesus in the form morphe of God
Colossians 1:15-18: By Jesus were all things created
Colossians 1:15-18: By Jesus were all things created
Hebrews 1:2:"The Son... by [dia] whom [God] made the worlds"
Who was Melchizedek?
.
. The Real Christ...
A Biblical And Devotional Analysis
Published by Carelinks Publishing, ISBN 978-1-906951-00-9
Beginning with basic Bible teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ, Duncan Heaster proceeds to deconstruct the popular Trinitarian view of Jesus. But the author doesn't leave us with nothing in its place. He explores at great depth the character of the Lord Jesus, using close study of the Biblical text to perform a kind of archaeology of ancient personality. And he relentlessly pursues to the end his cardinal point: that knowing the real Christ is the essence of true Christianity, both now and eternally.
Chapter 1 runs through basic Bible teaching concerning God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit, pausing to bring out the practical import of these truths in real human life and personality. Chapter 2 makes an in-depth study of the human, historical Jesus, seeking to provide us with some realistic image of Him to whom we can relate. Chapter 3 explores in detail the parables of the Lord Jesus- they account for a large bulk of His actual teaching content. Chapter 4 and the Appendix return to theological and psychological reflection as to why it is that the Lord Jesus has been so misunderstood by His own church; there's a detailed consideration of Biblical texts which have been widely misinterpretted.
You can read the whole book online by clicking here . The book is downloadable as PDF and Word files here .
Duncan Heaster is a tutor at Aletheia Bible College and along with his wife Cindy pastors an active church in Riga, Latvia. Originally from the UK, Duncan has lived in the ex-USSR for the last 20 years. His persistent theme in teaching and pastoring is that doctrine is important; because doctrine affects practice. Duncan and Cindy are also active in advocating for victims of religious persecution, and work extensively with Carelinks Ministries.
The Real Christ: Contents
Foreword
Part 1: Some Bible Basics
1-1 The Personality of God
1-13 Did Jesus create the Earth?
1-2 Implications Of The Unity Of God
1-14 Jesus Didn't Pre-Exist: And So What?
1-15 Differences Between God And Jesus
1-3 God Manifestation
1-16 The Nature of Jesus
1-4 God’s Spirit
1-17 The Humanity of Jesus
1-5 Is the Holy Spirit a Person?
1-18 The Victory Of Jesus
1-6 The Principle of Personification
1-19 The Blood Of Jesus
1-7 The Promise in Eden
1-20 Jesus And The Law Of Moses
1-8 The Promise to Abraham
1-21 Jesus As Our Representative
1-9 The Promise to David
1-22 The Meaning Of Christ's Resurrection For Us
1-10 Old Testament Prophecies of Jesus
1-23 Christ Died For Me: So What Should I Do?
1-11 The Virgin Birth
1-24 The Inspiration Of The Cross In Daily Life
1-12 Christ’s Place in God’s Plan
Part 2: The Real Christ
2-1 Images Of Jesus
2-13 Radical Demands Of Jesus
2-2 Abba, Father
2-14 The Radical Language Of Jesus
2-3 The Self-Proclamation Of Jesus
2-15 The Radical Authority Of Jesus
2-4 Jesus A Palestinian Jew
2-16 The Radical Acceptance Of Jesus
2-5 Jesus And People
2-17 Jesus: A Man Misunderstood
2-6 The Words Of Jesus
2-18 The Real Cross: Today Is Friday
2-7 The Poverty Of Jesus
2-19 The Same Yesterday And Today
2-8 Finding Meaning In Everyday Experience
2-20 The 21st Century Jesus
2-9 Jesus The Intellectual
2-21 The Importance Of The Humanity Of Christ
2-10 The Naturalness Of Jesus
2-22 The Divine Side Of Jesus
2-11 Perceiving Others’ Needs
2-23 Christ-centredness
2-12 Jesus The Radical
2-24 The Spirit Of Jesus
Part 3: The Real And The Unreal: The Self Revelation Of Jesus In The Parables
3-1 Elements Of Unreality
3-12 The Parable Of The Prodigal (1)
3-2 End Stress
3-13 The Parable Of The Prodigal (2)
3-3 The Sower Parable
3-14 The Parable Of The Prodigal (3):
The Unreality In Luke 15
3-4 The 11th Hour Worker
3-15 The Good Samaritan
3-5 The Two Carpenters
3-16 The Jesus Who Understands Weakness
3-6 The Fanatic Shepherd
3-17 The Sensitivity Of Jesus
3-7 Parables Of Israel
3-18 The Grace Of Jesus
3-8 Parables Of The Call Of The Gospel
3-19 The Demanding Lord
3-9 The Parables Of Judgment
3-20 Parables About The Cross
3-10 Divine Delegation
3-21 Parables Of The Kingdom
3-11 Unanswered Questions In The Parables
Part 4: How The Real Christ Was Lost
4 Why The Trinity Was Accepted : 4-1 Accommodation To Paganism
4-4 Jewish Influence On The Trinity
4-2 Genuine Intellectual Failure?
4-5 Dirty Politics And The Doctrine Of The Trinity
4-3 The Psychological Attraction Of A Non-Human Jesus
4-6 The Trinity: A Desire For Acceptance
4-7 How The Real Christ Was Lost
Appendix: Some Wrested Scriptures
Introduction
5 “I came down from Heaven” (Jn. 6:33,38)
2-1“In the beginning was the word”
6 “Before Abraham was, I am”(Jn. 8:58)
2-2 "The word was with God"
7 "The glory I had with you before the world was" (Jn. 17:5)
2-3 " The word was made flesh"
8 The Rock That Followed Them (1 Cor. 10)
2-4 “The word was God”
9 “Being in the Form of God” (Phil. 2)
2-5 “All things were made by him”
10 Colossians 1:15-18:
By Jesus Were All Things Created
10a Colossians 2:9:
“Christ... In whom dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily”
2-6 How Was The Logos / Word Made Flesh?
11 Hebrews 1:2:"The Son... by whom [God] made the worlds"
3 Jesus' Raising Up Of Himself (Jn. 2:19-21)
12 Who Was Melchizedek?
4 “God is a Spirit” (Jn. 4:24)
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. The Real Christ...
1-1 The Personality of God
It is a majestic, glorious theme of the Bible that God is revealed as a real being. It is also a fundamental tenet of Christianity that Jesus is the Son of God. If God is not a real being, then it is impossible for Him to have a Son who was the “image of His
As God is so infinitely greater than we are, it is understandable that many people’s faith has balked at the clear promises that ultimately we will see Him. It is impossible for sinful man to see God (Ex. 33:20 RSV) - although this implies that were it not for our sinfulness, God is indeed a being who can ‘be seen’. Israel lacked the faith to see God’s “shape” (Jn. 5:37). Such faith comes from knowing God and believing His word:
“Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God” (Mt. 5:8).
“His (God’s) servants shall serve him: and they shall see his face; and his name (God’s name - Rev. 3:12) shall be in their foreheads” (Rev. 22:3,4).
Such a wonderful hope, if we truly believe it, will have a profound practical effect upon our lives:
“Follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord” (Heb. 12:14).
We should not swear oaths, because “he that shall swear by heaven, swears by the throne of God, and by him that sits upon it” (Mt. 23:22).
“We shall see him as he is (manifest in Christ). And every man that has this hope in him purifies himself, even as he is pure” (1 Jn. 3:2,3).
In this life our understanding of the heavenly Father is very incomplete, but we can look forward, through the tangled darkness of this life, to meeting Him at last. Our ‘seeing’ of Him will doubtless be matched by our greater mental comprehension of Him. Thus from the absolute depths of human suffering, Job could rejoice in the totally personal relationship with God which he would fully experience at the last day:
“Though after my death worms shall destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God: whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another” (Job 19:26,27).
And the apostle Paul cried out from another life of pain and turmoil:
“Now we look in a glass mirror, with a poor image; but then face to face” (1 Cor. 13:12).
Old Testament Evidence
These promises of the New Testament build on a considerable Old Testament backdrop of evidence for a personal God. It cannot be over stressed that it is fundamental to appreciate the nature of God if we are to have any true understanding of what Bible based religion is all about. The Old Testament consistently talks of God as a person; the person-to-person relationship with God of which both Old and New Testaments speak is unique to the true Christian hope. The following are strong arguments in favour of a personal God:
“God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness” (Gen. 1:26). Thus man is made in the image and likeness of God, as manifested through the angels. James 3:9 speaks of “...men, which are made in the similitude of God.” Our creation in the image of God surely means that we can infer something about the real object of which we are but an image. Thus God, whom we reflect, is not something nebulous of which we cannot conceive. Ezekiel saw God enthroned above the cherubim, with the silhouette of “the likeness of a man” (Ez. 1:26; 10:20); it is God Himself who is located above the cherubim (2 Kings 19:15 RV). All this has a practical import; because we are in the image of God, because it is imprinted on every part of our bodies, we must give that body to God, just as men were to give the penny which had Caesar’s image on it to Caesar (Lk. 20:25). Commenting on this matter in relation to Gen. 1:26,27, Risto Santala writes: “There are two Hebrew words here,
- “He (God) knows our frame” (Ps. 103:14); He wishes us to conceive of Him as a personal being, a Father to whom we can relate.
- Descriptions of God’s dwelling place clearly indicate that He has a personal location: “God is in heaven” (Ecc. 5:2); “He has looked down from the height of His sanctuary; from heaven did the Lord behold the earth” (Ps. 102:19,20); “Hear in heaven your dwelling place” (1 Kings 8:39). Yet more specifically than this, we read that God has a “throne” (2 Chron. 9:8; Ps. 11:4; Is. 6:1; 66:1). Such language is hard to apply to an undefined essence which exists somewhere in heavenly realms. God is spoken of as “coming down” when He manifests Himself. This suggests a heavenly location of God. It is impossible to understand the idea of ‘God manifestation’ without appreciating the personal nature of God.
- Is. 45 is full of references by God to His personal involvement in the affairs of His people: “I am the Lord, and there is none else...I the Lord do all these things...I the Lord have created it. Woe unto him that strives with his maker...I, even my hands have stretched out the heavens...look unto me, and be saved, all the ends of the earth”. This last sentence especially shows the personal existence of God - He desires men to look to Him, to conceive of His literal existence with the eye of faith.
- God is revealed to us as a forgiving God, who speaks words to men. Yet forgiveness and speech can only come from a sentient being, they are mental acts. Thus David was a man after God’s own heart (1 Sam. 13:14), showing that God has a mind (heart), which is capable of being replicated to some limited degree by man, although man by nature is not after God’s heart. Passages like, “The Lord repented that He had made man...and it grieved Him at his heart” (Gen. 6:6), reveal God as a feeling, conscious being. This helps us to appreciate how we really can both please and displease Him, as children can a natural father.
If God Is Not Personal...
If God is not a real, personal being, then the concept of spirituality is hard to grapple with. If God is totally righteous but is not a personal being, then we cannot really conceive of His righteousness manifested in human beings. Once we appreciate that there is a personal being called God, then we can work on our characters, with His help and the influence of His word, to reflect the characteristics of God in our lives.
God’s purpose is to reveal Himself in a multitude of glorified beings. His memorial name, Yahweh Elohim, implies this (‘He who shall be revealed in mighty ones’, is an approximate translation). The descriptions of the reward of the faithful in God’s coming Kingdom on earth show that they will have a tangible, bodily existence, although no longer subject to the weaknesses of human nature. Job longed for the “latter day” when he would have a resurrection of his body (Job 19:25-27). Abraham is one of the “many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth (who) shall awake...to everlasting life” (Dan. 12:2) so that he can receive the promise of eternal inheritance of the land of Canaan, a physical location on this earth (Gen. 17:8). “Saints shall shout aloud for joy...let them sing aloud upon their beds...and execute judgment upon the nations” (Ps. 132:16; 149:5,7). A failure by both Jew and Gentile to appreciate passages like these, as well as the fundamentally literal, physical import of the promises to Abraham, has led to the wrong notion of an “immortal soul” as the real form of human existence. Such an idea is totally devoid of Biblical support. God is an immortal, glorious being, and He is working out His purpose so that men and women might be called to live in His future Kingdom on this earth, to share His attributes, expressed in a bodily form.
The faithful are promised that they will inherit God’s nature (2 Pet. 1:4). We will be given a body like that of Jesus (Phil. 3:21), and we know that he will have a physical body in the Kingdom. The doctrine of the personality of God is therefore related to the Gospel of the Kingdom.
There can be no sensible concept of worship, religion or personal relationship with God therefore until it is appreciated that God is a real being and that we are made in His image. We need to develop His mental likeness now so that we may be made fully like Him in the Kingdom of God. So much more sense and comfort can now be gained from the passages which speak of God as a loving Father, chastening us as a Father does his son (e.g. Dt. 8:5). In the context of Christ’s sufferings we read that, “It was the Lord’s will to bruise Him” (Is. 53:10); although he “cried unto God: he heard my voice...and my cry came before him, even into his ears” (Ps. 18:6). God’s promise to David of a seed who would be God’s Son required the miraculous birth of a human being who was truly in the image and likeness of his father.
A correct understanding of God is a key which opens up many other vital areas of Bible doctrine. But as one lie leads to another lie, so a false concept of God obscures the truth which the Scriptures offer. If you have found this section convincing, or even partly so, the question arises: ‘Do you really know God?’ We will now further explore Bible teaching about Him.
The Unity Of God
There is really repeated Biblical emphasis upon the unity of God, that Yahweh God of Israel, "the Father", is the one and only God: "Listen, Israel: Yahweh our God is the one, the only Yahweh" (Dt. 6:4 New Jerusalem Bible). He swears that there will be no God formed after Him (Is. 43:10). The birth and exaltation of His Son, whatever exalted language is used about, was therefore in no way the forming of another God. If the Lord Jesus knew there to have been a trinity, it's somewhat strange that He fails to correct the man who commented: "Teacher, you have truly stated that [God] is one; and there is none else besides Him" (Mk. 12:32). The record presents an aobviously monotheistic Jewish scribe as being in complete agreement with the Lord Jesus about the unity of God. The Lord Jesus evidently supported the Old Testament's strict monotheism. When Jesus speaks of His Father as "the one who alone is God" (Jn. 5:44 NRSV), He is evidently alluding to the classic statement of monotheism in Dt. 6:4- that Yahweh is the one God. And the inspired writers of the New Testament did the same thing. James commented to Jews upon their belief in one God: "You believe that God is one. You do well" (James 2:19). He doesn't seek to correct their monotheism. Why, if the issue was so utterly vital and obvious? Moses had spoken of the future Messiah as being "a prophet
Notes
(1) Risto Santala,
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1-2 Implications Of The Unity Of God
A Demand For Our All
That God is one is not just a numerical description. If there is only one God, He therefore demands our
That God is one is a command, an imperative to action (Mk. 12:28,29). It underlies the whole law and prophets (Mt. 22:40)- it's that fundamental. If there were two Gods, Yahweh would only demand half our energies. Nothing can be given to anything else; for there is nothing else to give to. There's only one God. There can be no idolatry in our lives, because there is only one God (2 Kings 19:18,19). Because " there is none else, you shalt keep
Dt. 6:4 is far more than a proof text. Indeed God is one; but consider the context. Moses has set the people up to expect him to deliver them a long list of detailed commands; he has told them that God told him to declare unto them " all the commandments…that they may do them…you shall observe to do therefore as the Lord your God has commanded you…you shall walk in all the ways which the Lord your God has commanded you…now these are the commandments…that you might do them…
Dt. 6:1 RV reads: " Now this is
We do not have two masters; only one. Therefore, the more we grasp this, the more we will give ourselves solely to Him. And this leads on, in the thinking of Jesus, to having no anxious thought for tomorrow; for a life of total devotion to Him means that we need not worry about tomorrow (Mt. 6:24,25).
No Idolatry
There is a religious impulse within all men, a desire to serve someone or something. Generally, men and women sink this in the worship of the many idols of this materialistic age. But for us, there is to be one God, one channel alone for our devotion; for God is one. When Israel rejected the fountain of Yahweh, they hewed out many other fountains, in the form of idols (Jer. 2:13). The urge to worship is there within all men and women. We are asked to concentrate and consecrate that passion solely for the one God- not to share it between the many things that demand it. Romans 1 goes so far as to condemn men because they worshipped the created things
Our worlds, our lives and hearts, are full of potential idols. And what, in the most fundamental essence, is wrong with idolatry? It seems to me that idolatry
Faith
The unity of God is related to His sovereign power in our lives: " He is one [and therefore] what his soul desires, even that he does. For he performs that which is appointed" (Job 23:13,14 RVmg.). The idea of truth is often linked with the fact there is only one God (Is. 45:5,6,14,18,21,22). This means that all He says is the total Truth; for there is no other God. Thus one God has given us only one faith, hope etc (Eph. 4:4-6). Other belief systems can't be acceptable with us. Such was the crucial importance of the unity of God; and likewise it should influence our lives, hourly.
David had to remind himself: " My soul, hope only upon God [one-ly upon the one God]; for my expectation is from him [i.e. Him alone]" (Ps. 62:5). There is only one God, one source of help and power- and thus the oneness of God inspires our faith in Him. This motivated Asa to cry unto Yahweh in faith: " LORD, there is none beside you to help…help us , O LORD…for we rely on you" (2 Chron. 14:11 RV). Summing up, James 2:14-18 speaks of the connection between
Unity
Paul, writing to those who thought they believed in the unity of God, had to remind them that this simple fact implies the need for unity amongst us His children, seeing He treats us all equally as a truly good Father: " If so be that God is one...he shall justify the circumcision by faith, and [likewise] the uncircumcision through faith" (Rom. 3:30 RV).
Notes
(1) See L. Finkelstein,
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1-3 God Manifestation
The name of God can be carried by anyone through whom He chooses to ‘manifest’ or reveal Himself. So men and angels as well as Jesus can carry God’s name. This is a vital principle which opens up so much of the Bible to us. A son especially may carry the name of his father; he has certain similarities with his father, he may have the same first name - but he is not one and the same person as the father. In the same way a representative of a company may speak on behalf of the company; he may telephone someone on business and say, ‘Hello, this is Unilever here’; he is not Mr. Unilever, but he carries their name because he is working on their behalf. And so it was with Jesus.
ANGELS CARRYING GOD’S NAME
We are told in Ex. 23:20,21 that God told the people of Israel that an angel would go ahead of them; “My name is in Him”, they were told. The personal name of God is ‘Yahweh’. So the angel carried the name of Yahweh, and could thus be called ‘Yahweh’, or ‘The LORD’, in small capitals, as the word ‘Yahweh’ is translated in the N.I.V. and A.V. We are told in Ex. 33:20 that no man can see the face of God and live; but in Ex. 33:11 we read that “The LORD (Yahweh) spoke to Moses face to face, as a man speaketh to his friend” - i.e. directly. It could not have been the LORD, Yahweh, Himself in person, who spoke to Moses face to face, because no man can see God Himself. It was the angel who carried God’s name who did so; and so we read of the LORD speaking face to face with Moses when it was actually an angel who did so (Acts 7:30 33).
There are many other examples of the words ‘God’ and ‘LORD’ referring to the angels as opposed to God Himself. One clear example is Gen. 1:26: “And God (the angels) said, Let us make man in our image”.
MEN WITH GOD’S NAME
One of the passages which is most helpful in demonstrating all this is John 10:34-36. Here the Jews made the mistake which many do today. They thought that Jesus was saying he was God Himself. Jesus corrected them by saying, “Is it not written in your law, I said, You are gods? If He called them ‘gods’...why do you say of (me)...’You blaspheme!’ because I said, I am the Son of God?’. Jesus is really saying ‘In the Old Testament men are called ‘gods’; I am saying I am the Son of God; so why are you getting so upset?’ Jesus is actually quoting from Ps. 82, where the judges of Israel were called ‘gods’.
As has been shown, the full name of God in Hebrew is ‘Yahweh Elohim’ - implying ‘He who will be revealed in a group of mighty ones’. The true believers are those in whom God is revealed in a limited sense in this life. However, in the Kingdom, they will be ‘mighty ones’ in whom the LORD will be fully manifested. This is all beautifully shown by a comparison of Is. 64:4 and 1 Cor. 2:9. “Men have not heard, nor perceived by the ear, neither has the eye seen, O God, besides you, what He has prepared for him that waits for him”. Paul quotes this in 1 Cor. 2:9,10: “It is written, Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, neither has entered into the heart of man, the things which God has prepared for them that love Him. But God has revealed them unto us by His Spirit”. The passage in Is. 64 says that no one except God can understand the things He has prepared for the believers. However 1 Cor. 2:10 says that those things have been revealed to us.
The priests were God’s representatives, and for a man to ‘appear before the Lord’ effectively referred to his appearance before the priest. When we read of “men going up to God at Bethel”, the ‘house of God’ (1 Sam. 10:3), we aren’t to think that God Himself lived in a house in Bethel. The reference is to the priests, his representative, being there.
Not only is the Name of God carried by people, but language and actions which are specific to God are sometimes applied to humans who manifest Him. The daughter of Pharaoh who saved baby Moses is described in the very terms with which God is described as saving His people Israel 'out of the water' just as Moses was saved. She came 'came down', 'sees' the suffering child, hears its cry, takes pity, draws him out of the water, provides for him (Ex. 2:23-25; 3:7,8). The parallels are surely to indicate that God was willing to show Himself manifest in that Gentile woman in the salvation of His people. And of course the whole practical idea of 'God manifestation' is that we consciously try to reflect the characteristics of God- for His Name is in fact a summary of His characteristics and personality (Ex. 34:4-6).
JESUS AND THE NAME OF GOD
It is not surprising that Jesus, as the Son of God and His supreme manifestation to men, should also carry God’s name. He could say “I am come in my Father’s name” (Jn. 5:43). Because of his obedience, Jesus ascended to heaven and God “gave him a name which is above every name” - the name of Yahweh, of God Himself (Phil. 2:9). So this is why we read Jesus saying in Rev. 3:12: “I will write upon him (the believer) the name of my God...and I will write upon him my new name”. At the judgment Jesus will give us God’s name; we then will fully carry the name of God. He calls this name, “My new name”. Remember, Jesus gave the book of Revelation some years after his ascension into heaven and after he had been given God’s name, as explained in Phil. 2:9. So he can call God’s name “My new name”; the name he had recently been given. We can now properly understand Is. 9:6, where concerning Jesus we are told, “His name (note that) shall be called, Wonderful, Counsellor, the mighty God, the everlasting Father...”. This is a prophecy that Jesus would carry all the name of God - that he would be the total manifestation or revelation of God to us. It was in this sense that he was called ‘Emmanuel’, meaning, ‘God is with us’, although He personally was not God (1). Thus the prophecy of Joel 2 that men would call on the name of Yahweh was fulfilled by people being baptised into the name of Jesus Christ (Acts 2:21 cf. 38). This also explains why the command to baptize into the name of the Father was fulfilled, as detailed in the Acts record, by baptism into the name of Jesus.
The Jews were fierce monotheists, any idea that there was any God apart from God the Father was to them blasphemous. And yet their own writings have no problem in using the language of 'God' in relation to men and Angels- e.g. Ezra addresses the Angel Uriel as God Himself (2 Esdr. 5:43). It is this idea of 'God manifestation' in a person or Angel which is so common in the Bible, and which inevitably at times is used about God's own Son, Jesus. But the use of such language doesn't mean that Jesus is God Himself in person.
Language Of God Used About Jesus: Some Background
We need to appreciate the extent to which the first century Middle East understood a messenger as being the very person of the one who sent him. R.J.Z. Werblowski and Geoffrey Wigoder in
The idea is sometimes expressed that calling Jesus "Son of God" somehow makes Him God. Apart from the illogicality of this [a son isn't the same being as his father], the language of "Son of God" is used in the Old Testament of men. Even the term "God" is used of
Again and again we have to emphasize that we read the Biblical documents at a great distance from the culture in which they were first written. It was quite understandable for a person to carry the name of their superior, without being that superior in person. And so it was and is with the Lord Jesus. To give just one of many possible confirmations of this: "[In 2 Esdras 5:43-46]... God's spokesman, the angel Uriel, is questioned by Ezra as though he were both Creator and Judge [which God alone is]. Ezra uses the same style of address to Uriel ("My lord, my master") as he uses in direct petition to God. This practice of treating the agent as though he were the principal is of the greatest importance for New Testament Christology [i.e. the study of who Christ is]" (5). The acclamation of Thomas "My Lord and my God!" must be understood within the context of first century usage, where as Paul says, many people were called Lord and "god" (1 Cor. 8:4-6). If we're invited by our manager "Come and meet the president", we don't expect to meet the President of the USA. We expect to meet the president of the company. The word "president" can have more than one application, and it would be foolish to assume that in every case it referred to the President of the USA. And it's the same with the words "Lord" and "God" in their first century usage. Hence a Jewish non-trinitarian like Philo could call Moses "God and king of the whole nation" (Life Of Moses 1.158)- and nobody accused him of not being monotheistic! Significantly, there is in the New Testament the Greek word latreuo which specifically refers to the worship of God- and this is always [21 times] applied to God and not Jesus. The worship of Jesus that is recorded is always to God's glory, and is recorded with the same words [especially proskuneo] used about the worship of believers (Rev. 3:9, Daniel (Dan. 2:46 LX), kings of Israel etc. (1 Chron. 29:20 LXX).
Notes
(1) It should be noted that "Many think that the list of titles in Is. 9:5 was borrowed from the traditional titles of the monarchs of other countries, especially of the Egyptian pharaoh... the title applied to the king of Judah portrays him as one specially favoured by God, e.g. "the divine mighty one" or "divine warrior"- Raymond Brown,
(2) George R. Beasley Murray,
(3) Citations in James Dunn,
(4) For documentation, see D. Cuss,
(5) G.B. Caird,
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1-4 God’s Spirit
As God is a real, personal being with feelings and emotions, it is to be expected that He will have some way of sharing His desires and feelings with us, His children, and of acting in our lives in a way that will be consistent with His character. God does all of these things by His “spirit”. If we wish to know God and have an active relationship with Him, we need to know what this “spirit of God” is, and how it operates.
It isn’t easy to define exactly what the word “spirit” means. If you went to a wedding, for example, you might comment, “There was a really good spirit there!” By this you mean that the atmosphere was good, somehow everything about the wedding was good; everyone was smartly dressed, the food was nice, people spoke kindly to each other, the bride looked beautiful, etc. All those various things made up the “spirit” of the wedding. Likewise the spirit of God somehow summarises everything about Him. The Hebrew word translated “spirit” in the Old Testament strictly means “breath” or “power”; thus God’s spirit is His “breathing”, the very essence of God, reflecting His mind. We will give examples of how the word “spirit” is used about someone’s mind or disposition in Study 4.3. That the spirit does not just refer to the naked power of God is evident from Rom. 15:19: “the power of the spirit of God”.
It is a common Bible teaching that how a man thinks is expressed in his actions (Prov. 23:7; Mt. 12:34); a little reflection upon our own actions will confirm this. We think of something and then we do it. Our ‘spirit’ or mind may reflect upon the fact that we are hungry and desire food. We see a banana going spare in the kitchen; that desire of the ‘spirit’ is then translated into action - we reach out for the banana, peel it and eat. This simple example shows why the Hebrew word for ‘spirit’ means both the breath or mind, and also power. Our spirit, the essential us, refers to our thoughts and therefore also to the actions which we take to express those thoughts or disposition within us. On a far more glorious scale, God’s spirit is the same; it is the power by which He displays His essential being, His disposition and purpose. God thinks and therefore does things. “As I have thought, so shall it come to pass; and as I have purposed, so shall it stand” (Is. 14:24).
THE POWER OF GOD
Many passages clearly identify God’s spirit with His power. In order to create the earth, “the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light” (Gen. 1:2,3).
God’s spirit was the power by which all things, e.g. light, were made. “By His spirit He has created the heavens; His hand has formed the crooked serpent” (Job 26:13). A comparison of Mt. 12:28 and Lk. 11:20 shows that “the finger of God” and “the spirit of God” are parallel - God in action is His spirit. “By the word of the Lord were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath of His mouth” (Ps. 33:6). God’s spirit is therefore described as follows.
- His breath
- His word
- His finger
- His hand
It is therefore His power by which He achieves all things. For example, believers are born again by God’s will (Jn. 1:13), which is by His spirit (Jn. 3:3-5). His will is put into operation by the spirit. Speaking of the entire natural creation, we read: “You send forth your spirit, they are created: and (thereby) you renew the face of the earth” (Ps. 104:30). This spirit/power is also the sustainer of all things, as well as the means of their creation. It is easy to think that this tragic life stumbles on without this active input of God’s spirit. Job, a man who became weary of this life, was reminded of this by another prophet: “If he (God) gather unto himself his spirit and his breath; all flesh shall perish together, and man shall turn again unto dust” (Job 34:14,15). When pulling out of a similar trough of depression, David asked God to continue to uphold him with this spirit, i.e. to preserve his life (Ps. 51:12).
We shall see in Study 4.3 that the spirit given to us and all creation is what sustains our life. We have “the breath of the spirit of life” within us (Gen. 7:22 A.V. mg.) given to us by God at birth (Ps. 104:30; Gen. 2:7). This makes Him “the God of the spirits of all flesh” (Num. 27:16 cf. Heb. 12:9). Because God is the life force which sustains all creation, His spirit is present everywhere. David recognised that through His spirit God was constantly present with him wherever he went, and through that spirit/power He was able to know every corner of David’s mind and thinking. Thus God’s spirit is the means by which He is present everywhere, although He personally is located in heaven.
“You know my sitting down and standing up, you understand my thought far off... Where shall I go from your spirit? or where shall I flee from your presence? If I dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; even there... your right hand (i.e. through the spirit) shall hold me” (Ps. 139:2,7,9,10).
A proper understanding of this subject reveals God to us as a powerful, active being. Many people have grown up with a vague ‘belief’ in God, but in reality ‘God’ is just a concept in their minds, a black box in part of the brain. An understanding of the true God and His very real presence all around us by His spirit can totally change our concept of life. We are surrounded by the spirit, constantly witnessing its actions, which reveal God to us. David found the encouragement of all this absolutely mind-blowing: “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain unto it” (Ps. 139:6). Yet responsibilities come with such knowledge; we have to accept that our thinking and actions are totally open to God’s view. As we examine our position before Him, especially when thinking about baptism, we need to bear this in mind. God’s majestic words to Jeremiah apply to us, too: “Can any hide himself in secret places that I shall not see him? says the Lord. Do not I fill (by the spirit) heaven and earth?” (Jer. 23:24).
The Holy Spirit
We have seen that God’s spirit is a vast concept to grasp; it is His mind and disposition, and also the power by which He puts His thoughts into operation. “As a man thinks in his heart, so is he” (Prov. 23:7); and so God is His thoughts, in that sense He is His spirit (Jn. 4:24), although this does not mean that God is not personal (see Digression 1). To help us grapple with this vastness of God’s spirit, we sometimes read of His “Holy Spirit”.
The phrase “Holy Spirit” is to be found almost exclusively in the New Testament. In the A.V. the name “Holy Ghost” is often used, but it should always be translated as “Holy Spirit”, as modern versions make clear. This is equivalent to the Old Testament phrases “the spirit of God” or “the spirit of the Lord”. This is clear from passages such as Acts 2, which records the pouring out of the Holy Spirit upon the apostles on the day of Pentecost. Peter explained that this was a fulfilment of the prophecy of Joel, in which it is described as the pouring out of “my (God’s) spirit” (Acts 2:17). The main fulfilment of this will be when Jesus returns (Is. 32:15,16). Again, Lk. 4:1 records that Jesus “being full of the Holy Spirit” returned from Jordan; later in the same chapter Jesus links this with Is. 61: “The spirit of the Lord God is upon me”. In both cases (and in many others) the Holy Spirit is equated with the Old Testament term “the spirit of God”.
Notice, too, how the Holy Spirit is paralleled with the power of God in the following passages.
- “The Holy Spirit shall come upon you (Mary), and the power of the Highest shall overshadow you” (Lk. 1:35)
- “The power of the Holy Spirit...mighty signs and wonders, by the power of the spirit of God” (Rom. 15:13,19)
- “Our gospel (preaching) came...in power, and in the Holy Spirit” (1 Thes. 1:5).
- The promise of the Holy Spirit to the disciples was spoken of as their being “endued with power from on high” (Lk. 24:49).
- Jesus himself had been “anointed...with the Holy Spirit and with power” (Acts 10:38).
- The “promise of the
- Paul could back up his preaching with undeniable displays of God’s power: “My speech and my preaching was...in demonstration of the spirit and of power” (1 Cor. 2:4).
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1-5 Is the Holy Spirit a Person?
Study 1-4 gave ample evidence that God’s spirit refers to His power, which reflects His “mind” in a very broad way. Because the way God’s spirit acts is such an accurate reflector of the essence and personality of God, some have argued that God’s spirit is a person who is also God. A careful re-reading of the previous sections will show that God’s spirit is His mind and power. Electricity is an unseen power that can produce results for the person controlling it, but it cannot be a person. Love is a part of someone’s character, but it cannot be a person. God’s spirit includes His love, as part of His character, and also refers to His power, but in no way can it refer to a person who is separate from Him.
It is a tragedy to me that this mistaken view (of the spirit being a person) is believed by the majority of Christians, seeing that they believe in the doctrine of the ‘trinity’. This effectively states that there are three gods who are somehow also the same - God the Father, the Holy Spirit and Jesus.
There is good reason to believe that the ‘trinity’ was fundamentally a pagan idea imported into Christianity - hence the word does not occur in the Bible. If we accept this idea that God is a trinity, we are then driven to reach the conclusion that somehow God’s power/spirit is a person, who is also God, although not God the Father. When confronted with the illogicality of their position, the most popular escape route is for such people to claim that God is a mystery, and that we should accept such things in faith without requiring a logical explanation.
This pointedly overlooks the references in the New Testament to the mystery of God being revealed through the word and work of Christ.
- “I would not, brothers, that you should be ignorant of this mystery” (Rom. 11:25).
- “The preaching of Jesus...the revelation of the mystery” (Rom. 16:25).
- “I shew (explain to) you a mystery...” (1 Cor. 15:51).
- “Having made known unto us the mystery of his will” (Eph. 1:9; 3:3).
- Paul’s preaching was “to make known the mystery of the Gospel” (Eph. 6:19; Col. 4:3).
- “The mystery...now is made manifest to his saints” (Col. 1:26,27).
With all this emphasis - and it is that - on there not now being any mystery attached to fundamental doctrines, it will only be someone still in darkness who will claim that there is. And does such a person not worry that the Bible’s name for “Babylon”, the system of false religion described in Revelation, is “Mystery” (Rev. 17:5)? The obvious implication is that this system proclaims that its beliefs are a mystery; but the true believers understand the mystery of that woman (Rev. 17:7).
Such hazy reasoning arises from having an understanding of God which is based upon subjective things like human experience, or the sense we have of church traditions. If we are expected to be truly humble to the teaching of God’s Word, it follows that we are also required to use basic powers of reasoning and deduction in order to discover its message.
Never did any preacher of the Gospel recorded in the Bible resort to saying, ‘This is a complete mystery, you cannot begin to understand it’. Instead, we read of them appealing to people through reason and drawing logical conclusions from Scripture.
In his preaching of the type of Gospel fundamentals which we are considering in these Studies, Paul “reasoned with them out of the Scriptures, … that Christ needed to have suffered, and risen again” (Acts 17:2,3). Here was systematic, logical Bible reasoning par excellence; and the record prefaces this sentence with, “Paul, as his manner was...reasoned...”. This was, therefore, his usual style (see also Acts 18:19). In keeping with this, during the great campaign at Corinth, Paul “
Notice, too, that the inspired record makes an appeal to logic and rationality, by pointing out that they “opposed themselves”. Likewise at Antioch, Paul and Barnabas “speaking (the word) to them, persuaded them...” (Acts 13:43). Their next stop was Iconium, where they “so spake, that a great multitude...believed” (Acts 14:1).
As he stood trial for his life a while later, the same glorious logic continued to inspire Paul’s sure hope for the future: “He
Because our conversion should be based on such a process of reasoning, we should be able to give a logical Biblical account of our hope and doctrine.
“Be ready always to give an answer to every man who asks you a reason of the hope that is in you” (1 Pet. 3:15).
To talk in a sober voice about one’s personal experiences, valid testimony as this can be, is not the same as the Gospel. We must be ever giving a reason of the Gospel hope. Such personal anecdotes must not be allowed to conflict with the words of Paul: “We preach not ourselves, but Christ” (2 Cor. 4:5) - and that from a man who ‘had a personal relationship with Jesus’ more than most.
The logical, Biblically reasonable manner of our conversion should set the pattern for our wider relationship with God through the rest of our days. Our examples, as always, are the first Christians who used “reason” to figure out the solutions to their problems of administration (Acts 6:2). The New Testament letters also assume their readers’ acceptance of using Biblical logic. Thus “by reason of” what the High Priests were like under the Law of Moses, we can understand details about the work of Christ (Heb. 5:3). Having spoken of the surpassing love of God in Christ, Paul urges that it is “your reasonable (Greek ‘logikos’ - i.e. logical) service” to totally dedicate ourselves to Him in response (Rom. 12:1). The word ‘‘logikos’ is derived from the Greek ‘logos’, which is the word normally translated “the word” with reference to God’s Word. Our “logical” response in Biblical terms is therefore one which is derived from God’s Word.
If we cannot draw logical conclusions from the Scriptures, then all Bible study is vain, and there is no need for the Bible, which can be treated just as sweet platitudes or a piece of fascinating literature. This is all it seems to be on many bookshelves.
However, to their credit, there are many earnest Christians who believe that the spirit of God is a person, and they do try to give Biblical reasons. The verses quoted are those which speak of God’s spirit in personal language, e.g. as “the comforter” in Jn. 14:16, or reference to the spirit being “grieved”.
We demonstrated earlier that a man’s “spirit” can be stirred up (Acts 17:16), made troubled (Gen. 41:8) or happy (Lk. 10:21). His “spirit”, i.e. his very essence, his mind and purpose, which gives rise to his actions, is therefore spoken of as a separate person, but, of course, this is not literally so. God’s spirit, too, can be spoken of in the same way.
It must also be understood that the Bible often uses the language of personification when talking about abstract things, e.g. wisdom is referred to as a woman in Prov. 9:1. This is to demonstrate to us what a person who has wisdom would be like in practice; ‘wisdom’ cannot exist except in someone’s mind, and so this device of personification is used. For more on this, see the study on “The Principle of Personification”.
Paul’s letters contain opening salutations
which refer to God and Jesus, but not to the Holy Spirit (Rom. 1:7; 1
Cor. 1:3; 2 Cor. 1:2; Gal. 1:3; Eph. 1:2; Phil. 1:2; Col. 1:2; 1 Thes.
1:1; 2 Thes. 1:2; 1 Tim. 1:2; 2 Tim. 1:2; Tit. 1:4; Philemon 3). This
is strange if he considered the Holy Spirit to be part of a godhead, as
the ‘trinity’ doctrine wrongly supposes.
Throughout Revelation- which was given
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1-6 The Principle of Personification
It is a recognised feature of the Bible that inanimate or non-living things such as wisdom, riches, sin, the church are personified, but only in the case of the devil is some fantastic theory woven around it. The following examples will illustrate the point.
WISDOM IS PERSONIFIED
“Happy is the man who finds wisdom, and the man that gets understanding. For the merchandise of it is better than the merchandise of silver, and the profit thereof than fine gold.
“Wisdom has builded
These verses, and indeed the rest of the chapters in which they appear, show that wisdom is personified as a woman, but because of this, no-one has the idea that wisdom is a literal beautiful woman who roams around the earth; all recognise that it is a very desirable characteristic which all people should try to acquire.
RICHES ARE PERSONIFIED
“No man can serve two
Here, riches are likened to a
SIN IS PERSONIFIED
“...Whoever committs sin is the servant of sin” (Jn. 8:34). “Sin has
As in the case of riches, sin is likened here to a master and those who commit sin are its servants. No reasonable reading of the passage justifies assuming that Paul is teaching that sin is a person.
THE SPIRIT IS PERSONIFIED
“When
Jesus is here telling His disciples that they would receive the power of the Holy Spirit, and this was fulfilled on the day of Pentecost, as recorded in Acts 2:3-4, where it is stated that “there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit”, which gave them remarkable power to do wonderful things to prove that their authority was from God. The Holy Spirit was not a person, it was a power, but when Jesus was speaking of it He used the personal pronoun “he”.
DEATH IS PERSONIFIED
“Behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death” (Rev. 6:8).
THE NATION OF ISRAEL IS PERSONIFIED
“Again I will build you, and you shalt be built,
Adapted from “
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1-7 The Promise In Eden
The story of humanity’s fall is related in Genesis chapter 3. The serpent was cursed for misquoting God’s word and tempting Eve to disobey it. The man and woman were punished for their disobedience. But a ray of hope comes into this dark picture when God says to the serpent.
“I will put enmity (hatred, opposition) between you and the woman, and between your descendant and her (special, notable) descendant; it (the woman’s descendant) shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel” (Gen. 3:15).
This verse is highly concentrated; we need to carefully define the various things involved. We will see later that Abraham’s special descendant was Jesus (Gal. 3:16), but that if we are in Jesus by baptism, then we also are the “descendant” (Gal. 3:27-29). This word “descendant” is translated “seed” in some versions, as it also refers to the idea of sperm (1 Pet. 1:23); so a true ‘seed’ will have the characteristics of its father.
The seed or descendant of the serpent must therefore refer to that which has the family likeness of the serpent.
- distorting God’s Word
- lying
- leading others into sin.
We will see in Study 6 that there is not a literal person doing this, but that within us there is.
- “our old man” of the flesh (Rom. 6:6)
- “the natural man” (1 Cor. 2:14)
- “the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts” (Eph. 4:22)
- “the old man with his deeds” (Col. 3:9).
This “man” of sin within us is the Biblical “devil”, the serpent.
The descendant of the woman was to be a specific individual - “you (the serpent) shalt bruise
- “Jesus Christ, who has (by the cross) abolished death (and therefore the power of sin - Rom. 6:23), and has brought life and immortality to light through the Gospel” (2 Tim. 1:10).
- “God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin, in the flesh”, i.e. the Biblical devil, the serpent (Rom. 8:3).
- Jesus “was manifested to take away our sins” (1 Jn. 3:5).
- On the cross, it was by His being ‘bruised’ [an allusion to Gen. 3:15] that we find forgiveness (Is. 53:5 AVmg.).
- “You shalt call his name Jesus (meaning “Saviour”): for he shall save his people from their sins” (Mt. 1:21).
Jesus was literally “made of a woman” (Gal. 4:4). He was the son of Mary, although God was his Father. Thus in this sense he was the descendant of the woman but not the descendant of a man as he had no human father. This descendant of the woman was to be temporarily wounded by sin, the serpent - “you shalt bruise his heel” (Gen. 3:15). A snakebite on the heel is normally a temporary wound, compared to the permanence of hitting the snake on the head. Many figures of speech have Biblical roots: “knock it on the head” (i.e. completely stop or end something) is probably based on this prophecy of Jesus hitting the snake on the head.
The condemnation of sin, the serpent, was through Christ’s sacrifice on the cross - notice how the verses quoted above speak of Christ’s victory over sin in the past tense. The temporary wound to the heel suffered by Jesus is therefore a reference to his death for three days. His resurrection proved that this was only a temporary wound, compared to the deathblow that he gave sin. It is interesting that non-Biblical historical records indicate that victims of crucifixion were nailed through their heel to the stake of wood. Thus Jesus was “wounded in the heel” through his death. Is. 53:4,5 describes Christ as being ‘bruised’ by God through his death on the cross. This plainly alludes to the prophecy of Gen. 3:15 that the serpent would bruise Christ. However, ultimately God worked through the evil which Christ faced,
The Conflict Today
But the question may have arisen in your mind: “If Jesus destroyed sin and death (the serpent), why are those things still present today?” The answer is that on the cross Jesus destroyed the power of sin in himself: the prophecy of Gen. 3:15 is primarily about the conflict between Jesus and sin. Now this means that because he has invited us to share in his victory, eventually we, too, can conquer sin and death. Those who are not invited to share in his victory, or decline the offer, will, of course, still experience sin and death. Although sin and death are also experienced by true believers, through their association with the descendant of the woman by being baptised into Christ (Gal. 3:27-29), they can have forgiveness of their sins and therefore eventually be saved from death, which is the result of sin. Thus in prospect Jesus “abolished death” on the cross (2 Tim. 1:10), although it is not until God’s purpose with the earth is completed at the end of the Millennium that death will never again be witnessed upon earth. “For he must reign (in the first part of God’s Kingdom) till he has put all enemies under his feet. The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death” (1 Cor. 15:25,26).
If we are “baptised
If we are truly in Christ, then our lives will reflect the words of Gen. 3:15 - there will be a constant sense of conflict (“enmity”) within us, between right and wrong. The great apostle Paul described an almost schizophrenic conflict between sin and his real self that raged within him (Rom. 7:14-25). Paul Tournier aptly described it as “the violence within”.
After baptism into Christ, this conflict with the sin that is naturally within us should increase - and continue to do so all our days. In a sense it is difficult, because the power of sin is strong. But in another sense it is not, seeing that we are
The very first descendant of the serpent was Cain. Unlike the serpent who had no understanding of morality, Cain did understand what was truth and what was lies, and he understood what God required of him, yet he chose to follow the thinking of the serpent which led him into murder and lying.
As the Jews were the people who actually put Jesus to death - i.e. bruised the descendant of the woman in the heel - it is to be expected that they were prime examples of the serpent’s descendant. John the Baptist and Jesus confirm this.
“When he (John) saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees (the group of Jews who condemned Jesus) come to his baptism, he said unto them, O generation of (i.e. gendered by, created by) vipers (snakes), who has warned you to flee from the wrath to come?” (Mt. 3:7).
“Jesus knew their (the Pharisees’) thoughts, and said...O generation of vipers, how can you, being evil, speak good things?” (Mt. 12:25,34).
The world has these same serpent characteristics. How Jesus treated the people who were the serpent’s descendant or family must be our example.
- He preached to them in a spirit of love and true concern, yet
- He did not let their ways and thinking influence Him, and
- He showed them the loving character of God by the way in which He lived.
Yet for all this they hated him. His own effort to be obedient to God made them jealous. Even his family (Jn. 7:5; Mk. 3:21) and close friends (Jn. 6:66) put up barriers and some even went away from him physically. Paul experienced the same thing when he lamented to those who had once stood with him through thick and thin.
“Am I therefore become your enemy, because I tell you the truth?” (Gal. 4:14-16).
The truth is never popular; knowing it and living it as we should will always create some form of problem for us, even resulting in persecution.
“As then he that was born after the flesh persecuted him that was born after the Spirit (by true knowledge of God’s Word – 1 Pet. 1:23), even so it is now” (Gal. 4:29).
“An unjust man is an abomination to the just: and he that is upright in the way is an abomination to the wicked” (Prov. 29:27). There is a mutual antagonism between the believer and the world.
If we are truly united with Christ we must experience some of his sufferings, so that we may also share in his glorious reward. Again Paul sets us a matchless example in this.
“It is a faithful saying: For if we be dead with him (Christ), we shall also live with Him: if we suffer (with Him), we shall also reign with him...therefore I endure all things (2 Tim. 2:10-12).
“If they have persecuted me (Jesus), they will also persecute you...all these things will they do unto you for my name’s sake” (Jn. 15:20,21).
Faced with verses like these, it is tempting to reason, “If that’s what being associated with Jesus, the woman’s descendant, is all about, I’d rather not”. But of course we will never be expected to undergo anything which we cannot cope with. Whilst self-sacrifice is definitely required in order to unite ourselves fully with Christ, our association with him will result in such a glorious reward “that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us”. And even now, his sacrifice enables our prayers for help through the traumas of life to be especially powerful with God. And add to this the following glorious assurance.
“God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that you are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that you may be able to bear it” (1 Cor. 10:13).
“These things I have spoken unto you, that in me you might have peace. In the world you shall have tribulation: but be of good hope: I have overcome the world” (Jn. 16:33).
“What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us?” (Rom. 8:31).
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1-8 The Promise to Abraham
There’s a connection between the promise in Eden and the promises to Abraham. Abraham was promised the very things which were lost in Eden. A land flowing with milk and honey (cp. the garden of Eden); a nation without number (cp. “be fruitful and multiply”), and kingship (cp. “subdue it and rule…”, Gen. 1:28). We can see here the golden thread of God’s purpose developing a link further- His intention, revealed through the promises, was to enable His people to have again what had been lost in Eden.
The Gospel taught by Jesus and the apostles was not fundamentally different from that understood by Abraham. God, through the Scriptures, “preached before the gospel unto Abraham” (Gal. 3:8). So crucial are these promises that Peter started and ended his public proclamation of the Gospel with reference to them (Acts 3:13,25). If we can understand what was taught to Abraham, we will then have a very basic picture of the Christian Gospel. There are other indications that “the gospel” is not something which just began at the time of Jesus.
- “We declare unto you glad tidings (the Gospel), how that the promise which was made unto the (Jewish) fathers, God has fulfilled” (Acts 13:32,33).
- “The gospel of God, which he had promised afore by his prophets (e.g. Abraham, Gen. 20:7) in the holy scriptures” (Rom. 1:1,2).
- “For this cause was the gospel preached also to them that are dead” (1 Pet. 4:6) - i.e. believers who had lived and died before the first century.
- “For unto us was the gospel preached, as well as unto them” (Heb. 4:2) - i.e. Israel in the wilderness.
The promises to Abraham have two basic themes.
(1) things about Abraham’s special descendant and
(2) things about the land which was promised to Abraham.
These promises are commented on in the New Testament, and, in keeping with our policy of letting the Bible explain itself, we will combine the teachings of both Testaments to give us a complete picture of the covenant made with Abraham.
Abraham originally lived in Ur, a prosperous city in what is now Iraq. Modern archaeology reveals the high level of civilisation that had been reached by the time of Abraham. There was a banking system, civil service and related infrastructure. Somehow Abraham was aware of the Lord and of His Word, but he was the only faithful one in Ur (Is. 51:2; Nehemiah. 9:8). Then the extraordinary call of God came to him - to leave that sophisticated life and embark on a journey to a promised land. Exactly where and exactly what was not made completely clear. All told, it turned out to be a 1,500 mile journey. The land was Canaan - modern Israel.
Occasionally during his life, God appeared to Abraham and repeated and expanded His promises to him. Those promises are the basis of Christ’s Gospel, so as true Christians that same call comes to us as it did to Abraham, to leave the transient things of this life, and go forward in a life of faith, taking God’s promises at face value, living by His Word. We can well imagine how Abraham would have mulled over the promises on his journeys. “By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out (from Ur) into a place (Canaan) which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed; and he went out, not knowing whither he went” (Heb. 11:8).
As we consider God’s promises for the first time, we, too, can feel that we do not know exactly what the promised land of God’s Kingdom will be like. But our faith in God’s Word should be such that we also eagerly obey.
Abraham was no wandering nomad with nothing better to do than take a chance on these promises. He was from a background which, in fundamental terms, has much similarity with our own. The difficult decisions he faced were similar to those we may also have to face as we consider whether to accept and act on God’s promises - the strange looks from business colleagues, the sly look in the eye from the neighbours (“He’s got religion!”) ...Abraham would have known these things. The motivation which Abraham needed to go through with it all must have been tremendous. The only thing that provided that motivation throughout his long travelling years was the word of promise. He must have memorised those words and daily meditated upon what they really meant to him.
By showing a similar faith and acting upon it, we can have the same honour as Abraham - to be called the friends of God (Is. 41:8), to find the knowledge of God (Gen. 18:17) and to have the sure hope of eternal life in the Kingdom. Again we emphasise that the Gospel of Christ is based on these promises to Abraham. To believe truly in the Christian message, we too must believe firmly the things promised to Abraham. Without them our faith is not faith. With eager eyes we should therefore read and re-read the dialogue between God and Abraham.
The Land
1. “Get out of your country...unto a land that I will show you” (Gen. 12:1).
2. Abraham “went on his journeys...to Bethel (in Central Israel). And the Lord said unto Abram...Lift up now your eyes, and look from the place where you are northward, and southward, and eastward, and westward: for all the land which you see, to you will I give it, and to your descendant for ever...walk through the land...for I will give it unto you” (Gen. 13:3,14-17).
3. “The Lord made a covenant with Abraham, saying, Unto your descendant [singular- i.e. one special descendant] have I given this land, from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates” (Gen. 15:18).
4. “I will give unto you, and to your descendant [singular- i.e. one special descendant] after you, the land wherein you are a stranger, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession” (Gen. 17:8).
5. “The promise that he (Abraham) should be the heir of the world” (Rom. 4:13).
We see here a progressive revelation to Abraham.
1. ‘There is a land which I would like you to go to’.
2. ‘You have now arrived in the area. You and your children will live here forever’. Note how this promise of eternal life is recorded without glamour or emphasis; a human author would no doubt have jazzed it up.
3. The area of the promised land was more specifically defined.
4. Abraham was not to expect to receive the promise in this life - he was to be a “stranger” in the land, although he would later live there forever. The implication of this is that he would die and then later be resurrected to enable him to receive this promise.
5. Paul, under inspiration, evidently saw the promises to Abraham as meaning his inheritance of the whole earth.
Scripture goes out of its way to remind us that Abraham did not receive the fulfilment of the promises in his lifetime.
“By faith he sojourned (implying a temporary way of life) in the land of promise, as in a strange country, living in tents” (Heb. 11:9).
He lived as a foreigner in the land, perhaps with the same furtive sense of insecurity and mismatch which a refugee feels. He was hardly living with his descendant in his own land. Along with his descendants, Isaac and Jacob, (to whom the promises were repeated), he “died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and (they) were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth” (Heb. 11:13). Notice the four stages.
- Knowing the promises - as we are doing through this study.
- Being “persuaded of them” - if it took a process of persuasion with Abraham, how much more so with us?
- Embracing them - by being baptised into Christ (Gal. 3:27‑29).
- Confessing to the world by our way of life that this world is not our real home, but we are living in hope of that future age to come upon the earth.
Abraham becomes our great hero and example if we appreciate these things. The ultimate recognition that the fulfilment of the promises lay in the future came for the tired old man when his wife died; he actually had to buy part of the promised land in which to bury her (Acts 7:16). Truly God “gave him none inheritance in it, no, not so much as to set his foot on: yet he promised that he would give it to him for a possession” (Acts 7:5). The present spiritual children / descendants of Abraham may feel the same incongruity as they buy or rent property - on an earth which has been promised to them for their personal, eternal inheritance!
But God keeps His promises. There must come a day when Abraham and all who have those promises made to them will be rewarded. Heb. 11:13,39,40 drives home the point.
“These all died in faith, not having received the promises; God having provided some better thing for us, that they without us should not be made perfect”.
All true believers will therefore be rewarded at the same point in time, i.e. at the judgment seat at the last day (2 Tim. 4:1,8; Mt. 25:31-34; 1 Pet. 5:4). It follows that to be in existence in order to be judged, Abraham and others who knew those promises must be resurrected just before the judgment. If they have not now received the promises and will only do so after their resurrection and judgment at Christ’s return, there is no alternative but to accept that the likes of Abraham are now unconscious, awaiting the coming of Christ. Yet stained glass mosaics in churches throughout the world have been known to depict Abraham as now in heaven, experiencing the promised reward for a life of faith. Thousands of people for hundreds of years have filed past those pictures, religiously accepting such ideas. Will you have the Bible-based courage to step out of line?
The Descendant
As explained earlier, the promise of a descendant applies primarily to Jesus and, secondarily, to those who are “in Christ” and therefore are also counted as the descendant of Abraham..
1. “I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you...and in you shall all families of the earth be blessed” (Gen. 12:2,3).
2. “I will make your descendant as the dust of the earth: so that if a man can number the dust of the earth, then shall your descendant also be numbered...all the land which you see, to you will I give it, and to your descendant for ever” (Gen. 13:15,16).
3. “Look now toward heaven, and count the stars, if you be able to number them...So shall your descendant be...Unto your descendant have I given this land” (Gen. 15:5,18).
4. “I will give unto...your descendant[s] after you...the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession; and I will be their God” (Gen. 17:8).
5. “I will multiply your descendant as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which is upon the sea shore; and your descendant shall possess the gate of his enemies; and in your descendant shall all the nations of the earth be blessed” (Gen. 22:17,18).
Again, Abraham’s understanding of the “descendant” was progressively extended.
1. Firstly he was just told that somehow he would have an extraordinary number of descendants, and that through his “descendant” the whole earth would be blessed.
2. He was later told that he would have a descendant who would come to include many people. These people would spend eternal life, along with himself, in the land at which he had arrived, i.e. Canaan.
3. He was told that his descendant would become as many as the stars in the sky. This may have suggested to him that he would have many spiritual descendants (stars in heaven) as well as many natural ones (as “the dust of the earth”).
4. The previous promises were underlined with the additional assurance that the many people who would become part of the descendant could have a personal relationship with God.
5. The descendant would have victory against his enemies.
Notice that the descendant was to bring “blessings” to be available to people from all over the earth. In the Bible the idea of blessing is often connected with forgiveness of sins. After all, this is the greatest blessing a lover of God could ever want. So we read things like: “Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven” (Ps. 32:1); “The cup of blessing” (1 Cor. 10:16), describing the cup of wine which represents Christ’s blood, through which forgiveness is possible.
The only descendant of Abraham who has brought forgiveness of sins to the world is, of course, Jesus, and the New Testament commentary on the promises to Abraham provides solid support.
“He (God) doesn’t say, ‘And to descendants’, in the plural, but in the singular, ‘And to your descendant’, which is Christ” (Gal. 3:16).
“...the covenant which God made with our fathers, saying unto Abraham, And in your descendant shall all the tribes of the earth be blessed. Unto you first God, having raised up his Son Jesus (i.e. the descendant), sent him to bless you, in turning away every one of you from his iniquities” (Acts 3:25,26).
Notice here how Peter quotes and interprets Gen. 22:18.
The descendant = Jesus
The blessing = forgiveness of sins.
The promise that Jesus, the descendant, would have victory over his enemies now slots more neatly into place if this is read with reference to his victory over sin - the greatest enemy of God’s people, and therefore of Jesus, too.
BECOMING PART OF THE DESCENDANT
By now it should be clear that Abraham understood the basic elements of the Christian Gospel. But these vital promises were to Abraham and his descendant, Jesus. What about anyone else? Even physical descent from Abraham would not automatically make someone part of that one specific descendant (Jn. 8:39; Rom. 9:7). Somehow we have to become intimately part of Jesus, so that the promises to the descendant are shared with us as well. This is by baptism into Jesus (Rom. 6:3-5); frequently we read of baptism
“As many of you (i.e. only as many!) as have been baptised into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek (Gentile), there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female: for you are all one (through being) in Christ Jesus (by baptism). And if you be Christ’s (by baptism into him), then are you Abraham’s descendants, and heirs according to the promise”.
The promise is of eternal life on earth, through receiving the “blessing” of forgiveness through Jesus. It is by being baptised into Christ, the descendant, that we share the promises made to him; and so Rom. 8:17 calls us “joint heirs with Christ”. People from all nations “bless themselves” by becoming part of that descendant through baptism into Him- they thus appropriate to themselves the promised blessings (Gen. 22:18 RVmg.).
Remember that the blessing was to come on people from all parts of the earth, through the descendant; and the descendant was to become a worldwide group of people, like the sand of the shores and the stars of the sky. It follows that this is due to their first receiving the blessing so that they can become the descendant. Thus the (singular) descendant “shall be accounted to the Lord for a generation” (i.e. many people; Ps. 22:30).
We can summarise the two strands of the promises given to Abraham.
1. The Land
Abraham and his descendant, Jesus, and those in him would inherit the land of Canaan and by extension the whole earth, and live there forever. In this life they would not receive it, but would do so at the last day, when Jesus returns.
2. The Descendant
This was primarily Jesus. Through Him the sins (“enemies”) of mankind would be overcome, so that the blessings of forgiveness would be made available world-wide.
By baptism into the name of Jesus we become part of the descendant promised to Abraham.
These same two threads occur in New Testament preaching, and, not surprisingly, it is often recorded that when people heard them taught, they were then baptised. This was, and is, the way through which these promises can be made to us. We can now understand why, as an old man faced with death, Paul could define his hope as “the hope of Israel” (Acts 28:20): the true Christian hope is the original Jewish hope. Christ’s comment that “salvation is of the Jews” (Jn. 4:22) must also refer to the need to become spiritual Jews, so that we can benefit from the promises of salvation through Christ which were made to the Jewish fathers.
We read that the early Christians preached:-
1. “The things concerning the Kingdom of God
and
2. the name of Jesus Christ” (Acts 8:12).
These were the very two things explained to Abraham under slightly different headings.
1. Promises about the land
and
2. Promises about the descendant.
Note in passing that “the things” (plural) about the Kingdom and Jesus are summarised as “preaching Christ” (Acts 8:5 cf. v. 12). At times, this has taken to mean “Jesus loves you! Just say you believe he died for you and you’re a saved man!”. All of which is valid in some sense. But the phrase “Christ” clearly summarises the teaching of a number of things about him and his coming Kingdom. The good news about this Kingdom which was preached to Abraham played a big part in the early preaching of the Gospel.
In Ephesus, Paul was “three months, disputing and persuading the things concerning the Kingdom of God” (Acts 19:8; 20:25); and his swan-song in Rome was the same, “He expounded and testified the Kingdom of God, persuading them concerning Jesus...out of the law...and out of the prophets” (Acts 28:23,31). That there was so much to talk about shows that the basic Gospel message about the Kingdom and Jesus was not simply and only a matter of saying “Believe on Jesus”. God’s revelation to Abraham was more detailed than that, and the things promised to him are the basis of the true Christian Gospel.
We have shown that baptism into Jesus makes us part of the promised descendant and therefore able to inherit the promises (Gal. 3:27-29), but baptism alone is not enough to gain us the salvation promised. We must remain in the descendant, in Christ, if we are to receive the promises made to the descendant. Baptism is therefore just a beginning; we have entered a race which we then need to run. Don’t forget that just physically being Abraham’s descendant does not mean that we are acceptable to God. The Israelis are Abraham’s descendants but this does not mean that they will be saved without being baptised and conforming their lives to Christ and the example of Abraham (Rom. 9:7,8; 4:13,14). Jesus told the Jews: “I know that you are Abraham’s descendants; but you seek to kill me...If you were Abraham’s children, you would do the works of Abraham” (Jn. 8:37,39), which was to live a life of faith in God and Christ, the promised descendant (Jn. 6:29).
The descendant or “seed” must have the characteristics of its ancestor. If we are to be the true descendant of Abraham we must therefore not only be baptised but also have a very real faith in God’s promises, just as he had. He is therefore called “the father of all them that believe...who also walk in the steps of that faith of our father Abraham, which he had” (Rom. 4:11,12). “Know therefore (i.e. really take it to heart!) that they which are of faith, the same are the children of Abraham” (Gal. 3:7). Paul is alluding here to the practice of Gentile converts to Judaism [“proselytes”] taking the name
Real faith must show itself in some sort of action, otherwise, in God’s eyes, it isn’t faith (James 2:17). We demonstrate our belief in these promises that we have studied by first being baptised, so that they come to apply to us personally (Gal. 3:27-29). This is even an Old Testament idea- for David says that the true believer will share the promise to Abraham that “his descendant shall inherit the land”, and thus God will make us know personally His covenant with us (Ps. 25:13,14 RVmg.). So do you really believe God’s promises? This is a question we must continually ask ourselves all our lives long.
The Old And New Covenant
It should be evident by now that the promises to Abraham summarise the Gospel of Christ. The other major set of promises which God made were with the Jews in the context of the law of Moses. These stated that if the Jews were obedient to this law, then they would be physically blessed in this life (Dt. 28). There was no direct promise of eternal life in this series of promises, or “covenant”. So we see that there have been two “covenants” made.
1. To Abraham and his descendant, promising forgiveness and eternal life in God’s Kingdom when Christ returns. This promise was also made in Eden and to David. This is the “new covenant”. When this “new covenant” is made with Israel when Christ returns, it will include the promise to Abraham that “I will be their God” (Jer. 31:33 cf. Gen. 17:8).
2. To the Jewish people at the time of Moses, promising them peace and happiness in this present life if they obeyed the law which God gave to Moses.
God promised Abraham forgiveness and eternal life in the Kingdom, but this was only possible through the sacrifice of Jesus. For this reason we read that Christ’s death on the cross confirmed the promises to Abraham (Gal. 3:17; Rom. 15:8; Dan. 9:27; 2 Cor. 1:20), therefore his blood is called the “blood of the new testament” (covenant, Mt. 26:28). It is to remember this that Jesus told us to regularly take the cup of wine, symbolising his blood, to remind us of these things (see 1 Cor. 11:25): “This cup is the new testament (covenant) in my blood” (Lk. 22:20). There is no point in “breaking bread” in memory of Jesus and his work unless we understand these things.
The sacrifice of Jesus made forgiveness and eternal life in God’s Kingdom possible; he therefore made the promises to Abraham sure; he was “a surety of a better testament” (Heb. 7:22). Heb. 10:9 speaks of Jesus taking “away the first (covenant), that he may establish the second”. This shows that when Jesus confirmed the promises to Abraham, he did away with another covenant, that was the covenant given through Moses. The verses already quoted about Jesus confirming a new covenant by his death, imply that there was an old covenant which he did away with (Heb. 8:13).
This means that although the covenant concerning Christ was made first, it did not come into operation until his death, therefore it is called the “new” covenant. The purpose of the “old” covenant made through Moses was to point forward to the work of Jesus, and to highlight the importance of faith in the promises concerning Christ (Gal. 3:19,21). Conversely, faith in Christ confirms the truth of the law given to Moses (Rom. 3:31). Paul sums it up: “The law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith” (Gal. 3:24). It is for this purpose that the law through Moses has been preserved, and is still beneficial for us to study.
These things are not easy to understand at first reading; we can summarise as follows.
§ Promises concerning Christ made to Abraham - New Covenant.
§ Promises to Israel associated with the law given to Moses - Old Covenant.
§ Death of Christ - Old Covenant ended (Col. 2:14-17); New Covenant came into operation.
For this reason things like tithing, Sabbath-keeping etc., which were part of the Old Covenant, are not now necessary - see Study 9.4. The New Covenant will be made with natural Israel when they repent and accept Christ (Jer. 31:31,32; Rom. 9:26,27; Ez. 16:62; 37:26). Of course any Jew who does that now and is baptised into Jesus, can immediately enter the New Covenant (in which there is no Jew/Gentile distinction - Gal. 3:27-29).
Truly appreciating these things makes us realise the certainty of God’s promises. Sceptics unfairly accused the early Christian preachers of not giving a positive message. Paul replied by saying that because of God’s confirmation of His promises on account of the death of Christ, the hope they spoke of was not a touch-and-go affair, but a totally certain offer: “As God is true, our word (of preaching) toward you was not yes and no. For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who was preached among you by us...was not yes and no, but in him was yes. For all the promises of God in him are yes, and in him, Amen” (2 Cor. 1:17-20).
Surely this torpedoes the attitude of, ‘Well, I suppose there
“I will be with you”
There are two other things promised to Abraham and his descendants: “I will be their God…I will be with you” (Gen. 17:8; 26:3; 28:15 cf. Ex. 6:7). The Lord Jesus Christ is ‘God with us’ (Emmanuel, Is. 7:14). For those of us who have part in these promises concerning Jesus Christ and the Kingdom of God, God will be with us and guide us to that happy end. Time and again God’s people in their times of desperation have come back to these promises to Abraham, in their realisation that truly God
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1-9 The Promise To David
David, like Abraham and many other recipients of God’s promises, did not have an easy life. He grew up as the youngest son in a large family which, in the Israel of 1000 B.C., meant looking after the sheep and running errands for his older brothers (1 Sam. 15-17). During this time he learnt a level of faith in God which few men have since approached.
The day came when Israel were faced with the ultimate challenge from their aggressive neighbours, the Philistines; they were challenged to let one of their men fight the giant Goliath, the Philistine champion, on the understanding that whoever won that fight would rule over the losers. With God’s help David defeated Goliath by using a sling, which earned him even greater popularity than their king (Saul). “Jealousy is cruel as the grave” (Song 8:6), words which were proved true by Saul’s persecution of David chasing him around the wilderness of southern Israel.
Eventually David became king, and to show his appreciation of God’s love toward him during the wilderness of his life, he decided to build God a temple. The reply from God was that David’s son, Solomon, would build the temple and that God wanted to build
“And when your days are fulfilled, and you shall sleep with your fathers, I will set up your descendant after you, which shall proceed out of your body, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build an house for my name, and I will stablish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be his father, and he shall be my son. If he commit iniquity, I will chasten him with the rod of men, and with the stripes of the children of men: But my mercy shall not depart away from him, as I took it from Saul, whom I put away before you. And your house and your kingdom shall be established forever before you: your throne shall be established forever” (v.12-16).
From our previous studies we would expect the “descendant” to be Jesus. His description as the Son of God (2 Sam. 7:14) confirms this, as do many other references in other parts of the Bible.
- “I am the...offspring of David”, Jesus said (Rev. 22:16).
- “(Jesus), made of the family [AV “seed”] of David according to the flesh” (Rom. 1:3).
- “Of this man’s descendants (David’s) has God, according to His promise, raised unto Israel a saviour, Jesus” (Acts 13:23).
- The angel told the virgin Mary concerning her son, Jesus: “The Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father (ancestor) David...and of his Kingdom there shall be no end” (Lk. 1:32,33). This is applying the promise of David’s descendant, in 2 Sam. 7:13, to Jesus.
With the descendant firmly identified as Jesus, a number of details now become significant.
1. The descendant
“Your descendant...which shall proceed out of your body...I will be his father, and he shall be my son.” “...of the fruit of your body will I set upon your throne” (2 Sam. 7:12,14; Ps. 132:10,11). Jesus, the descendant, was to be a literal, bodily descendant of David, and yet have God as his Father. This could only be achieved by the virgin birth as described in the New Testament; Jesus’ mother was Mary, a descendant of David (Lk. 1:32), but he had no human father. God acted miraculously upon Mary’s womb by the Holy Spirit in order to make her conceive Jesus, and so the Angel commented: “Therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of you shall be called the Son of God” (Lk. 1:35). The “virgin birth” was the only way in which this promise to David could be properly fulfilled.
2. The house
“He shall build an house for my name” (2 Sam. 7:13) shows that Jesus will build a temple for God. God’s “house” is where He is willing to live, and Is. 66:1,2 tells us that He will come to live in the hearts of men who are humble to His word. Jesus is therefore building a spiritual temple for God to dwell in, made up of the true believers. Descriptions of Jesus as the foundation stone of God’s temple (1 Pet. 2:4-8) and of Christians as the temple stones (1 Pet. 2:5) now slot into place.
3. The throne
“I will stablish the throne of his (Christ’s) kingdom for ever... your (David’s) house and your kingdom... your throne shall be established for ever” (2 Sam. 7:13,16 cf. Is. 9:6,7). Christ’s kingdom will therefore be based on David’s kingdom of Israel; this means that the coming kingdom of God will be a re-establishment of the kingdom of Israel - see Study 5.3 for more on this. To fulfil this promise, Christ must reign on David’s “throne”, or place of rulership. This was literally in Jerusalem. This is another proof that the kingdom must be established here on earth in order to fulfil these promises.
4. The kingdom
“Your house and your kingdom shall be established for ever before you” (2 Sam. 7:16) suggests that David would witness the establishment of Christ’s eternal kingdom. This was therefore an indirect promise that he would be resurrected at Christ’s return so that he could see with his own eyes the kingdom being set up world-wide, with Jesus reigning from Jerusalem.
These things which were promised to David are absolutely vital to understand. David joyfully spoke of these things as “an everlasting covenant... this is all my salvation and all my desire” (2 Sam. 23:5). These things relate to our salvation too; rejoicing in them should likewise be all our desire. As with the promises to Abraham, if we are in Christ, all that is true of the promised descendant of David is in some way true of us if we are in Christ (Is. 55:3 cf. Acts 13:34). So again the point is made that these doctrines are so important. It is a tragedy that parts of Christendom have adopted doctrines which flatly contradict these marvellous truths.
- If Jesus physically “pre-existed”, i.e. he existed as a person before he was born, then this makes nonsense of these promises that Jesus would be David’s descendant.
- If the kingdom of God will be in heaven, then Jesus cannot re-establish David’s kingdom of Israel, nor can he reign from David’s “throne” or place of rulership. These things were literally on the earth, and so their re-establishment must be in the same place.
Fulfilment In Solomon?
David’s son, Solomon, fulfilled some part of the promises to David. He built a temple for God (1 Kings 5-8), and he had a very prosperous kingdom. Nations from all around sent representatives to pay respect to Solomon (1 Kings 10), and there was great spiritual blessing from the use of the temple. Solomon’s reign therefore pointed forward to the much greater fulfilment of the promises to David which will be seen in the kingdom of Christ.
Some have claimed that the promises to David were completely fulfilled in Solomon, but this is disallowed by the following.
- Abundant New Testament evidence shows that the “descendant” was Christ, not Solomon.
- David seems to have connected the promises God made to him with those to Abraham (1 Chron. 17:27 = Gen. 22:17,18).
- The kingdom of the “descendant” was to be everlasting - which Solomon’s was not.
- David recognised that the promises were concerning eternal life, which precluded any reference to his immediate family: “Although my house be not so with God; yet he hath made with me an everlasting covenant” (2 Sam. 23:5).
- The descendant of David is the Messiah, the Saviour from sin (Is. 9:6,7; 22:22; Jer. 33:5,6,15; Jn. 7:42). But Solomon later turned away from God (1 Kings 11:1-13; Neh. 13:26) due to his marriage with those outside the hope of Israel.
As a footnote, it's interesting that the genealogy of the Lord Jesus in Matthew 1 frames Him as the product of 42 generations, divided into three groups of 14. The numerical value of 'David' is 14 [D = 4; w = 6; d = 4]. The emphasis is therefore on the fact that Jesus was so very intrinsically a descendant of David- and not, therefore, a pre-existent being.
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1-10 Old Testament Prophecies of Jesus
Earlier studies have explained how God’s purpose of salvation for men was centred in Jesus Christ. The promises which He made to Eve, Abraham and David all spoke of Jesus as their literal descendant. Indeed, the whole of the Old Testament points forward to, and prophesies about, Christ. The Law of Moses, which Israel had to obey before the time of Christ, constantly pointed forward to Jesus: “The law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ” (Gal. 3:24). Thus at the feast of Passover, a lamb in perfect condition had to be killed (Ex. 12:3-6); this represented the sacrifice of Jesus, “the Lamb of God, which takes away the sin of the world” (Jn. 1:29; 1 Cor. 5:7). The spotless condition which was required for all the animal sacrifices pointed forward to the perfect character of Jesus (Ex. 12:5 cp. 1 Pet. 1:19).
Throughout the Psalms and prophets of the Old Testament there are countless prophecies about what Messiah would be like. They particularly focus on describing how he would die. Judaism’s refusal to accept the idea of a Messiah who dies can only be due to their inattention to these prophecies, a few of which are now presented.
Old Testament Prophecy
Fulfilment in Christ
“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Ps. 22:1)
These were the very words of Jesus on the cross (Mt. 27:46)
“I am despised of the people. All they that see me laugh me to scorn: they shake the head, saying, He trusted on the Lord that he would deliver him: let him deliver him” (Ps. 22:6-8)
Israel despised Jesus and mocked him (Lk. 23:35; 8:53); they shook their heads (Mt. 27:39), and said this as He hung on the cross (Mt. 27:43)
“My tongue cleaves to my jaws…they pierced my hands and my feet” (Ps. 22:15,16)
This was fulfilled in Christ’s thirst on the cross (Jn. 19:28). The piercing of hands and feet refers to the physical method of crucifixion used.
“They parted my garments among them, and cast lots upon my clothing” (Ps. 22:18)
The precise fulfilment of this is found in Mt. 27:35.
Note that Ps. 22:22 is specifically quoted as applying to Jesus in Heb. 2:12
“I am become a stranger unto my brothers, and am an alien unto my mother’s children. For the zeal of your house has eaten me up” (Ps. 69:8,9)
This well describes Christ’s feeling of estrangement from his Jewish brethren and his own family (Jn. 7:3-5, Mt. 12:47-49). This is quoted in John 2:17.
“They gave me also gall for my meat; and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink” (Ps. 69:21)
This happened while Christ was on the cross (Matt. 27:34)
The whole of Isaiah 53 is a remarkable prophecy of Christ’s death and resurrection, every verse of which had an unmistakable fulfilment. Just two examples will be given.
“As a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he opens not his mouth” (Is. 53:7)
Christ, the Lamb of God, remained silent during his trial (Mt. 27:12,14)
“He made his grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death” (Is. 53:9)
Jesus was crucified along with wicked criminals (Mt. 27:38), but was buried in the tomb of a rich man (Mt. 27:57-60).
It is little wonder that the New Testament reminds us that the “law and prophets” of the Old Testament is the basis of our understanding of Christ (Acts 26:22; 28:23; Rom. 1:2,3; 16:25,26). Jesus himself warned that if we do not properly understand “Moses and the prophets”, we cannot understand him (Lk. 16:31; Jn. 5:46,47).
That the Law of Moses pointed forward to Christ, and the prophets prophesied of him, should be proof enough that Jesus did not exist physically before his birth. The false doctrine of the physical ‘pre-existence’ of Christ before birth makes a nonsense of the repeated promises that he would be the
The promise to David concerning Christ precludes his physical existence at the time the promise was made: “I
Solomon was the primary fulfilment of the promise, but as he was already physically in existence at the time of this promise (2 Sam. 5:14), the main fulfilment of this promise about David having a physical descendant who would be God’s son, must refer to Christ (Lk. 1:31-33). “I
Similar future tenses are used in other prophecies concerning Christ. “I
All this renders meaningless the idea of a literal 'pre-existence' of the Lord Jesus before His birth. Indeed, I would go further and press that the very term "pre-existence" is of doubtful value- for in what sense can someone exist before they exist? The only counter to that observation could be something to the effect: 'They can exist before they exist- only in the mind of God'. And this is what I'll suggest the Bible does in fact teach concerning the prior 'existence' of both the Lord Jesus and ourselves. But literal 'pre-existence'- existence before existence- is surely a tautology.
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1-11 The Virgin Birth
The record of Christ’s conception and birth does not allow for the idea that he physically existed beforehand. Those who hold the false doctrine of the ‘Trinity’ are driven to the conclusion that at one moment there were three beings in heaven, and one of them then became the child in Mary’s womb, leaving just two in heaven. We are therefore left to conclude from the ‘pre-existence’ belief that Christ somehow came down from heaven and entered into Mary’s womb. All this complex theology is quite outside the teaching of Scripture. The record of Christ’s beginning gives no reason whatsoever to think that he left heaven and entered into Mary. The lack of evidence for this is a big ‘missing link’ in trinitarian teaching.
The angel Gabriel appeared to Mary with the message that “you shall conceive in your womb, and bring forth a son, and shall call his name Jesus. He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest...Then said Mary unto the angel, How shall this be, seeing I know not a man? (i.e. she was a virgin). And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Spirit shall come upon you, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow you: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of you shall be called the Son of God” (Lk. 1:31-35).
Twice it is emphasized that Jesus
Through the Holy Spirit (God’s breath/power) acting upon her, Mary was able to conceive Jesus without having intercourse with a man. Thus Joseph was not the father of Jesus. It must be understood that the Holy Spirit is not a person (see Study 2); Jesus was the Son of God, not the Son of the Holy Spirit. Through God’s use of His spirit upon Mary, “
That Jesus was ‘conceived’ in Mary’s womb (Lk. 1:31) is also proof that he could not have physically existed before this time. If we ‘conceive’ an idea, it begins within us. Likewise Jesus was conceived inside Mary’s womb - he began there as a foetus, just like any other human being. Jn. 3:16, the Bible’s most famous verse, records that Jesus was the “only
It is significant that Jesus was “begotten” by God rather than being created, as Adam was originally. This explains the closeness of God’s association with Jesus - “God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself” (2 Cor. 5:19). Christ being
Is. 49:5,6 contains a prophecy concerning Christ as the light of the world, which he fulfilled (Jn. 8:12). He is described as meditating on “the Lord that formed me from the womb to be his servant”. Christ was therefore “formed” by God in Mary’s womb, through the power of His Holy Spirit. Mary’s womb was evidently the place of Christ’s physical origin.
We have seen earlier that Psalm 22 prophesies Christ’s thoughts on the cross. He reflected that God “took me out of the womb...I was cast upon you from the womb: you art my God from my mother’s belly” (Ps. 22:9,10). In his time of dying, Christ looked back to his origins - in the womb of his mother Mary, formed by the power of God. The very description of Mary in the Gospels as Christ’s “
Mary was an ordinary human being, with normal human parents. This is proved by the fact that she had a cousin, who gave birth to John the baptist, an ordinary man (Lk. 1:36). The Roman Catholic idea that Mary was not of ordinary human nature would mean that Christ could not truly have been both “Son of man” and “Son of God”. These are his frequent titles throughout the New Testament. He was “Son of man” by reason of having a totally human mother, and “Son of God” because of God’s action on Mary through the Holy Spirit (Lk. 1:35), meaning that God was his Father. This beautiful arrangement is nullified if Mary was not an ordinary woman.
“Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? Not one...What is man, that he should be clean? and he which is born of a woman, that he should be righteous?...how can he be clean that is born of a woman?” (Job 14:4; 15:14; 25:4). This puts paid to any idea of an immaculate conception being possible, either of Mary or Jesus.
Mary being “born of a woman”, with ordinary human parents, must have had our unclean, human nature, which she passed on to Jesus, who was “made of a woman” (Gal. 4:4). The language of his being “
The Gospel records frequently indicate Mary’s humanity. Christ had to rebuke her at least thrice for a lack of spiritual perception (Lk. 2:49; Jn. 2:4); she failed to understand all his sayings (Lk. 2:50). This is exactly what we would expect of a woman who was of human nature, whose son was the Son of God, and therefore more spiritually perceptive than herself, although he, too, shared human nature. Joseph had intercourse with Mary after Christ’s birth (Mt. 1:25), and there is no reason to think that they did not have a normal marital relationship from then on.
The mention of Christ’s “mother and his brethren” in Mt. 12:46,47 would therefore imply that Mary had other children after Jesus. Jesus was only “her
The whole record of the virgin birth makes a nonsense of the claim that Jesus pre-existed as a person before His birth. This has even been recognized by theologians: “Jesus’ virgin birth stands in an irreconcilable contradiction to the Christology of the incarnation of the preexistent Son of God” (1). James Dunn likewise denies the literal pre-existence of Jesus: “There is no evidence that any NT writer thought of Jesus as actively present in Israel’s past, either as the angel of the Lord, or as “the Lord” himself” (2). A pre-existent Jesus is merely a continuation of the old pagan idea that the gods came to earth and had relations with innocent women (cp. Acts 14:11). Or take C.F.D. Moule: "There is no doctrine of Christ's pre-existence in Acts, though there is ample stress on foreknowledge and God's predetermined plan (see, e.g., Acts 4:28; 9:15; 10:42; 13:27,48; 16:14; 17:31). Neither is such a doctrine entertained in the Gospel: the Lucan allusions to the virgin birth certainly do not imply it" (3).
The Genealogies Of Jesus
The genealogies of the Lord Jesus given at the beginnings of Matthew and Luke are surely impossible to square with the idea of His personal pre-existence before birth. How ever could the Gospel writers have seriously believed that, and yet written such genealogies? Are we really to imagine that they intended us to believe in the Lord's pre-existence when they wrote up the genealogies as they did? Marshall Johnson comments on them: "Jesus is Son of God not through the categories of pre-existence or metaphysical relationship between Father and Son, but through the line of OT patriarchs... Conzelmann seems correct when he describes Luke's conception of the title, Son of God, as connected with a subordinationism that reveals in itself a complete lack of the idea of pre-existence" (4)
Notes
(1) W. Pannenberg,
(2) J.D.G. Dunn,
(3) C.F.D. Moule,
(4) Marshall Johnson,
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1-12 Christ’s Place In God’s Plan
God does not decide on His plans on the spur of the moment, devising extra parts to His purpose as human history unfolds. God had a complete plan formulated right from the beginning of creation (Jn. 1:1). His desire to have a Son was therefore in His plan from the beginning. He loved that Son before he was born, just as parents may love a child still in the womb. The whole of the Old Testament reveals different aspects of God’s plan of salvation in Christ.
We have frequently demonstrated that through the promises, the prophecies of the prophets, and the types of the Law of Moses, the Old Testament is constantly revealing God’s purpose in Christ. It was on account of God’s knowledge that He would have a Son that He brought creation into existence (Heb. 1:1,2, Greek text; “by” in the A.V. is better translated “on account of”). It was on account of Christ that the ages of human history were allowed by God (Heb. 1:2 (Greek). It follows that God’s revelation to man down through the years, as recorded in the Old Testament, is full of references to Christ.
The supremacy of Christ and his fundamental importance to God is difficult for us to comprehend fully. It is therefore true to say that Christ existed in God’s mind and purpose from the beginning, although he only came into existence physically through his birth of Mary. Heb. 1:4-7, 13,14, stress that Christ was not an angel; whilst in his mortal life he was less than angels (Heb. 2:7), he was exalted to a far greater honour than them seeing he was God’s “
Jesus was the central pivot of the Gospel, which God “had promised afore by his prophets in the holy Scriptures, concerning his son, Jesus Christ our Lord, which was made (created by begettal) of the seed of David according to the flesh; and declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead” (Rom. 1:1-4).
This summarizes the history of Christ.
1. Promised in the Old Testament - i.e. in God’s plan;
2. Created as a physical person through the virgin birth, as a seed of David;
3. Due to his perfect character (“the spirit of holiness”), shown during his mortal life
4. He was resurrected, and again publicly declared to be the Son of God by the apostles’ spirit-gifted preaching.
The Lord Jesus was the promised descendant of Abraham. Mic. 5:2 speaks of Him as having these very "ancient origins". The same Hebrew term used there is to be found in Dt. 32:7; Mic. 7:14; Amos 9:11; Is. 63:9,11 with the same connotation. As the
The Foreknowledge Of God
We will be greatly helped in appreciating how fully Christ was in God’s mind at the beginning, while not physically existing, if we can come to terms with the fact that God knows
The “counsel”, or word of God, had prophesied Christ from the beginning; he was always in God’s purpose or “pleasure”. It was therefore certain that at some time Christ would be physically born; God would fulfil His stated purpose in Christ. The certainty of God’s foreknowledge is therefore reflected in the sureness of His word. Biblical Hebrew has a ‘prophetic perfect’ tense, which uses the past tense to describe future things which God has promised. Thus David said, “This
Thus Christ spoke during his ministry of how God “
God spoke about His plan of salvation through Jesus “by the mouth of his holy prophets, which have been since the world began” (Lk. 1:70). The prophets “have been since the world began” (Acts 3:21 RV). Because they were so closely associated with God’s plan, these men are spoken of as though they literally existed at the beginning, although this is evidently not the case. Instead, we can say that the prophets were in God’s plan from the beginning. Jeremiah is a prime example. God told him: “Before I formed you in the belly I knew you; and before you came forth out of the womb I sanctified you, and I ordained you a prophet” (Jer. 1:5). Thus God knew everything about Jeremiah even before the creation. In like manner God could speak about the Persian king Cyrus before the time of his birth, using language which implies he was then in existence (Is. 45:1-5). Heb. 7:9,10 is another example of this language of existence being used about someone not then born.
In the same way as Jeremiah and the prophets are spoken of as existing even before creation, due to their part in God’s plan, so the true believers are spoken of as existing then. It is evident that we did not physically exist then except in the mind of God. God “has saved us, and called us with an holy calling...according to his own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began” (2 Tim. 1:9). God “has chosen us in (Christ) before the foundation of the world...having predestinated us...according to the good pleasure of His will” (Eph. 1:4,5). The whole idea of individuals being foreknown by God from the beginning, and being ‘marked off’ (‘predestinated’) to salvation, indicates that they existed in the mind of God at the beginning (Rom. 8:27; 9:23).
In the light of all this, it is not surprising that Christ, as the summation of God’s purpose, should be spoken of as existing from the beginning in God’s mind and plan, although physically he could not have done so. He was “the lamb slain from the foundation of the world” (Rev. 13:8). Jesus did not die then literally; he was the “Lamb of God” sacrificed about 4,000 years later on the cross (Jn. 1:29; 1 Cor. 5:7). In the same way as Jesus was chosen from the beginning (1 Pet. 1:20), so were the believers (Eph. 1:4; the same Greek word for “chosen” is used in these verses). Our difficulty in comprehending all this is because we cannot easily imagine how God operates outside of the concept of time. ‘Faith’ is the ability to look at things from God’s viewpoint, without the constraints of time.
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1-13 Did Jesus Create The Earth?
“The firstborn of every creature: for by (Jesus) were all things created that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers; all things were created by him, and for him: and he is before all things, and by him all things consist. And he is the head of the body, the church: who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead...” (Col. 1:15-18). This is typical of those passages which can give the impression that Jesus actually created the earth.
1. If this were true, then so many other passages are contradicted which teach that Jesus did not exist before his birth. The record in Genesis clearly teaches that God was the creator. Either Jesus or God were the creator; if we say that Jesus was the creator while Genesis says that God was, we are saying that Jesus was directly equal to God. In this case it is impossible to explain the many verses which show the differences between God and Jesus (see Study 8.2 for examples of these).
2. Jesus was the “
3. It is in this sense that Jesus is described as the firstborn from the dead (Col. 1:18), a phrase which is parallel to “the firstborn of every creature” or creation (Col. 1:15 R.V.). He therefore speaks of himself as “the first begotten of the dead...the beginning of the creation of God” (Rev. 1:5; 3:14). Jesus was the first of a new creation of immortal men and women, whose resurrection and full birth as the immortal sons of God has been made possible by the death and resurrection of Jesus (Eph. 2:10; 4:23,24; 2 Cor. 5:17). “In Christ shall all (true believers) be made alive. But every man in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, afterward they that are Christ’s at his coming” (1 Cor. 15:22,23). This is just the same idea as in Col. 1. Jesus was the first person to rise from the dead and be given immortality, he was the first of the new creation, and the true believers will follow his pattern at his return.
4. The creation spoken about in Col. 1 therefore refers to the new creation, rather than that of Genesis. Through the work of Jesus “were all things created...thrones...dominions” etc. Paul does not say that Jesus created all things and then give examples of rivers, mountains, birds etc. The elements of this new creation refer to those rewards which we will have in God’s Kingdom. “Thrones...dominions” etc. refer to how the raised believers will be “kings and priests, and we shall reign on the earth” (Rev. 5:10). These things were made possible by the work of Jesus. “In him were all things created
5. If Jesus were the creator, it is strange how He should say: “…from the beginning of the creation God made them…” (Mk. 10:6). This surely sounds as if He understood God to be the creator, not He Himself. And if He literally created everything in Heaven, this would include God.
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1-14 Jesus Didn't Pre-Exist: And So What?
2 Jn. 11 speaks of how teaching that Jesus was not truly human is associated with " evil works" . Surely the implication is that good works are inspired by a true understanding of the Lord's humanity, and evil works by a refusal to accept this teaching. The tests of genuineness which John commanded centred around two simple things: Do those who come to you hold true understanding of the nature of Jesus; and do they love. The two things go together. And they are a fair test even today. For where there is no love, the true doctrine of Jesus is not truly believed, no matter how nicely it is expressed in words and writing.
Bold Prayer And Witness
Therefore in the daily round of life, He will be a living reality, like David we will behold the Lord Jesus before our face all the day. We will really believe that forgiveness is possible through the work of such a representative; and the reality of his example will mean the more to us, as a living inspiration to rise above our lower nature. Appreciating the doctrines of the atonement enables us to pray acceptably; " we have boldness and access with confidence by
The connection between the atonement and faith in prayer is also brought out in 2 Cor. 1:20 RSV: " For all the promises of God in him are yea. That is why we utter the Amen through him" . The promises of God were confirmed through the Lord's death, and the fact that He died as the seed of Abraham, having taken upon Him Abraham's plural seed in representation (Rom. 15:8,9). Because of this, " we utter the Amen through [on account of being in] Him" . We can heartily say 'Amen', so be it, to our prayers on account of our faith and understanding of His atoning work.
Love
The fact the Lord Jesus didn't pre-exist as a person needs some meditation. The kind of thoughts that come to us as we stand alone at night, gazing into the sky. It seems evident that there must have been some kind of previous creation(s), e.g. for the creation of the Angels. God existed from infinity, and yet only 2,000 years ago did He have His only and His
True Christianity holds that personal relationships matter more than anything in this world, and that the truly human way to live is- in the last analysis- to lovingly, constantly, unreservedly give ourselves away to God and to others. And yet this is ultimately rooted in the fact that we are seeking above all else to follow after the example of Jesus. This example is only real and actual because of the total humanity of Jesus. As He taught these things, so He lived them. The word of love was made flesh in Him. At the deepest level of personhood, His was the one perfect human life which this world has seen. And exactly because of His humanity, exactly because He was not " very God" but " the man Christ Jesus" , because Jesus didn't pre-exist, we have the pattern for our lives and being. To claim Jesus was " God" is to depersonalize Him; it destroys the wonder of His character and all He really was and is and will ever be.
The Reality Of Judgment
We will be judged in the man Christ Jesus (Acts 17:31 R.V. Mg.). This means that the very fact Jesus didn't pre-exist and was human makes Him our constant and insistent judge of all our human behaviour. And exactly because of this, Paul argues, we should right now repent. He is judge exactly because He is the Son of man.
Conclusion
John makes such a fuss about believing that Jesus came in the flesh because he wants his brethren to have the same Spirit that was in Jesus dwelling in
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1-15 Differences Between God And Jesus
There is a fine balance to be drawn between those passages which emphasise the degree to which “God was in Christ”, and those which highlight his humanity. The latter group of passages make it impossible to justify Biblically the idea that Jesus is God Himself, “very God of very God”, as the doctrine of the Trinity wrongly states. (This phrase “very God of very God” was used at the Council of Nicea in 325 A.D., where the idea of God being a ‘trinity’ was first promulgated; it was unknown to the early Christians.) The word ‘trinity’ never occurs in the Bible. Study 9 will delve further into Christ’s total victory over sin, and God’s part in it. As we commence these studies, let us remember that salvation depends upon an acceptance of the real Jesus Christ (Jn. 3:36; 6:53;17:3). Once we have come to this true understanding of his conquest of sin and death, we can be baptised into him in order to share in this salvation.
One of the clearest summaries of the relationship between God and Jesus is found in 1 Tim. 2:5: “There is
- As there is only
- In addition to this one God, there is the mediator, the man Christ Jesus - “...
- As
Christ is the “mediator” it means that he is a go-between. A mediator
between sinful man and sinless God cannot be sinless God Himself; it had
to be a sinless man, of human nature. “The
Several times we are reminded that “God is not a man” (Num. 23:19; Hos. 11:9); yet Christ was clearly “the Son of man” or, as he is often called in the New Testament, “the
In line with this, there are a number of obvious differences between God and Jesus, which clearly show that Jesus was not God himself.
GOD
JESUS
“God cannot be tempted” (James 1:13).
Christ “was in all points tempted like as we are” (Heb. 4:15).
God cannot die - He is immortal by nature (Ps. 90:2; 1 Tim. 6:16).
Christ died and was in the grave for three days (Mt. 12:40; 16:21). He was once under the “dominion” of death (Rom. 6:9). The time of Christ's return is known only by God (Acts 1:7) Christ didn't know the time of His return (Mt. 24:36)
God cannot be seen by men (1 Tim. 6:16; Ex. 33:20).
Men saw Jesus and handled him (1 Jn. 1:1 emphasises this).
When we are tempted, we are forced to choose between sin and obedience to God. Often we choose to disobey God; Christ had the same choices, but always chose to be obedient. He therefore had the possibility of sinning, although he never actually did. It is unthinkable that God has any possibility of sinning. We have shown that the seed of David promised in 2 Sam. 7:12-16 was definitely Christ. Verse 14 speaks of Christ’s possibility of sinning: “
The Centurion reasoned that because he was under authority, he therefore had authority over others; and he applies this very same logic to the abilities of the Lord Jesus. Because He was under
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1-16 The Nature of Jesus
The word ‘nature’ refers to ‘fundamental,
essential being'. The Bible speaks of only two natures - that of God,
and that of man. By nature God cannot die, be tempted etc. It is evident
that Christ was not of God’s nature during his life. He was therefore
of human nature. From our definition of the word ‘nature’ it is evident
that Christ could not have had two natures simultaneously. It was vital
that Christ was tempted like us (Heb. 4:15), so that through his perfect
overcoming of temptation he could gain forgiveness for us. “We have not
an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities;
but was in all points tempted like us” (Heb. 4:15) expresses a truth negatively.
The passage suggests that even in the first century there were those who
thought that Jesus “cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities”;
the writer is stressing that this is
Heb. 2:14-18 puts all this in so many words.
“As the children (us) are partakers of flesh and blood (human nature), he (Christ) also himself likewise partook of the same (nature); that through death he might destroy...the devil...For truly he took not on him the nature of angels; but he took on him the (nature of the) seed of Abraham. Wherefore in all things it was appropriate that he be made like unto his brothers, that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest... to make reconciliation for the sins of the people. For in that he himself has suffered being tempted, he is able to help them that are tempted”.
This passage places extraordinary
emphasis upon the fact that Jesus had human nature: “He
Whenever baptised believers sin, they can come to God, confessing their sin in prayer through Christ (1 Jn. 1:9); God is aware that Christ was tempted to sin exactly as they are, but that he was perfect, overcoming that very temptation which they fail. Because of this, “God for Christ’s sake” can forgive us (Eph. 4:32). It is therefore vital to appreciate how Christ was tempted just like us, and needed to have our nature for this to be possible. Heb. 2:14 clearly states that Christ had “flesh and blood” nature to make this possible. “God is spirit” (Jn. 4:24) by nature and as “spirit” He does not have flesh and blood. Christ having “flesh” nature means that in no way did he have God’s nature during his mortal life.
Previous attempts by men to keep God’s word, i.e. to overcome totally temptation, had all failed. Therefore “God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and by a sacrifice for sin, condemned sin, in the flesh” (Rom. 8:3).
“The wages of sin is death”. To escape
this predicament, man needed outside help. By himself he is incapable
of perfection; it was and is not possible for us as fleshly creatures
to redeem the flesh. God therefore intervened and gave us His own Son,
who experienced our “sinful flesh”, with all the temptation to sin which
we have. Unlike every other man, Christ overcame every temptation, although
he had the possibility of failure and sinning just as much as we do. Rom.
8:3 describes Christ as being in the likeness of sinful man- not that
He was personally sinful, of course. A few verses earlier, Paul spoke
of how in the flesh “dwells no good thing”, and how the flesh naturally
militates against obedience to God (Rom. 7:18-23). In this context it
is all the more marvellous to read that Christ had our "flesh"
in Rom. 8:3. It was because of this, and his overcoming of that flesh,
that we have a way of escape from our flesh; Jesus was intensely aware
of the potential to sin within his own nature. He was once addressed as
“Good master”, with the implication that he was “good” and perfect by
nature. He responded: “Why do you call me good? There is none good but
one, that is, God” (Mk. 10:17,18). The Lord Jesus was alluding here to Ps. 16:2: "I say to the Lord, You are my God; I have no good apart from You" (R.S.V.). And it seems Paul had the Lord's words of Mk. 10:18 in mind when he said that no "good" thing dwelt in his flesh (Rom. 7:18)- showing how Paul appreciated that he shared the same nature as that of the Lord Jesus in His mortality. On another occasion, men started to
testify of Christ’s greatness due to a series of outstanding miracles
which he had performed. Jesus did not capitalise on this “because he knew
all, and needed not that any should testify of man: for he knew what was
in man” (Jn. 2:23-25, Greek text). Because of his great knowledge of human
nature (“he knew
All this can seem almost impossible to believe; that a man with our weak nature could in fact be sinless by character. It requires less faith to believe that ‘Jesus was God’ and was therefore perfect. Hence the attraction of this false doctrine. Those who knew the half-sisters of Jesus in first century Palestine felt the same: “…his sisters, are they not all with us? Whence then has this man these things? And they were offended in him” (Mt. 13:56,57). And countless others have likewise stumbled in this way.
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1-17 The Humanity Of Jesus
The Gospel records provide many examples of how completely Jesus had human nature. It is recorded that he was weary, and had to sit down to drink from a well (Jn 4:6). “Jesus wept” at the death of Lazarus (Jn. 11:35). Most supremely, the record of his final sufferings should be proof enough of his humanity: “Now is my soul troubled”, he admitted as he prayed for God to save him from having to go through with his death on the cross (Jn. 12:27). He “prayed, saying, O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup (of suffering and death) pass from me; nevertheless not as I will, but as you will” (Mt. 26:39). This indicates that at times Christ’s fleshly desires were different from those of God.
However, during his whole life Christ always submitted his own will to that of God in preparation for this final trial of the cross. “I can of mine own self do nothing: as I hear, I judge: and my judgment is just; because I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father which has sent me” (Jn. 5:30). This difference between Christ’s will and that of God is proof enough that Jesus was not God.
Throughout our lives we are expected to grow in our knowledge of God, learning from the trials which we experience in life. In this, Jesus was our great example. He did not have complete knowledge of God poured into him any more than we have. From childhood “Jesus increased in wisdom and stature (i.e. spiritual maturity, cp. Eph. 4:13), and in favour with God and man” (Lk. 2:52). “The child grew, and became strong in spirit” (Lk. 2:40). These two verses portray Christ’s physical growth as parallel to his spiritual development; the growth process occurred in him both naturally and spiritually. If “The Son is God”, as the Athanasian Creed states concerning the ‘Trinity’, this would not have been possible. Even at the end of his life, Christ admitted that he did not know the exact time of his second coming, although the Father did (Mk. 13:32). He asked questions of the teachers of the Law at age 12, eager to learn; and often He spoke of what He had
Obedience to God’s will is something
which we all have to learn over a period of time. Christ also had to go
through this process of learning obedience to his Father, as any son has
to. “Though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience (i.e. obedience to
God) by the things which he suffered; and being
It is evident from this that Jesus had to make a conscious, personal effort to be righteous; in no way was he automatically made so by God, which would have resulted in him being a mere puppet. Jesus truly loved us, and gave his life on the cross from this motive. The constant emphasis upon the love of Christ for us would be hollow if God compelled him to die on the cross (Eph. 5:2,25; Rev. 1:5; Gal. 2:20). If Jesus was God, then he would have had no option but to be perfect and then die on the cross. That Jesus
It was because of Christ’s willingness to give his life voluntarily that God was so delighted with him: “Therefore does my Father love me, because I lay down my life...No man takes it from me, but I lay it down of myself” (Jn. 10:17,18). That God was so pleased with Christ’s willing obedience is hard to understand if Jesus was God, living out a life in human form as some kind of tokenistic association with sinful man (Mt. 3:17; 12:18; 17:5). These records of the Father’s delight in the Son’s obedience, is proof enough that Christ had the possibility of disobedience, but consciously chose to be obedient.
Christ’s Need Of Salvation
Because of his human nature, Jesus was mortal as we are. In view of this, Jesus needed to be saved from death by God. Intensely recognising this, Jesus “offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto him (God) that was able to save him from death, and was heard for his piety” (Heb. 5:7 A.V. mg.). The fact that Christ had to plead with God to save him from death rules out any possibility of him being God in person. After Christ’s resurrection, death had “
Many of the Psalms are prophetic of Jesus; when some verses from a Psalm are quoted about Christ in the New Testament, it is reasonable to assume that many of the other verses in the Psalm are about him too. There are a number of occasions where Christ’s need for salvation by God is emphasised.
- Ps. 91:11,12 is quoted about Jesus in Mt. 4:6. Ps. 91:16 prophesies how God would give Jesus salvation: “With long life (i.e. eternal life) will I satisfy him, and shew him my salvation.” Ps. 69:21 refers to Christ’s crucifixion (Mt. 27:34); the whole Psalm describes Christ’s thoughts on the cross: “Save me, O God...Draw nigh unto my soul, and redeem it...Let your salvation, O God, set me up on high” (vs. 1,18,29).
- Ps. 89 is a commentary upon God’s promise to David concerning Christ. Concerning Jesus, Ps. 89:26 prophesies: “He shall cry unto me (God), You art my father, my God, and the rock of my
- Christ’s prayers to God for salvation were heard; he was heard because of his personal spirituality, not because of his place in a ‘trinity’ (Heb. 5:7). That
- “
- “
- “This Jesus has
- Jesus himself recognised all this when he asked
If Jesus was God Himself, then all this emphasis would be out of place, seeing that God cannot die. Jesus would not have needed saving if he were God. That it was God who exalted Jesus demonstrates God’s superiority over him, and the separateness of God and Jesus. In no way could Christ have been “very and eternal God (with) two...natures...Godhead and manhood”, as the first of the 39 Articles of the Church of England states. By the very meaning of the word, a being can only have one nature. We submit that the evidence is overwhelming that Christ was of our human nature.
The Relationship Of God with Jesus
Considering how God resurrected Jesus leads us on to think of the relationship between God and Jesus. If they are “co-equal...co-eternal”, as the trinity doctrine states, then we would expect their relationship to be that of equals. We have already seen ample evidence that this is not the case. The relationship between God and Christ is similar to that between husband and wife: “The head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God” (1 Cor. 11:3). As the husband is the head of the wife, so God is the head of Christ, although they have the same unity of purpose as should exist between husband and wife. Thus “Christ is God’s” (1 Cor. 3:23), as the wife belongs to the husband.
God the Father is often stated to be Christ’s God. The fact that God is described as “the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Pet. 1:3; Eph. 1:17) even after Christ’s ascension to heaven, shows that this is
Revelation, the last book of the New Testament, was written many years after Christ’s glorification and ascension, yet it speaks of God as “his (Christ’s) God and Father” (Rev. 1:6 R.V.). In this book, the resurrected and glorified Christ gave messages to the believers. He speaks of “the temple of my God...the name of my God...the city of my God” (Rev. 3:12). This proves that Jesus even now thinks of the Father as his God - and therefore he (Jesus) is not God.
During his mortal life, Jesus related to his Father in a similar way. He spoke of ascending “unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God” (Jn. 20:17). On the cross, Jesus displayed his humanity to the full: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mt. 27:46). Such words are impossible to understand if spoken by God Himself. The very fact that Jesus prayed to God “with strong crying and tears” in itself indicates the true nature of their relationship (Heb. 5:7; Lk. 6:12). God evidently cannot pray to Himself. Even now, Christ prays to God on our behalf (Rom. 8:26,27 N.I.V. cp. 2 Cor. 3:18 R.V. mg.).
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1-18 The Victory Of Jesus
The previous Study has demonstrated how the Lord Jesus had our human nature and was tempted to sin just like us. The difference between him and us is that he completely overcame sin; whilst having our
- He was "in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin" (Heb. 4:15).
- He "knew no sin". "In Him there is no sin" (2 Cor. 5:21; 1 John 3:5).
- "Who committed no sin, nor was guile found in His mouth" (1 Peter 2:22).
- "Holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners" (Heb. 7:26).
The Gospel records demonstrate how his fellow men recognized the perfection oozing from his character, shown in his words and actions. Pilate's wife recognized that he was a "just man" (Matt. 27:19), undeserving of punishment; the Roman soldier who watched Christ's demeanour whilst hanging on the cross had to comment, "Certainly this was a righteous man" (Luke 23:47). Earlier in his life, Jesus challenged the Jews with the question: "Which of you convicts Me of sin?" (John 8:46). To this there was no reply.
As a result of His victorious perfection in every way, Jesus of Nazareth was
Due to his perfect character, Jesus was the manifestation of God in flesh (1Tim. 3:16); He acted and spoke as God would have done had He been a man. He was therefore the perfect reflection of God - "the
Living in a sinful world, beset by sin and failure in our own lives, it is hard for us to appreciate the totality and immensity of Christ's spiritual supremacy; that a man of our nature should fully reveal the righteousness of God in his character. Believing this requires a more real faith than just accepting the theological idea that Christ was God Himself; it is understandable that the false doctrine of the trinity is so popular.
Christ willingly gave his perfect life as a gift to us; he showed his love for us by dying "for our sins" (1 Cor. 15:3), knowing that through his death he would gain us eventual salvation from sin and death (Eph. 5:2,25; Rev. 1:5; Gal. 2:20). Because Jesus was perfect in character he was able to overcome the result of sin by being the first person to rise from the dead and be given immortal life. All those who identify themselves with Christ through baptism and a Christ-like way of life therefore have hope of a similar resurrection and reward.
In this lies the glorious significance of Christ's resurrection. It is the "assurance" that we will be resurrected and judged (Acts 17:31), and if we have been truly like him, share his reward of immortal life, "
To displace the effects of our sins,
God "credits righteousness" (Rom. 4:6NIV) to us through our
faith in His promises of salvation. We know that sin brings death, therefore
if we truly believe that God will save us from it, we must believe that
He will count us as if we are righteous, although we are not. Christ was
perfect; by being truly
All this was made possible through Christ's resurrection. He was the "firstfruits" of a whole harvest of human beings who will be made immortal through his achievement (1 Cor. 15:20), "the firstborn" of a new spiritual family who will be given God's nature (Col.1:18,19 cp. Eph. 3:15). Christ's resurrection therefore made it possible for God to count believers in Christ as if they are righteous, seeing that they are covered by his righteousness. Christ "was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification" (Rom. 4:25 NIV), a word meaning 'to be righteous'.
It takes a conscious, meditated faith in these things to really be convinced that we can be counted by God as if we are perfect. Christ can present us at the judgment seat "
It is only by proper baptism into Christ that we can be "in Christ" and therefore be covered by his righteousness. By baptism we associate ourselves with his death and resurrection (Rom. 6:3-5), which are the means of our deliverance from our sins, through being 'justified', or counted righteous (Rom. 4:25).
The marvellous things which we have considered in this section are quite out of our grasp unless we have been baptized. At baptism we associate ourselves with the blood of Christ shed on the cross; believers wash "their robes and (make) them white in the blood of the Lamb" (Rev. 7:14). Figuratively, they are then clothed in white robes, representing the righteousness of Christ which has been counted ('credited') to them (Rev. 19:8). It is possible to make these white clothes dirty as a result of our sin (Jude v. 23); when we do this after baptism, we must again use the blood of Christ to wash them clean through asking God for forgiveness through Christ.
It follows that after baptism we still need to strive to remain in the blessed position which we then entered. There is a need for regular, daily self-examination, with constant prayer and seeking of forgiveness. By doing this we will always be humbly confident that, due to our covering with Christ's righteousness, we really will be in the Kingdom of God. We must seek to be found abiding
The repeated emphasis on
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1-19 The Blood Of Jesus
It is very often stated in the New Testament that our justification and salvation is through the blood of Jesus (e.g. 1 John 1:7; Rev. 5:9; 12:11; Rom. 5:9). To appreciate the significance of Christ's blood, we must understand that it is a Biblical principle that "the life of every creature is its blood" (Lev. 17:14 NIV). Without blood a body cannot live; it is therefore symbolic of life. This explains the aptness of Christ's words, "Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you" (John 6:53).
Sin results in death (Rom. 6:23),i.e. a pouring out of the blood, which carries the life. For this reason the Israelites were expected to pour out blood each time they sinned, to remind them that sin resulted in death. "... according to the law (of Moses) almost all things are purged (cleansed mg.) with blood, and without shedding of blood is no remission (forgiveness mg.)" (Heb. 9:22). Because of this, Adam and Eve's covering of themselves with fig leaves was unacceptable; instead, God killed a lamb to provide skins to cover their sin (Gen. 3:7,21). Similarly, Abel's sacrifice of animals was accepted rather than Cain's offering of vegetables, because he appreciated this principle that without shedding blood there could be no forgiveness and acceptable approach to God (Gen. 4:3-5). Not only did he appreciate it, he
These incidents point forward to the supreme importance of the blood of Christ. This was especially foreshadowed in the events of the Passover, at which God's people had to place the blood of a lamb on their doorposts to gain salvation from death. This blood pointed forward to that of Jesus, with which we must cover ourselves. Before the time of Christ the Jews had to offer animal sacrifices for their sins, according to God's law through Moses. However, this shedding of animal blood was only for teaching purposes. Sin is punishable by death (Rom. 6:23); it was not possible that a human being could kill an animal as a substitute for his own death or as a true representative of himself. The animal he offered had no appreciation of right or wrong; it was not fully representative of him: "It is not possible that the blood of bulls and goats could take away sins" (Heb. 10:4).
The question therefore arises, Why did the Jews have to sacrifice animals when they sinned? Paul sums up the various answers to this question in Gal. 3:24: "The law was our tutor to bring us to Christ." The animals which they killed as offerings for sin had to be spotless - without blemish (Ex. 12:5; Lev. 1:3,10 etc.). These pointed forward to Christ, "a lamb without blemish" (1 Peter 1:19). The blood of those animals therefore
We explained in Section 7.3 how the whole of the Old Testament, particularly the Law of Moses, pointed forward to Christ. Under that Law the way of approach to God was through the High Priest; he was the mediator between God and men under the Old Covenant as Christ is under the New Covenant (Heb. 9:15). "... the law appoints as high priests men who are weak; but the oath ... appointed the Son, who has been made perfect for ever" (Heb. 7:28 NIV). Because they themselves were sinners, these men were not in a position to gain true forgiveness for men. The animals which they sacrificed for sin were not truly representative of the sinners. What was required was a perfect human being, who was in every way representative of sinful man, who would make an acceptable sacrifice for sin which men could benefit from by associating themselves with that sacrifice. In a similar way, a perfect High Priest was required who could sympathize with the sinful men for whom he mediated , having been tempted just like them (Heb. 2:14-18).
Jesus fits this requirement perfectly - "Such a high priest meets our need – one who is holy, blameless, pure ..." (Heb. 7:26 NIV). He does not need to continually sacrifice for his own sins, nor is he liable to death any more (Heb. 7:23,27) In the light of this, the Scripture comments upon Christ as our priest: "Therefore he is able to save completely those who come to God through him, because he always lives to intercede for them" (Heb. 7:25 NIV). Because he had human nature, Christ, as our ideal High Priest, “can have compassion on those who are ignorant and going astray, since
As the Jewish high priests mediated for God's people, Israel, so Christ is a Priest for spiritual Israel - those who have been baptized into Christ, having understood the true Gospel. He is “a high priest over the
Having been baptized into Christ, we should eagerly make full use of Christ's priesthood; indeed, we have certain responsibilities with regard to this which we must live up to. "By Him let us continually offer the sacrifice of praise to God " (Heb. 13:15). God's plan of providing Christ as our priest was in order that we should glorify Him; we should therefore make constant use of our access to God through Christ in order to praise Him. Heb. 10:21-25 (NIV) lists a number of responsibilities which we have on account of Christ being our High Priest: "We have a great priest over the house of God:
1. Let us draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water". Understanding Christ's priesthood means that we should be baptized into him ("our bodies washed"), and we should never let a bad conscience develop in our minds. If we believe in Christ's atonement, we are made at one with God ('AT-ONE-MENT') by his sacrifice.
2. "Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess...” We should not deviate from the true doctrines which have brought about our understanding of Christ's priesthood.
3. "Let us consider how we may spur one another on towards love and good deeds. Let us not give up meeting together". We should be lovingly bound together with others who understand and benefit from Christ's priesthood; this is particularly through meeting together for the communion service, by which we remember Christ's sacrifice.
Appreciating these things should fill us with humble confidence that we really will reach salvation, if we are baptized and abide in Christ: "Let us
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1-20 Jesus And The Law Of Moses
Jesus being the perfect sacrifice for sin and the ideal High Priest who could truly gain forgiveness for us, the old system of animal sacrifices and high priests was done away with after his death (Heb. 10:5-14). "The priesthood being changed (from the Levites to Christ), of necessity there is also a change of the law" (Heb. 7:12). Christ "has become a priest not on the basis of a regulation as to his ancestry (i.e. just because a man was a descendant of Levi he could be a priest), but on the basis of the power of an indestructible life", which he was given due to his perfect sacrifice (Heb. 7:16 NIV). Therefore, "the former regulation (i.e. the law of Moses) is set aside because it was weak and useless (for the law made nothing perfect), and a better hope (through Christ) is introduced" (Heb. 7:18,19 NIV).
It is evident from this that the law of Moses has been ended by the sacrifice of Christ. To trust in a human priesthood or to still offer animal sacrifices means that we do not accept the fulness of Christ's victory. Such beliefs mean that we do not accept Christ's sacrifice as completely successful, and that we feel that works are necessary to bring about our justification, rather than faith in Christ alone. "No one is justified by the law in the sight of God ... for, The just(ified) shall live by
If we are going to observe the law of Moses, we must attempt to keep
Because of this, we are no longer required to keep any part of the law of Moses. The New Covenant in Christ replaced the Old Covenant of Moses' law (Heb. 8:13). By his death, Christ cancelled "the written code, with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us (by our inability to fully keep the law); he took it away, nailing it to the cross ... Therefore do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a religious festival, a New Moon celebration or a Sabbath day. These are a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ" (Col. 2:14-17 NIV). This is quite clear - because of Christ's death on the cross, the Law was taken away so that we should resist any pressure put on us to keep parts of it, e.g. the feasts and the sabbath. Like the rest of the Law, the purpose of these things was to point forward to Christ. After his death, their typical significance was fulfilled, and there was therefore no further need to observe them.
The early Christian church of the first century was under constant pressure from the Orthodox Jews to keep parts of the Law. Throughout the New Testament there is repeated warning to resist these suggestions. In the face of all these, it is extraordinary that today there are several denominations who advocate partial obedience to the Law. We have earlier shown that any attempt to gain salvation from obedience to the Law must aim to keep the
There is an element within human nature which inclines to the idea of justification by works; we like to feel that we are
Warnings against keeping any part of the Law of Moses in order to gain salvation, are dotted throughout the New Testament. Some taught that Christians should be circumcised according to the Mosaic law, "and keep the law". James flatly condemned this idea on behalf of the true believers: "
It is a sure sign of the apostasy of popular Christendom that many of their practices are based upon elements of the Law of Moses - despite the clear and laboured teaching considered above that Christians should not observe this Law, seeing that it has been done away in Christ. We will now consider the more obvious ways in which the Law of Moses is the basis of present 'Christian' practice:-
Priests
The Orthodox, Catholic and Anglican churches openly use a system of human priesthood. The Roman Catholics see the Pope as their equivalent of the Jewish high priest. There is "
There is absolutely no Biblical evidence that the authority possessed by the Spirit-gifted elders of the first century - e.g. Peter - was passed on to successive generations or to the Pope in particular. Even if the possibility of this were admitted, there is no way of proving that the Pope and priests personally are those upon whom the spiritual mantle of the first century elders has fallen.
The miraculous Spirit gifts having been withdrawn, all believers have equal access to the Spirit-Word in the Bible (see Studies 2.2 and 2.4). They are therefore all brethren, none having any more spiritually exalted a position than another. Indeed,
The Catholic practice of calling their priests 'Father' (the 'Pope' means 'father' too) is in flat contradiction to Christ's clear words, "Do not call anyone on earth your father; for One is your Father, He who is in heaven" (Matt. 23:9). Indeed, Jesus warned against granting any fellow man the sort of spiritual respect demanded by modern priests: "But you, do not be called ‘Rabbi’ (teacher), for One is your Teacher, the Christ, and you are all brethren" (Matt. 23:8).
The ornate robes worn by priests, bishops and other clergymen have their basis in the special clothing worn by the Mosaic priests and high priest. This clothing pointed forward to the perfect character of Christ, and, as with all the Law, its purpose has now been fulfilled. It is indeed heartbreaking, that clothing which was intended to extol the glory of Christ, is now used to advance the glory of the men who wear it - some of whom admit that they do not accept Christ's resurrection or even the personal existence of God.
The Catholic idea that Mary is a priest is grossly wrong. Our requests are in
Tithing
This, too, was part of the Mosaic Law (Num. 18:21), whereby the Jews were to donate a tenth of their substance to the priestly tribe of Levi. Seeing that there is now no human priesthood, it can no longer be obligatory to pay a tithe to any church elders. Again, one false idea (in this case concerning priests) has led to another (i.e. tithing). God Himself does not
Food
The Jewish Law categorized certain foods as unclean - a practice adopted by some denominations today, especially regarding pork. Because of Christ's removing of the Law on the cross, "... do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink" (Col. 2:14-16 NIV). Thus the Mosaic commands concerning these things have been done away, seeing that Christ has now come. It was he to whom the 'clean' foods pointed forward.
Jesus clearly explained that nothing a man eats can spiritually defile him; it is what comes out of the heart which does this (Mark 7:15-23). "In saying this, Jesus declared
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. The Real Christ...
1-21 Jesus As Our Representative
We have seen that the animal sacrifices were not completely representative of sinful men. Jesus
If Jesus was God rather than being solely of human nature, he could not have been our representative. This is another example of where one wrong idea leads to another. Because of this, theologians have developed many complex ways of explaining Christ's death. The popular view of apostate Christendom is that man's sins placed him in a debt to God which of himself he could not pay. Christ then cleared the debt of each believer by his blood, shed on the cross. Many a Gospel Hall preacher has expressed it like this: "It was as if we were all lined up against a wall, about to be shot by the devil. Jesus then rushed in; the devil shot him instead of us, so we are now free."
These elaborate theories are without any firm Biblical support. There is the obvious contradiction that if Christ died
The Bible teaches that salvation is possible through Christ's death AND resurrection, not just by his death. Christ "died for us" once. The theory of substitution would mean that he had to die for each of us personally. The English preoposition “for” (as in “Christ died for us”) has a much wider range of meaning than the Greek word which it translates. If Christ had died
If Christ paid off a debt with his blood, our salvation becomes something which we can expect as a right. The fact that salvation is a gift, brought about by God's mercy and forgiveness, is lost sight of if we understand Christ's sacrifice as being a debt payment. It also makes out that an angry God was appeased once He saw the physical blood of Jesus. Yet what God sees when we repent is His Son as our representative, whom we are striving to copy, rather than we connecting ourselves with Christ's blood as a talisman. Many hymns and songs contain an incredible amount of false doctrine in this area. Most false doctrine is drummed into people's minds by music, rather than rational, Biblical instruction. We must ever be on the watch for this kind of brain-washing.
Tragically, the simple words "Christ died for us" (Rom. 5:8) have been grossly misunderstood as meaning that Christ died instead of us. There are a number of connections between Romans 5 and 1 Cor. 15 (e.g. v. 12 = 1 Cor. 15:21; v. 17 = 1 Cor. 15:22). "Christ died for
To put it mildly, the 'substitution' idea reflects careless thought and a wrong use of language. The sacrifice of Jesus was made
It’s interesting to note that there are others who’ve seen through the ‘substitution’ theory. John A.T. Robinson, one-time Bishop of Woolwich, wrote: “The New Testament writers
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1-22 The Meaning Of Christ's Resurrection For Us
Preaching
If we believe in the resurrection of Jesus, we will preach it world-wide. He died and rose as the representative of all men; and therefore this good news should be preached to all kinds and all races of people. Men from all nations were in prospect sprinkled by His blood (Is. 52:15); and therefore we must extend the knowledge of this to all men, both in our collective and personal witness. Lk. 24:48 simply comments that the disciples were witnesses to the resurrection and the fact that forgiveness and salvation was therefore potentially available to all men. The parallel records in Mt. and Mk. say that they were told to go out and witness to the resurrection world-wide. Putting them together it is apparent that if we are truly witnesses of the resurrection in our own faith, then part and parcel of this is to take this witness out into our own little worlds.
Christ's resurrection is an imperative to preach. When Peter is asked why he continues preaching when it is forbidden, he responds by saying that he is obeying God's command, in that Christ had been raised (Acts 5:29-32). There was no specific command from God to witness (although there was from Christ); from the structure of Peter's argument he is surely saying that the fact God raised Christ is
Because the Lord's resurrection enabled forgiveness of sins (1 Cor. 15:17), Peter therefore on this basis makes an appeal for repentance and appropriation of the Lord's work for men through baptism into His death and resurrection (Acts 2:31-38; 3:15,19 " therefore" ). And Paul likewise: " He, whom God raised again...through [on account of] this man [and His resurrection] is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins" (Acts 13:37,38). Because of the Name the Lord has been given, salvation has been enabled (Acts 4:12 cp. Phil. 2:9). " God, having raised up his Son Jesus, sent Him to bless you, in turning away every one of you from his iniquities" (Acts 3:26); " the God of our fathers raised up Jesus…exalted with his right hand to be a Prince and a Saviour, for to give (i.e. inspire) repentance to Israel, and forgiveness" (Acts 5:30,31). The fact of the Lord's resurrection has assured forgiveness of sins for all who will identify themselves with it through baptism into Him; and this is why it is thereby an imperative to preach it, if we believe in it. The disciples were told to go and preach of the resurrection of Christ, and
Confession Of Sin
We who were dead in sins were " made alive together with Christ" (Eph. 2:5). If we believe in Christ Jesus' resurrection, we will therefore repent, confess our sins and know His forgiveness. Thus believing in His raising and making confession of sin are bracketed together in Rom. 10:9,10, as both being essential in gaining salvation. Because He rose,
Peter knew Jesus had risen, and he had met him and been " glad" when he saw the Lord, and in some form had joyfully proclaimed the news to the others. But " when Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he girt his fisher's coat unto him (for he was naked) and did cast himself into the sea" (Jn. 21:7), and then meets the Lord and as it were they settle the score relating to his denials. Again by a fire, the three fold " lovest thou me?" probed Peter's denials, and the threefold commission to " feed my sheep" confirmed his total re-instatement to grace. The whole flavour of this record would make it seem that this was the first time Peter had met the risen Lord. But it clearly wasn't. Surely the point is that like us, we can know theoretically that Christ rose; we can be sure of it. But the personal implications in terms of confession of sin and service to that risen Lord can be lost on us, to the point that we
Labour For Him
Because Christ rose, we have not believed and preached " in vain" (1 Cor. 15:14). Because He rose, therefore " awake to righteousness and sin not" (15:34)- for He is our representative. We labour for Him because our faith in His resurrection is not " in vain" . Our faith in His resurrection is not in vain (:2,14), and our labour is therefore not in vain (:58) because it is motivated by His rising again. The grace of being able to believe in the resurrection of Jesus meant that Paul " laboured abundantly" (:10). And he can therefore bid us follow his example- of labouring abundantly motivated by the same belief that the Lord rose (:58). Paul exhorts that prayers be made " for all men" , just because " Christ Jesus gave himself a ransom for all" , and He thereby is the one and only mediator between God and man (1 Tim. 2:1-6). Because of what He enabled for all, we should pray for all, that somehow circumstances might be allowed which enable all men's salvation in Jesus to indeed spread to all men.
Forgiving Others
Atonement means 'covering'. Because God covers our sins, we ought to cover those of others. The simple statement " love covers all sins" (Prov. 10:12) comes in the context of appealing for God's people not to gossip about each others' failures. And the passage is most definitely applied to us in the NT (1 Pet. 4:8; James 5:20; 1 Cor. 13:7RVmg. " love covereth all things" ). " He that goes about as a talebearer reveals secrets; but he that is of a faithful spirit conceals the matter" (Prov. 11:13). Our natural delight in telling or brooding on the moral failures of others, as if life is one long soap opera, will be overcome if we have personally felt the atonement; the covering of our sins. " He that covers his [own] sins shall not prosper: but whoever confesses and forsakes them shall have mercy" (Prov. 28:13). The opposition is between owning up to our sins, and trying to cover them for ourselves. If we believe in the covering work of God in Christ, then we will own up to our sins the more easily, confident in His atonement.
Use Our Bodies Properly
The classic chapter about the resurrection of body, 1 Cor. 15, is also about the resurrection of Jesus. And it is not just a doctrinal treatise which Paul throws in to his letter to the Corinthians. It must be viewed in the context of the entire letter. He has been talking about the correct use of the body- not abusing it, defiling it, in whatever way. And he has spoken specifically about sexual issues. And then in summary, at the end of his letter, he speaks at such length about the resurrection of the body. Seeing that God intends resurrecting our body, our body means so much to Him that Christ died and rose again to enable our bodily resurrection, therefore it matters a lot what we do with our body right now!
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1-23 Christ Died For Me: So What Should I Do?
Freedom From Sin
And so I too must surrender all, I will willingly strive to do this, for the glorious wonder of knowing this Man who died for me to enable such great salvation. He died and rose so that He might be made Lord of His people (Rom. 14:9); if we believe in His resurrection and subsequent Lordship, He will be the Lord of our lives, Lord of every motion of our hearts. We are yet in our sins, if Christ be not risen (1 Cor. 15:17). But He has risen, and therefore we are no longer dominated by our moral weakness. Because baptism united us with His resurrection, we are no longer in our sins (Col. 2:13). Therefore the baptized believer will not " continue in sin" if he really understand and believes this (Rom. 6:1 and context). Ours is the life of freedom with Him, for He was and is our representative [note that He represents us now, in His freedom and eternal life, just as much as He did in His death].
We died and rose with Christ, if we truly believe in His representation of us and our connection with Him, then His freedom from sin and sense of conquest will be ours; as the man guilty of blood was to see in the death of the High Priest a representation of his own necessary death, and thereafter was freed from the limitations of the city of refuge (Num. 35:32,33). Because Christ really did rise again, and we have a part in that, we must
Such is the power of a true, lived-out baptism and faith that we have found freedom from sin. If we have really died and resurrected with the Lord, we will be dead unto the things of this world (Col. 2:20; 3:1). This is why Paul could say that the greatest proof that Christ had risen from the dead was the change in character which had occurred within him (Acts 26:8 ff.). This was " the power of his resurrection" ; and it works within us too. The death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth aren't just facts we know; if they are truly believed, there is within them the power of ultimate transformation.
True Faith
Nearly everyone in the first century believed in the God-idea. There were very few atheists. Hence the radical nature of statements like 1 Pet. 1:21: we " through him [Jesus] are believers in God" , because God raised Jesus from the dead. The resurrection of the Lord inspires faith in the Father to such an extent that anyone whose faith in 'God' is not based on the risen Jesus does not actually count as a believer in God.
Selfless Service
The wonder of the resurrection would totally affect our attitude to asking for things, the Lord taught in Jn. 16:23,26. “In that day [of marvelling in the resurrected Lord], you shall ask me nothing…if you shall ask anything of the Father, he will give it you [RV]…in that day you shall ask in my name…”. What are we to make of all this talk of asking and not asking, in the ‘day’ of the resurrected Lord Jesus? My synthesis of it all is this: Due to the sheer wonder of the resurrection of the Lord, we will not feel the need to ask for anything for ourselves. The gift of freedom from sin is enough. Because if God gave us His Son and raised Him from the dead, we will serve for nothing, for no extra ‘perks’ in this life; and yet, wonder of wonders,
Generosity
To put it mildly, our experience of His death for us should lead us to be generous spirited in all ways. In appealing for financial generosity to poorer brethren, Paul sought to inspire the Corinthians with the picture of Christ crucified: " For you know the grace [gift / giving] of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor [Gk. a pauper], that you through his poverty might be rich" (2 Cor. 8:9). In the light of this, we should not just be generous from the abundance of what we have; we should become as paupers in our giving. By this I don't mean we should get to the position where there are no rich people amongst us- this is clearly not the church scene imagined in passages like 1 Tim. 6. But the image of the pauper is the one that is impressed upon us. The Lord's giving wasn't financial; it was emotional and spiritual. And so, Paul says, both materially and in these ways, we should likewise respond to our brethren, poorer materially or spiritually than we are. " The very spring of our actions is the love of Christ" (2 Cor. 5:14 Philips; it " urges us on" , NRSV).
Living Like Jesus
By God's grace, the Lord tasted death
Preaching
2 Cor. 5:14-21 urges us to preach the salvation in Christ to all men, because He died for us, as our representative. He died
Paul in 1 Cor. 15 lists ten serious consequences of failing to believe that Christ rose. One of these is that there was no reason for him to constantly risk his life to preach the Gospel if Christ was not risen. It stands to reason that the fact Jesus
Note
(1) W.F. Barling,
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1-24 The Inspiration Of The Cross In Daily Life
The love of Christ in the cross is to have a continual inspiration upon us- endless love, countless moments of re-inspiration, are to come to us daily
The image of soldiers in their time of dying has often been used afterwards as a motivation for a nation: “Earn this" is the message their faces give. And it is no more true than in the death of the Lord. “The love of Christ", an idea elsewhere used of His death (Jn. 13:1; 2 Cor. 5:14,15; Rom. 8:32,34,35; Eph. 5:2,25; Gal. 2:20; Rev. 1:5 cp. 1 Jn. 4:10),
Nothing, whatever, not even life, our sins and dysfunctions of human life, can separate us from the love of Christ towards us in His death (Rom. 8:35). His cross is therefore the constant rallying point of our faith, in whatever difficulty we live through. The resolve and strength we so need in our spiritual path can come only through a personal contemplation of the cross. Do we seek strength to endure unjust treatment and the grace to submit cheerfully to the loss of what we feel is rightfully ours? Be it discrimination in the workplace, persecution from the Government, perceived abuse or degradation by our partner or family...? Let the cross be our endless inspiration: “For it is better, if the will of God be so [a reference to the Lord’s struggle in Gethsemane being our struggle], that you suffer for well doing...
Or do we live in the loneliness of old age or serious illness, fearing death and the uncertainty of our brief future? Again, the cross of Jesus is our rallying point. “For God has not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us, that, whether we wake or sleep, we should live together with him" (1 Thess. 5:8-10). Because we are in Christ, His death was not an isolated historical event. We also are weak with Him (2 Cor. 13:4 RV), such is the identity between us and Him. When Paul reflected upon his own sickness [which the RVmg. calls his stake / cross in the flesh], he could say in all sober truth that he gloried in his weakness, because his identity with the weakness of Christ crucified also thereby identified him with the strength and power of the risen Lord (2 Cor. 11:9).
Do we feel that life is just pointless, an endless round of childcare, working all day doing in essence the same job for 30 years, a trudging through an endless tunnel until our mortality catches up on us? We were redeemed by the precious blood of Christ from the “vain way of life handed down from the fathers" (1 Pet. 1:18), from the frustration of this present life . The word used for “vain" is that used by the LXX for the ‘vanity’ of life as described in Ecclesiastes, and for idol worship in Lev. 17:7 and Jer. 8:19. We have been redeemed from it all! Not for us the life of endlessly chasing the rainbow’s end, slavishly worshipping the idols of ever bigger homes, smarter technology...we were redeemed from the vanity of life “under the sun" by the precious blood of Christ. We were bought out of this slavery, even if in the flesh we go through its motions. Knowing this, we the redeemed, the bought out from vanity, shouldn’t spend our hours in front of the television or doing endless crosswords, or frittering away the time of life as the world does. James foresaw that a man could appear to be religious, and yet have a religion that was “vain" (James 1:26)- because he didn’t appreciate that the cross has bought him out of vanity. His death was
Do we feel simply not appreciated? As a hassled and harried mother, as a hard working dad who toils to provide for the family he rarely sees, as the person who feels their ideas and abilities are always trashed…? The tragedy of the Lord’s death was that when He died, there was nobody to recount His life, as there usually was at a funeral (Is. 53:8 RVmg.). The greatest life that was ever lived was so misunderstood and unappreciated and hated and hurriedly buried, that there was nobody even to give Him an appreciative funeral speech. In our struggle to feel appreciated, we share both His and His Father’s sufferings and pain. The cross was the ultimate example of a Man being misjudged and misunderstood and condemned unjustly. When we feel like that, and the nature of our high speed, superficially judging society means that it seems to happen more in this generation than any other [and with deeper consequences]… then we know we are sharing the sufferings of the Lord.
Are we just caught up in our daily work, slave to the corporations who employ us? 1 Cor. 7:23 begs us not to become the slaves of men, because Christ bought us with His blood. Young people especially need to be influenced by this as they chose their career path and employers. Through the cross of Christ, the world is crucified to us (Gal. 6:14 RV).
Do we struggle to live the life of true love, to endure people, even our brethren; are we simply tired of people, and living the life of love towards them? Does the past exist within us as a constant fountain of bitterness and regret? “Let all bitterness, and wrath and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice: and be kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake [the sake of His cross] has forgiven you...walk in love,
Do we find a true unity with our brethren impossible? He died
Is humility almost impossible for us, lifted up as we may be by our own sense of worth and achievement? Is a true service of
Do we struggle with some secret vice, in the grip of habitual sin? The cross convicts of sin, for we are impelled by it to follow Christ in going forth “without the camp" (Heb. 13:13), following the path of the leper who had to go forth without the camp (Lev. 13:46). He “his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that
Perhaps we feel that our preaching somehow lacks a sense of power and compulsion of others. Try explicitly telling them about the cross. The apostles recounted the fact of the cross and on this basis appealed for people to be baptized into that death and resurrection. There is an impelling power, an imperative, in the wonder and shame of it all. Joseph saw the Lord’s dead body and was compelled to offer for that body to be laid where
Do we struggle to be truly generous to the Lord’s cause, and to turn our words an vague feelings of commitment into action? Corinth too were talkers, boasting of their plans to give material support to the poor brethren in Jerusalem, but doing nothing concrete. Paul sought to shake them into action by reminding them of “the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor" on the cross (2 Cor. 8:9). Corinth had few wealthy members, but Paul knew that the cross of Christ would inspire in them a generous spirit to those even poorer than they. The richer should be made poor by what the Lord did, Paul is saying- not harmlessly giving of their pocket money. For He gave in ways that hurt Him, ways that were real, meaningful and thereby effective and powerful.
Do we struggle with the ultimate fairness of God? For all we have written about the problem of suffering, it seems to me that no intellectual answer is enough when one personally experiences real tragedy. The sending of Jesus to die in the way that He did was surely one form of God’s response to it. In the death of the cross, God showed His entering into our suffering and sense of loss and hurt.
Do we fear that we lack a personal relationship with the Lord Jesus? Do we read of Him, but rarely if ever
But do we feel ashamed that we just don’t witness as we ought to? There is no doubt that the cross and baptism into that death was central to the preaching message of the early brethren. Knowing it, believing it, meant that it just had to be preached. The completeness and reality of the redemption achieved is expressed in Hebrews with a sense of finality, and we ought not to let that slip from our presentation of the Gospel either. There in the cross, the justice and mercy of God are brought together in the ultimate way. There in the cross is the appeal. Paul spoke of “the preaching of the cross", the word / message which
The cross alone can shake people out of their indifference, and force them to make some election in this world, instead of sliding dully forward as in a dream. Life is a business we are all apt to mismanage; either living recklessly from day to day, or suffering ourselves to be gulled out of our moments by habits, the TV, life... There is something stupefying in the recurrence of unimportant things. And it is only through the provocations of the Lord and His cross that we are lead to take an outlook beyond daily concerns, and comprehend the narrow limits, and great possibilities of our existence. It is the power of the Lord and His cross to induce such moments of clear insight. He, there, is the declared enemy of all living by reflex action. He, there, can electrify His readers and viewers into an instant unflagging activity of service. Those who ignore the challenge of the cross turn to their “own way" (Is. 53:6)- the Hebrew means a custom, habitual way of life. This is what stops us responding to the radical challenge of the cross- our basic conservatism, our love of what we know and are used to. Yet the cross can shake us from this.
Do we feel that our conscience is so dysfunctional and our heart so hardened in some places that nothing much can touch us and motivate us like it used to? The cross can touch and transform the hardest and most damaged heart. Apart from many real life examples around of this, consider the Biblical case of Pilate. Jewish and Roman historians paint a very different picture of Pilate than what we see in the Biblical record. Philo describes him as “ruthless, stubborn and of cruel disposition", famed for “frequent executions without trial" (1). Josephus speaks of him as totally despising the Jews, stealing money from the temple treasury and brutally suppressing unruly crowds(2). Why then does he come over in the Gospels as a man desperately struggling with his conscience, to the extent that the Jewish crowds manipulate him to order the crucifixion of a man whom he genuinely believed to be innocent? Surely because the person of the Lord Jesus and the awfulness of putting the Son of God to death touched a conscience which appeared not to even exist. If the whole drama of the death of Jesus could touch the conscience and personality of even Pilate, it can touch each of us. Just compare the words of Philo and Josephus with how Mark records that Pilate was “amazed" at the self-control of Jesus under trial (Mk. 15:5); how he almost pleads with his Jewish subjects for justice to be done: “Why, what evil has he done?" (Mk. 15:14). Compare this with how Philo speaks of Pilate as a man of “inflexible, stubborn and cruel disposition", famous for “abusive behaviour… and endless savage ferocity"(3). Mt. 27:25 describes how Pilate washes his hands, alluding to the Jewish rite based in Deuteronomy, to declare that he is innocent of the blood of a just man. But Josephus records how Pilate totally despised Jewish religious customs and sensibilities, and appeared to love to commit sacrilege against Jewish things. And in Luke’s record, Pilate is recorded as pronouncing Jesus innocent no less than three times.
Do we feel so hurt by others that we find forgiveness impossible, sensing an ever-encroaching bitterness always getting closer to gripping our whole lives? All around this sad world, there seems an endless round of revenge being danced out. The knock someone receives is paid back by them on someone else, and often this ends up in another person being made a scapegoat, someone incapable of defending themselves, who must take all the knocks when they can’t pay them back. People subconsciously are obeying a compelling law- to get even. To pay back the hard words the postman gave you with hard words to the girl in the supermarket, and then to scapegoat [say] a child at church for messing up the church service… But the point is, the Lord Jesus is set up as the one and only scapegoat for human sin. On the cross He was the ultimate One who took all the knocks without paying back. For those who truly believe this to the point of feeling it deep within them, they are freed from the law of revenge- and thus they become free to live life spontaneously, for fun, to not be ashamed of fulfilling life’s natural needs. The cycle of revenge and paying back has to be resolved in sacrifice- many societies have shown that. I was a few times in far northern Russia, and it was fascinating to hear the traditions of the Chukchi people. In the past, they say, when a big crime was committed and the criminal convicted, an
Finally, and, I think, most relevantly. Do we, as men and women all too taken up with our lives, raising families, earning money... lost in the absorption of our daily work, as computer programmers, drivers, factory workers, housewives, business executives...do we in our heart of hearts feel that we just don’t have the faith to believe that truly we are forgiven, and will be saved? I know I am talking to the heart of every reader here. Are we like that? I am, and I suspect most of us are. Not that this makes me feel any better about my own inadequacy of faith. Again, let the cross of Christ be our inspiration. For there, “when we were yet without strength, in due time, Christ died for the ungodly". He gave His life there, in the way that He gave it, without any consideration for our personal merits. “God commendeth his love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us". The Lord gave His all for us, the totally unworthy. And with abounding and matchless logic, Paul continues: “Much more then, being now justified by his blood [i.e. no longer being so worthless and undeserving, but counted as so much better through the atonement He achieved], we
The knowledge and experience of the love of Christ is the end result of all our Bible searching. There’s a well known story about the great theologian Karl Barth, who probably penned more words of theology than any other writer in the 20th century. Towards the end of his life, he gave a lecture and invited questions. He was asked something to the effect: ‘After a lifetime of Biblical study, what’s your single greatest theological insight?’. After a pause he replied, to a hushed audience: ‘Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so’. To know that love of Christ, with the full assurance of salvation which it involves, is the end result of all our questioning, our study, our Bible searching, our hunting through concordances, listening to talks, reading studies.
Notes
(1) Philo,
(2) Flavius Josephus,
(3) See James M. Robinson,
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. The Real Christ...
2-1 Images Of Jesus
It becomes apparent from any reading of the Gospels that the Lord Jesus sought (and seeks) to radically re-orient the thinking of His followers to be centred around Him as a person. They are to see Him as their leader, the one they follow, the light of their world. All that they have seen and know of Him is to be the centre of their lives and very consciousness as human beings. The only foundation for spiritual life is the man Christ Jesus (1 Cor. 3:11). To be like Him is to the aim of our lives to which all else is bent: “Until we all reach...to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ...to grow in every way into him which is the head, that is, into Christ” (Eph. 4:12-16). The most essential error, practically or doctrinally, is to “lose connection to the head [Jesus], from whom the whole body, nourished and knit together...grows” (Col. 2:19). The Lord Himself taught that what Paul called 'growing up into Him who is the head'. He commented that the end goal for His disciples was that "every one [i.e. disciple, in the context] when he is perfected shall be as his master", i.e. Himself (Lk. 6:40). This was why Paul can speak of "Jesus who is our hope" (1 Tim. 1:1), all we hope to ever become. Later, the Lord spoke of following Him as being like a man ploughing by keeping his eye constantly and unswervingly on an end point- and that point is Him as a person (Lk. 9:61,62). The account of Peter starting to drown exemplifies all this- when he took his gaze off the Lord personally, in order to notice how the wind was so strongly blowing some object [perhaps back on the boat], then his walk to Jesus started to come to an end (Mt. 14:30).
In the parable of the sower, the seed is surely Jesus (Jn. 12:24)- our eternal destiny is decided upon our response to Him and His teaching. We are bidden believe in or into Jesus. Belief involves the heart; it doesn't mean to merely give mental assent to some propositions. It must in the end involve believing in a person, with all the feelings and emotions this involves. We are married unto the Lord Jesus, in order that we might bring forth fruit unto God (Rom. 7:4). All spiritual fruit is therefore an offspring, an outcome, of a living, daily relationship with the Lord Jesus. This is how crucial it is to know Him. To believe in Him is described by John as a ‘work’ that has to be laboured at- with even more effort than that expended by the crowds who walked around the lake to get to Jesus and the free bread He appeared to be offering (Jn. 6:27; 2 Jn. 8). It is this ‘labour’, this hard mental effort to know Him and believe in Him, which will have a ‘full reward’ (2 Jn. 8). John here is alluding to the LXX of Ruth 2:12, where a ‘full reward’ is given to Ruth for working hard all day gleaning in the fields. It may be that this allusion was because “the elect lady” addressed by John was in fact a proselyte widow, like Ruth. But the point is, we have to
The blind man asked about Jesus: “Who is he, that I may believe on him?” (Jn. 9:36). True belief depends upon having the true image of Jesus. The goal of conversion to Him is love from a pure heart (1 Pet. 1:22). To know Him properly leads to love within us. 1 Jn. 3:22 brackets together believing in His Name and loving one another. Again and again we say: images and understanding of Jesus matter. As John Newton put it:
Two of the twentieth century's greatest theologians in the field of Christology [the study of Christ] were Albert Schweitzer and Rudolf Bultmann. At the risk of all too crudely summing up the large corpus of research and writing which they left behind, I'd say that Schweitzer presented Jesus as a man of
Who Then Is Jesus?
All this, then, throws up a question of fundamental importance: Who then is Jesus? What is our image of Him as a person? Do we actually
We are no longer under Moses' law; but under " the law of Christ" . I cannot understand this as meaning that the 613 commands of Moses have been replaced by a set of laws given by Jesus. For the antithesis between law and grace to which the New Testament constantly draws our attention would then be meaningless. The law of Christ surely means the law which is Christ; to be and speak and think and do as He would do. This must be our law, a principle far more comprehensive and intrusive into our lives than mere legalism. 'What would Jesus do?' is surely our law. To walk even as He walked (1 Jn. 2:6), to do as He did (Jn. 13:15), love as He loved (Jn. 13:34; 15:12; Eph. 5:2), forgive as He forgave (Col. 3:13), have the mind which was in Him (Phil. 2:5), give our lives for our brethren as He did (1 Jn. 3:16). Gal. 6:2 defines fulfilling the law of Christ as 'bearing one another's burdens'. He bore the burden of our sin on the cross. The essential law of Christ, the law of being like Christ, is to likewise play our part in leading others towards the forgiveness of their sins. This is why preaching to others in whatever form is such a basic and necessary part of our response to His bearing of our sins on the cross. But if ‘What would Jesus do?’ is the golden rule of the Christian life, this of course assumes that we have a clear understanding of Jesus, and what He would do! To be able to live according to the ‘What would Jesus do?’ rule, we need to know Him, and know Him in a way which means we have a clear picture of how He would live in our current human situation.
The New Testament speaks in challenging terms of how real is to be our relationship with the Lord Jesus. The Lord’s enigmatic words of Jn. 16:16 indicate just
Images of Jesus matter. He will say to many in the last day that He has never known them, for they never knew Him- for all their pure doctrine and good works. Life eternal is about knowing God and Jesus (Jn. 17:3)- and the Greek word here doesn't mean to merely know in an academic sense, but to know intimately and personally. Only if we
1 Jn. 3:14 states that “We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren”. But this is John taking his converts further in appreciating something he had earlier preached to them in his Gospel: “He that heareth my word, and believeth him that sent me, hath eternal life, and cometh not into judgment, but hath passed out of death into life” (Jn. 5:24). To hear the word of Christ and believe the Gospel of God
I am convinced from talking to people that for many, their childhood image of Jesus remains intact into adulthood. If you were raised thinking of Him as a pale faced man with a halo round His head, effectively non-human, this tends to continue. Yet because Christianity is based around the man Christ Jesus, this means that ones image of Christian life will reflect their image of Jesus. Dietrich Bonhoeffer truly wrote that " Christianity without the living Christ is inevitably Christianity without discipleship" (1). Albert Schweitzer in
Any biographer tends to interpret the great person of whom they write through the lens of their own personality; in a way, they create another person who is related to their own image and worldview. Yet if we read the Gospels properly, we are confronted there by the real Christ. We are asked to study His character, indeed to make this the most vital pursuit of our lives. But in seeking to reconstruct His personality, we are to allow Him as He was and as He is to be accepted by us just as He is, and not re-interpreted by us to make Him somehow more convenient or palatable or easier to handle.
Of course we need a correct image of Jesus if we are to follow Him. He, Himself, is the way in which we are to walk. When we read of being and acting and thinking " in Christ" , this surely refers to our way of life being based around Him as a person, reflecting His image into our own. The believer works and rejoices " in Christ" , speaks and admonishes in Him, shows hospitality in Him, marries in Him, is a slave in Him... We can only do these things in Him if we have an image of who He is. And my concern is that some of us admit to having a very hazy image of Him; or, in fact, hardly having one at all. God forbid that we should have merely accepted certain doctrinal principles and been baptized as mere members of a church. We must
John writes that he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God will be thus empowered to overcome the world (1 Jn. 5:5). It’s unusual for the Lord of glory to be referred to merely as “Jesus” by the apostles. Perhaps what John is saying is that if we perceive how the real, human Jesus, the man from Nazareth, was so much more than that, He was Son of God- we too will find strength from the fact of His humanity to overcome the world. Thus later John writes that to confess Jesus Christ as having come in the flesh, to acknowledge His true humanity, is related to walking after His commandments (2 Jn. 6,7). And this perhaps is why John can say that it is a sin, a “transgression”, to abide not in the doctrine of a human Jesus (2 Jn. 9). Why should it be ‘sinful’ to hold a theological misunderstanding? Surely God cannot hold people morally culpable for genuine misinterpretation? Perhaps the answer lies in looking at it from a different angle. The purpose of doctrine is to elicit a Godly way of life. To refuse to believe in the real, human Jesus is actually a way of justifying our wrong behaviour, of hiding away from the challenge that
Real prayer and Bible study as God intends- exciting, life-changing prayer and Bible reading- must surely be rooted in a correct image of Jesus Himself. Even as non-trinitarians, we have so often muted the stark challenge of the real, genuinely human Jesus. We have done this by abstracting Jesus into theological terms which obscure the exciting, compelling human being which Jesus was. If we aren't careful, we end up doing in essence what the Catholics and Orthodox churches have done by reducing this awesome Man to a mere stained-glass figure. Caught up as we inevitably are in this world, in careers, child care and worldly worries, we must think afresh through the issues of what allegiance to this Man mean in practice. The substance and structure of our lives, and indeed of the whole world around us, need to be thought through in the light of the unique achievement of the man Jesus. And we must then go on to be for this world what Jesus was for the Israel of His day. So to search for a reconstruction in our own hearts and minds of who Jesus was is a solemn, non- negotiable duty for each true believer. Some degree of recovery of the personality of Jesus of Nazareth is not beyond the reach of any serious believer. And only in this way will we find the power to be renewed in our personal discipleship, and our community to be renewed in its sense of mission in this world. Indeed, our view of God depends totally upon our understanding of Jesus- for He has revealed the invisible God, not only to those who met Him, but to those who read and learn of Him through the inspired records of Him (Jn. 1:18).
Images of Jesus matter because the believer consciously seeks to mould his or her personality into the image of Jesus which they have. Who
An Eye For Jesus
The Lord Jesus likens Himself to a candle that has been lit and displayed publicly, giving light to us. He then continues that imagery in some rather difficult words. He says that in our lives, the eye is "the light of the body"- a good eye lets light and vision in, thus totally and fundamentally affecting how we are inside us, as persons. But if the eye is faulty, then there is darkness within. But when the eye is good and functioning, the whole person is "full of light, as when the bright shining of a candle gives you light" (Lk. 11:33-36). But earlier, He's defined Himself as the candle which gives light. He seems to be saying that our "eye", our perception of Him, is vital. And this is exactly the context of this passage- He's been lamenting how Israel haven't perceived Him for who He is. If we perceive Him rightly, if our "eye" is good, then our whole body will be filled with the light which comes from Him. But it all depends upon our image / perception of / eye for Jesus. Hence the vital and ultimate importance of understanding and perceiving Him correctly. The subject we're now studying actually couldn't be more important; for the correct perception of Him will fill our whole lives with light, totally affect our internal world-views, granting us an ability to understand and make sense of all around us and within us in the light of the person of Jesus. And if we don't perceive Him aright, our inner lives will be dark and formless, whatever external trappings of culture and knowledge we may have.
And so I have sought to show that images of Jesus matter. We each have a solemn duty to reconstruct our own personal image of the Lord, based on Scripture. On one hand, the details don't matter. If you imagine Him with a long beard, well it doesn't ultimately matter if this wasn't how He was. But we need to have an imagination, an imaging, of how He essentially was in thinking and behaviour in situations so that we can seek to replicate that image. It is clear enough that the four Gospel writers, under inspiration, were each struck by different aspects of this incredible man. Thus Luke pays more attention that the others to the prayers of Jesus; this is what struck him so deeply. John makes little mention of the phrase " Gospel of the Kingdom" - unlike Matthew. And this, perhaps, is how the body of Christ as a whole potentially has the complete vision of Him- for we each see different aspects of Him. Comparing the Gospel records, it is apparent that different people saw different things in Jesus. According to Mark's record, Jesus never openly proclaimed His identity; whereas John shows how in fact Jesus did so very clearly. John proclaims Jesus as the Jewish Messiah, whereas Mark almost implies that His Messiahship was some sort of secret throughout the ministry. And so it will be with us- my perception of Jesus may not quite be yours. Indeed, this is the very unique thing about Jesus- that He is the very personal Lord and representative of each of His followers, uniquely able to relate to them in an intimate way.
Notes
(1) Dietrich Bonhoeffer,
(2) Albert Schweitzer,
(3) Dietrich Bonhoeffer,
(4) L.J. Francis and J. Astley, ‘The Quest for the Psychological Jesus: Influences of Personality on Images of Jesus’,
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. The Real Christ...
2-2 Abba, Father
Jesus as the perfect man was a function both of His Father and mother. And so there was a psychological matrix for Jesus in which He lived and developed. Until relatively recently, there was very limited knowledge of the early stages of human development. Biographies tended to be long at the end, focusing on the achievements of a person, and short at the beginning. But now, biographers and psychologists are realizing that the traumas, triumphs and parental influence of childhood are crucial in a person's later personality and achievements. And so it is surely significant that the Biblical record gives so much attention to the babyhood and childhood of Jesus, telling us virtually nothing about the rest of His life until age 30. Mary's crucial role is thus tacitly recognized. Jesus was fully human. Of this there must never be any doubt. As such, He would have passed through all the stages of growth and socialization which we all do. We become what we are emotionally, intellectually, morally, not only by prolonged acts of sheer willfulness, but also simply by living through a sequence of biological, personal and interpersonal developments, beginning in the very first weeks of our lives. For Jesus to have been perfect says a huge amount about His mother. The Lord had an exceptional sense of self-identity, He knew who He was and clearly had a sense of mission from an early age. Because of this, He developed into a person about whom it was difficult to remain neutral; people had decided opinions either for or against Him. This sense of self-identity was surely developed in Him by Mary getting through to Him from a very early age that He was uniquely special, with a mission of ultimate consequence. Within the matrix of His upbringing, the child Jesus was of course immature and under so many less than perfect influences. The fact He was perfect indicates to me that a strong, independent will must have coursed through Him from the very beginning. It was the will that later matured to be able to say “I am [that I am]”, to send away huge crowds by the sheer force of His personality… And yet there is huge emphasis upon the fact that the will of Father and Son differed (Lk. 22:42; Jn. 5:30; 6:38; Heb. 10:7,9; Rom. 15:3). He had to submit perhaps the strongest of any human wills to that of the Father. And for this, I for one salute Him.
The Lord Jesus was obviously male and not female. I recall the (friendly) argument I had with my wife in the first couple of years of our marriage, about whether men are multi-taskers. I conceded defeat. Men simply aren’t multi-taskers. We focus on one thing at a time. This raises for me the question of spiritual mindedness. What is it? I have at times emerged from half an hour’s work on, say, trying to fix a broken lock, or coding some HTML on a web page, feeling guilty that in that period, I’ve not consciously thought about spiritual things. My restless mind thinks of Jesus. As His skilled hands worked on a piece of furniture, or fixing a leaking roof, surely He too suffered from the same inability to have the male mind in two places at once? How, then, was He so one with the Father in daily life and thought? Perhaps as the only man to be fully in the image of God, He had both male and female elements in His psychology, and He had that feminine way of being able to have a mind in two places. But maybe His male example redefined spiritual mindedness, as simply having a deep inner consciousness focused upon the Father.
There must have been certain similarities of personality type between the Lord and His mother. Thus in Lk. 2:33 Mary " marvelled" , and the same word is used about Jesus in Mt. 8:10 and Mk. 6:6. The Lord at 12 years old displayed such piercing knowledge and spirituality, but it seems He returned to Nazareth and suppressed the expression of it (Lk. 2:51). This is why the villagers were so amazed when He stood up in the Nazareth synagogue and on the basis of Old Testament exposition, indirectly declared Himself the Messiah. He must have stored up so much knowledge and spirituality within Him, but hid it from the eyes of men. This was quite an achievement- to be perfect, and yet not to be noticed as somehow other-worldly. If we ask where He obtained this humility and ability from, it is clearly an inheritance from His dear mother, who stored up things in her heart and didn't reveal them to others, just quietly meditating over the years. It has been observed that it was unusual for the villagers to describe Jesus as " the son of Mary" (Mk. 6:3)- even if Joseph were dead, He would have been known as Jesus-ben-Joseph. It could well be that this was a reflection of their perception of how closely linked Jesus was to His mother.
Abba, Father
Whether or not Joseph died or left Mary by the time Jesus hit adolescence, the fact was that Joseph wasn't His real father. He was effectively fatherless in the earthly sense. As such, this would have set Him up in certain psychological matrices which had their effect on His personality. He could speak of His Heavenly Father in the shockingly unprecedented form of 'abba', daddy. He grew so close to His Heavenly Father because of the lack of an earthly one, and the inevitable stresses which there would have been between Him and Joseph. A strong, fatherly-type figure is a recurrent feature of the Lord's parables; clearly He was very focused upon His Heavenly Father. He could say with passionate truth: " No one knows a son except a father, and no one knows a father except a son" (Mt. 11:27; Lk. 10:22). Yet as a genuine human being, Jesus would have gone through some of the psychoses which any human being does when deprived of the physical presence of his or her true Father. Such an experience produces a major hole in the human psyche; yet if coped with successfully, " the hole in the psyche [of the fatherless child] becomes a window providing insights into the depths of being" (1). This is surely why so many geniuses have been fatherless children. Yet there is a very strong tendency for such children to be fixated on their mothers, and to be generally ill at ease with fathers and father figures.
Yet Jesus was clearly enough at home with His Heavenly Father, and most of His parables feature a strong fatherly figure in them. The tensions evident between Jesus and Mary show clearly enough that He wasn't fixated on her, either. Yet this explains the terrible tension there must have been within the Lord when He considered His mother; there would have been a natural desire to be as fixated upon her as she was upon Him. And yet He overcame this, whilst still loving her, in order to focus upon His Heavenly Father. This explains, to me at least, His unusual addressing of Mary as " woman" , and the final tragic scene of separation from her at the cross. Yet it had to be, for the sake of a true relationship with His Father; and, as with all aspects of the crucifixion sufferings, the essence of it had been going on throughout the Lord's life. Again we bow in admiration before the Lord; that He was no mere victim of background, but that every negative in His life [e.g. not having the physical presence of a father] He turned into a positive in progressing in His unique relationship with His invisible Heavenly Father. There is in Jn. 5:39 what C.H. Dodd has called ‘the parable of the apprentice’: “A son…does only what he sees his father doing: what father does, son does; for a father loves his son and shows him all his trade”(2). Now just imagine what that meant for the Lord Jesus, growing up with Joseph, who appeared to be His father, learning Joseph’s trade. Yet He knew that His true Father was God, and He was eagerly learning
Assuming Joseph disappeared from the scene quite early on, Jesus would have had to take financial responsibility for the household, and would have become the emotional and spiritual head of the home. This would have played its part in maturing the Lord. His latent talents would have been brought out, His personal development accelerated. And yet Mary would have likely sought to cope with the loss of her husband by relying increasingly on her capable firstborn, Jesus, and becoming fixated on Him. This is the backdrop for the evident tension between them throughout the ministry, as the Lord struggles to be the person God intends Him to be, and not to be merely caught up in the hand-to-mouth existence as supporter of His mother and younger siblings. It has been observed by counselors that mothers in this situation become very blind to the needs of their sons on whom they have come to rely. Her sensitivity to who Jesus really was would have likely decreased; she would perhaps have seen Him merely as the clever, hard working, amazing solver of all the myriad daily problems the poor young widow faced. And so we too can be worn down by life into making the same mistakes Mary made in our relationship with the Lord. The wonder of who He is must never be lost upon us.
Often when certain needs have to take priority, e.g. the need for a teenager to care for younger siblings and His mother, other needs are subsumed and the personality becomes skewed, the biological imperative pushes one on to physical maturity, yet unfulfilled emotional needs become stuck and remain at that stage of development. These needs keep coming back and are acted out, particularly at times of stress. Yet, there is no sign that our Lord was in any way an emotionally dysfunctional adult. He was the perfect human in every sense. He must have concentrated on His relationship with His Father to an extent that He could develop perfectly to the extent that His human problems didn't skew or damage His personality. And in this He sets us, hour by hour, the supreme pattern.
Finding The Father
Almost all adopted children have a very strong desire to find their real parents if they are still alive, or find those that knew them if they are no longer around. The stories of the 'stolen generation' of Aboriginal children forcibly removed from their parents prove this; their lives were consumed with trying to 'find' their parents in various ways. The Lord would have naturally turned His attention to 'finding' and getting to know His real Father from about the age of 3 or 5, forging a bond which is the biological imperative of all children, at this age. He would have been told by Mary that the true Father was not around, but could be 'found' in the book of His words- the Law and the Prophets. This knowledge would have given Him a strong desire to not only read the scriptures but to understand every single word of them, to mull over them to imagine what His Father was like and so on. He would have read the Torah avidly from beginning to end and back again, knowing they were the words, every single one of them, of His Heavenly Father. Through them and through prayer He got to 'know' and love His Father intimately because He is there in Scripture in all His completeness, nothing is hidden. For the word is God, and God is His word. Hence His 'abba' approach to the Father He came to know. The Lord had more understanding than all his teachers in the temple and synagogues, because he
The spirit that motivated Him was partly His own psychological need, His great desire that grew and grew, to know and love His real Father, His own dad. In this He was helped by the sure knowledge of His mother's love. And by the tradition that all Jewish boys learn to read and write from God's word, we can be sure that from an early age He filled Himself with Scripture. By the time He was 12, His insight into those Scriptures was phenomenal. He was utterly convinced and secure in the knowledge that God in heaven was His real Father and that these very words spoke of Him too...He could teach others to pray to the Father who really
Jn. 5:19 gives a window into the Lord's self-perception here. He says that whatever He sees the Father / abba / daddy do, He does " in like manner" . It is the language of a young child mimicking their father. And He speaks of Himself as an adult behaving just like this. There was a child-likeness about Him in this sense. And the disciples seem to have noticed this- for no less than four times in Acts (Acts 3:13,26; 4:27,30) they refer to Jesus as the " holy child" of God. Their image of Jesus had something in it which reflected that child-likeness about Him which still stuck in their memories. And may we too " ceaseless...Abba, father, cry" . The haunting melody of that hymn well expresses the utter wonder of it all, as we too struggle to find our true Father. The spirit / attitude of the Son of God should be ours, in that we like Him cry " Abba, father" (Gal. 4:6; Rom. 8:15). His spirit / attitude to the Father should be ours; He stressed that His Father is our Father (Jn. 20:17). Jesus acted and 'was' for all the world as if He had had His natural Father with Him from the start of His life. This was how close the Father became to Jesus; the extent to which He successfully 'found' Him; to the point that the 'mere' invisibility of that Father was not a major issue or barrier in their relationship. And so it should be for us, in the life of believing in that which is unseen, and in them who are invisible to us.
Another window into the Lord's self-perception is given in the record of His behaviour in the temple at age 12. Within the psychological matrix in which the young Jesus existed, as well as within the cultural norms of first century Palestine, it was rude for a 12 year old to retort to His mother: "Didn't you know I would be about my father's business?". It appears insolent towards Joseph too. But that statement, in the Lord's case, was not a sin, nor a typically precocious childish comment- although it would've been on the lips of any other 12 year old. Instead it reflects an abnormal degree of detachment from His mother and step-father, and a remarkable statement as to how much He was Himself, how mature and strong was His sense of identity as the uniquely begotten Son of God.
Another part of the psychological matrix would have been that by the time the Lord was 30, the younger siblings would have grown to self-sufficiency; the need for Him to stay in the home as provider was now past. The normal psychological pressure would have been for Him to start His own family and home. Yet instead, He channelled those energies into His true bride, the band of Palestinian peasants who were to slowly and falteringly come to love Him back and bring forth fruit to His glory. Much study has been done of the crisis many males go through around the age of 30, the desire to stop experimenting and settle down, to cease being cared for and instead seeking to build up something permanent, the sense that life is passing by...it has all been very well summed up by daniel Levinson in his study of the " age thirty transition" (3) .All this energy was released by the Lord into His three year ministry which changed human destiny, so intense and far reaching and successful was it. " I go to prepare a place for you...." is surely an allusion to the Palestinian tradition that the wife came to live with the new husband after a year and a day, whilst He 'prepared the place' for her. The cross was His purchase of us as His bride. The bridegroom was “taken away” from the wedding guests (Mk. 2:20)- the same word used in the LXX of Is. 53:8 for the ‘taking away’ of the Lord Jesus in His crucifixion death. But the groom is ‘taken away’ from the guests- because he is going off to marry his bride. The cross, in all its tears, blood and pain, was the Lord’s wedding to us.
Fatherless In Galilee
The fact that Jesus was humanly fatherless has been extensively commented upon by Andries van Aarde. He points out that: “Against the background of the marriage arrangements within the patriarchal mind-set of Israelites in the Second Temple period, a fatherless Jesus would have been without social identity. He would have been excluded from being called a child of Abraham, that is, a child of God. Access to the court of the Israelites in the temple, where mediators could facilitate forgiveness for sin, would have been denied to him. He would have been excluded from the privilege of being given a daughter in marriage” (4) . Behold the paradox. Because He was the Son of God, He was written off by Israel as not being a child of God; because He was
We can easily overlook the deep and awesome significance of calling our fellow believers “brother” and “sister”. As Paul so strongly stresses, the Lord Jesus created a new sense of family, of “social identity”. We can easily miss how radical this was in first century Palestine; just as we can miss it in our own context. In the Mediterranean world of the first century, families were supremely important. The head of the family exercised total control. For the Lord to teach that His followers should call no man on earth their father was extreme; and yet He said it and expected it (Mt. 23:9). Likewise His teaching about our having a
Because the Lord was so excluded from society, He would have been so focused upon His Heavenly Father. And that would have been felt and perceived. Reflect how the Centurion muttered: “Truly this was the Son of God”. The Lord’s creation of a new family was radical then; and it’s just as radical today. In passing, the Lord must have been so tempted to say that Joseph was his father. It would’ve made things
The Struggle With Self-Doubt
The essence of the wilderness temptations appears to me to be connected with a tendency within Jesus towards self-doubt; to question whether He really was God’s Son. After all, everyone around Him thought He had a human father. Perhaps Mary’s mid-life collapse of faith involved her going quiet over the visit of the Angel and her strange son’s Divine begettal. Perhaps it all seemed as a dream to her, especially if Joseph was dead or not on the scene. Jesus was so human that it must have been unreal for Him to imagine that actually, His mother was the only woman to have become pregnant directly from God. And we all have the essence of this temptation; to wonder whether in fact we really are any different from the world around us, whether we have in any meaningful sense been born again, whether God actually sees us as His children; whether we will receive the salvation of God's children and eternal entrance into His family which is ours if we are now His children. To have those struggles isn’t sinful; for the Lord endured these temptations without sinning. Here, then, is the evidence that the wilderness temptations hinged around His own questioning of His Divine Sonship:
- The promise to receive ‘the Kingdoms of the world and their glory’ was framed in the language of Ps. 2:7,8 LXX. Here God proclaims His Son to the world, and invites His Son to ‘Ask of me, and I will give to you the nations of the earth for your inheritance, and the ends of the earth for your possession”. The Greek words used are similar to the words of ‘the devil’ to Jesus. Clearly the Lord was being tempted not only to misapply Scripture, but also to just check that He really was in fact God’s Son.
- “
- “If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread” (Mt. 4:3) can also be translated: “Give the command to God, so that he will provide bread from these stones”(8). The idea is that if Jesus is God’s Son, then, God will do what Jesus asks Him. The temptation to jump off the temple was really the same thing- ‘If God’s really your father, then surely He’ll give you unlimited protection?’.
- The temptation to worship the devil, and
- The Jews expected Messiah to authenticate Himself by creating manna(9). The
- The temptations involved an element of doing visible miracles in order to prove that He was indeed God’s Son. Several times, the Lord stresses that experiencing miracles would not of itself prove to anyone that He is the Son of God. He taught this on the basis of having faced acute temptation in that very area.
These temptations to self-doubt recurred. We read that the devil left Jesus for a while, implying he / it returned to Jesus. If the devil refers to a literal person, then Scripture is silent as to this ever occurring. But once the devil is understood as the personal temptations of Jesus, then all becomes clearer. The essence of what He internally struggled with as He sat in the desert returned to Him. In fact whenever the Lord is described as being ‘tempted’ later in the Gospel records, it’s possible to understand those temptations not merely as ‘tests’, but as moral temptations which repeated the essence of the wilderness temptations:
- The Greek wording of ‘command that these stones be made bread’ recurs in Mt. 20:21, where a woman likewise asks Jesus to command, to utter a word of power, that would give her sons the best places in His Kingdom. Likewise in Lk. 9:54, where the Lord is asked to issue a ‘command’ for fire to come down against the Samaritans. Fire will only come from Heaven in the final judgment (Rev. 20:9). Again, the essence of the temptation was to try to prove that He was Son of God by forcing the Kingdom to come in His lifetime, to avoid the cross. Whereas it was His death and resurrection which actually declared Him to be the Son of God (Rom. 1:4)- not simply His miracles. For many men have done miracles, but this didn’t prove they were the begotten Son of God. And all this is what He faced in the wilderness.
- Another example of the ‘devil’ returning is to be found in the way that the Lord Jesus is described as being ‘tempted’ to provide a ‘sign’, a miracle to prove He is actually Son of God (Mt. 12:38-40; 16:1-4).
- The temptation to produce a miraculous sign to validate Himself was of course repeated as He hung on the cross (Mk. 15:27-32).
- The temptation of the Lord about the divorce and remarriage question was also a moral issue (Mt. 19:1-9). John the Baptist had lost his head for criticizing Herod's divorce and remarriage; and surely the intention of the question was to lead the Lord into making a statement which Herod would see as critical of his situation. The temptation for the Lord was perhaps to assert Himself as a King in opposition to Herod and thus proclaim His political Kingdom there and then. Likewise the 'temptation' whether to pay tax to Rome or not (Mk. 12:14). Refusing to pay tax to Rome was the classic issue raised by the Jewish revolutionaries- for the tax was seen as funding anti-Jewish and pagan functions and rituals. Again, the essence of the temptation, as in the wilderness, was to proclaim Himself as King of Israel and Son of God there and then, rather than wait for His death and resurrection to be the true declaration of that Sonship (Rom. 1:4).
- Peter tempts the Lord to consider that being Messiah didn’t mean that He had to suffer, and that He could start His Kingdom there and then (Mt. 16:21-23). Perhaps the way the Lord called Peter ‘satan’ at that point was an intentional reference back to the wilderness struggles with ‘satan’.
Notes
(1) Edward Edinger,
(2) C.H. Dodd,
(3) Daniel Levinson,
(4) Andries van Aarde,
(5) Quoted in J.A. Montgomery,
(6) Bruce Malina has written extensively about this. See his
(7) E.P. Sanders,
(8) This translation is justified at length in J.B. Gibson,
(9) B. Gerhardsson,
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. The Real Christ...
2-3 The Self-Proclamation Of Jesus
The real Christ must be the concealed basic pattern behind a person. But one of the problems in seeking to build up an image of the man Jesus is that He Himself didn't proclaim so much about Himself in so many words. He never specifically announces that He is Messiah- that fact is stated by who He was in life. His miracles were a
Jesus does not proclaim Himself, and yet He expects us to base our lives around Him. This is yet another paradox. Clearly we are intended to reconstruct Him from our repeated and sensitive readings of the Gospels. We in our day must read the Gospel records, portraying Him as they do from four different angles, and seek to reconstruct Him in our own minds as a person. His actions spoke loudly [and in this He is a pattern to us in our witness]. When He stilled the storm, the disciples marvelled: " What manner of man is this?" , knowing full well that His actions were in fulfillment of the prophecy that
The Lord Jesus preached of the Kingdom of God. But “The Kingdom of God” is a title of Jesus in places like Lk. 17:20,21. As the King of the Kingdom, He was the personal embodiment of it. His personality was the proclamation in itself of the reign of God, both as it can be now, and as it will be on earth at His return. There's another example of " the Kingdom of God" being used as a title for Jesus; it's in Jn. 3:2-5. There, Nicodemus says that he perceives that Jesus is “from God” because of His miracles. But the Lord replies that only if a man is born again can he see or perceive the Kingdom of God; and only if he is born again by baptism of water and spirit can he enter into the Kingdom. It’s easy to overlook the fact that the context of the Lord’s comment was about His being Messiah, and how men could perceive / recognize that. If we read “the Kingdom of God” as a title of Himself, all becomes clear. Through baptism, birth of water and spirit, we enter into Christ. He was then and is now, the very essence of the Kingdom; the ultimate picture of the Kingdom life. There was a perfect congruence between His message about the Kingdom, and His own character. And this is what will give our preaching of that very same Kingdom a like power and convicting appeal to men and women.
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2-4 Jesus A Palestinian Jew
The real Christ becomes yet more real – in my experience at least- by reflecting upon what the Gospels record of His
And so we come to I guess the crucial question, in our search for a true picture of Jesus. What did people see in Jesus as He walked down the street, as He scratched, sneezed, as perhaps He asked for directions to someone's home...? Surely they saw no halo around His head. The Orthodox and Catholic churches have done huge damage to people in pushing this image of Jesus. People saw in Him a man. So human, that they were surprised when He indirectly declared one day in the synagogue that basically, He was Messiah. We read that Jesus “came into his own country” (Mk. 6:1)- an artless reflection of the way in which He really was so human, having His “own” native area- here on this earth and not in any pre-existent form in Heaven! He had a very common Jewish name. The brothers of Jesus had names which were among the commonest Jewish names at the time- James, Joseph, Simon and Judas (Mt. 13:55; Mk. 6:3). I know we know this, but just remember how Jesus truly shared our nature. He smelt the smells of the marketplace, as He walked around helping a little child crying because he'd lost his mum. From the larynx of a Palestinian Jew there truly came the words of Almighty God. There, in the very flesh and body tissue of the man Jesus, was God manifested in flesh. And yet that wondrous man, that being, that Son of God who had no human father, readily laughed at the funny side of events, just like anyone else. His hands and arms would have been those of a working man. He is always described as walking everywhere- and it's been calculated that He must have walked 10,000 km. during His ministry. He slept under the Olive trees at the foot of the Mount of Olives; the Son of man had nowhere to lay His head. So He would often have appeared a bit rough, His feet would have developed large blisters, and His skin would have been sunburnt. Palestine was infested with bandits at the time. It was almost inevitable that the Lord was robbed and threatened at least once. He would have gone through all the gut feelings one does when they are mugged: the initial shock, the obvious question that skates through the mind 'How much harm are they gonna do me...?', the bad taste left in the mouth afterwards, the way one keeps on re-living every moment of what happened. He would have known those feelings.
He was “despised and rejected of men”, as Isaiah had foretold so long before. It’s perhaps hard to feel from our distance the extent to which Galilee was despised by the Jerusalem Jews. Although Jerusalem to Galilee is only around 100 km., “only in exceptional circumstances will someone living in Jerusalem have travelled to the distant province of Galilee, as the
Notes
(1) N.T. Wright,
(2) Martin Hengel,
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2-5 Jesus And People
Although He was a leader, swamped by crowds wherever He went, with an entourage of children always behind Him, Jesus had none of the characteristics of the cult leader. Those religious reformer, cult leader types are usually highly strung, compulsive, angry, austere people who make others feel uncomfortable in their presence. Yet the way the Gospels make it clear that He made all types of people and children feel happy in His presence indicates that Jesus just wasn't like this. He wasn't critical of others' weaknesses. And today just as much, Jesus attracts all types of people to Himself, thus forging the unique fellowship which we know so well- from taxi drivers to insurance executives, saints to sinners. The light of who He was revealed the areas of improvement required in others; but it was His very uncriticalness which attracted people. Yet this wasn't because He simply wasn't the critical type. His lambasting of the Scribes and Pharisees shows that clearly enough. What He
His otherwise uncritical spirit is shown by His patient bearing with the immaturity of the twelve. Recall when the Lord was walking ahead of them, and they were fiercely debating who should be the greatest. He either sensed what they were talking about, or simply overheard them and didn't let on. He slows down and lets them catch up. And instead of blasting them that " Come on, that's not how you should be talking..." , He almost congratulates them on wanting to be greatest by saying that whoever wants to be greatest must be servant of all. So artless, so gentle, so careful not to humiliate them by force or spiritual manipulation. Or think of the rich young man who wanted to follow the Lord. Jesus told him to keep the commandments. There is a glaring contradiction in the way this
His body language would have spoken volumes. Grace as it were poured from His lips, Ps. 45 had foretold. His words were full of grace in a way that was altogether striking. You know how it is when it seems a fly or a bee seems intent on persecuting you. Think of your body language as you brush it away in exasperation. Think of His...in the blazing heat of Palestine. Time and again, day after day. I suspect it would have been different. And then think of how the scent of blood would have beckoned all manner of insects and even birds of prey to irritate the Son of God as He hung in His time of dying, unable to brush them away. Thinking of His daily demeanour helps us grasp how the cross was really an extension of His life; it wasn't simply an unusual, out of character pinnacle of uncharacteristic spirituality. And likewise our crises will only be surmounted if we can meet them in the spirit with which we live everyday life.
Jesus was in His life " separate from sinners" (Heb. 7:26). The Greek word very definitely means 'to actively depart from'- it's used about a partner walking out of a marriage. Yet the Lord is always pictured as mixing with sinners, to the extent that they felt they could come to Him easily, and actually liked to do this. So how was He " separate" from them in the way the Hebrew writer understood? Here again we see one of the profoundest paradoxes in this supremest of personalities. He was with sinners, then and now; His solidarity with us, the roughest and the most obvious and the subtlest of us, is what attracts us to Him. And yet He is somehow totally separate from us; and it is this in itself which brings us to Him.
Jesus truly was all things to all men, as was his matchless disciple Paul; yet He managed to achieve this without being hypocritical, in the sense of being one thing to one person but acting another way to someone else. The fact He wasn't hypocritical and yet was all things to all perhaps reflects the way there were so many sides to His character; or it can simply be that He Himself had such compassion for people that He could somehow genuinely be the person they needed Him to be, without any insincerity about Him. God is perfect within Himself as signified by His name " I am that I am" nothing more nothing less, and Jesus as His Son was likewise complete within Himself. He was complete as a human being. When we look at our Lord there is no false self- a phenomena which dogs all of us in some ways at some times, What we see is what He is, nothing is hidden in the sense that He had no hidden agendas. This was extremely appealing to people.
All this was why He was able to attract all kinds of sinners to Him, when those who are spiritually marginalized tend normally to steer away from those who exude righteousness but no humanity. He was real, He really was who He appeared to be, there was total congruence between His words and actions; and He encouraged others in the same spirit to simply face up to who they were. And He would accept them at that. Yet He was real and human; although there was this congruence between His words and actions, consider how His spirit was “troubled”; “now is my soul troubled” (Jn. 12:27; 13:21). Yet He goes on to use the same word to exhort the disciples hours later: “Let not your heart be troubled” (Jn. 14:1, 27). Was this inconsistency, “Do as I say, not as I do”? Of course not. The strength and power of His exhortation “Let not your heart be troubled” was in the very way that His heart
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2-6 The Words Of Jesus
From the larynx of a Palestinian Jew there came the words of Almighty God. And yet He spoke them in the accent of a rural Galilean. We know this because Peter was identified as being one of the Lord's close disciples because of His accent (Mt. 26:73; Mk. 14:70). The dialect of Aramaic used in Galilee was a permanent topic of sarcasm in Jerusalem circles. There is a story in the Mishnah (bErubin 53b) which mocks how the Galileans pronounced words which began with a guttural [deep-throat] consonant. It ridicules how a Galilean in Jerusalem tries to buy something in a market but is mocked by the merchant: " You stupid Galilean, do you need something to ride on [
Most 1st century religious Jews tried to pray to God in Hebrew rather than Aramaic. Yet even on the cross, Jesus prayed to His Father in Aramaic-
There can be no doubt that Jesus spoke the words of God, and therefore His sayings can be interpreted at the deepest possible level; and yet at the same time, they were so easy to understand. The sayings of Jesus have been translated back into Aramaic, the language of His day, by C.F. Burney (1). He was struck by the degree to which they had a rhythmic shape, like many of the prophetic sayings of the Old Testament. Thus a passage like Lk. 7:22 has six two-beat lines followed at the end by a three beat line; the commission to the disciples in Mt. 10:8 rhymes, both in Aramaic and in Greek. The Lord’s prayer is expressed in two-beat lines. The crunch point of the Lord’s forgiveness parable in Lk. 15:7, that there is joy in Heaven over one sinner that repents, uses the device of alliteration, i.e. similarly sounding words. He uses three words which feature the guttural ‘h’: joy =
How He prayed is an example of the Lord’s words being made flesh in His living. He taught His men to pray “Your will be done”; and in Gethsemane, He prayed those very words Himself, even though praying them meant an acceptance of crucifixion (Mt. 26:52). In that same context, the Lord asks His men to pray that they enter not into temptation (Lk. 22:46). He was asking them to pray His model prayer just as He was doing. His own example was to be their inspiration. I wonder too, in passing, whether the Lord’s request at that time that the cup of suffering pass from Him (Mk. 14:35) was His way of praying not to be led into temptation- for perhaps He momentarily feared that He would finally spiritually stumble under the burden of the cross? This surely is the meaning of the hymn that speaks of living more nearly as we pray.
The theme of John’s writings is that “the word” which was in the beginning, the word of the Gospel, the word of command which brought forth all creation in the first place, is the same word that has been made flesh in Jesus, and which can likewise work a powerful new creation in the lives of all who allow that word to abide in them. Hence the emphasis of John upon the manner in which the
Notes
(1) C.F. Burney,
(2) This is from the Old Russian text of
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2-7 The Poverty Of Jesus
Rich Man In A Poor Man's Shirt
Jesus was poor (1). He was from Nazareth, a village of between 200 to 2,000 people, about 7 km. away from Sepphoris, a city of 40,000. And He would have gone through the process of socialization which anyone does who lives in a village under the shadow of the big town. He is described as a
That God's Son could be a normal working class person actually says a lot about the humility of God Himself. Jn. 5:17 has been translated: "My Father is a working man to this day, and I am a working man myself". No less an authority than C.H. Dodd commented: "That the Greek words could bear that meaning is undeniable" (5). I find especially awsome the way Mary mistakes the risen Lord for a lowly gardener- He evidently dressed Himself in the clothes of a working man straight after His resurrection, a far cry from the haloed Christ of high church art.
And yet if ever there was the rich man in the poor man's shirt, it was Jesus. The cross is imaged as Jesus the rich man making Himself a pauper for our sakes. He could have asked His Father for anything; He could have had all the Kingdoms of the world and their wealth. Just for the sake of an internal submission within His brain cells to the desire to have it all. That's how close wealth and prosperity was for Jesus. Why, then, did He allow Himself to remain poor, when He must have seen His family so suffering? Surely it was because He wanted to be able to relate not only to the materially poor, but to those who are marginalized and desperate in
The special identity of Jesus with the poor is reflected in His parable of the sheep and goats. We will be judged upon our treatment of “the least” of the Lord’s brethren; yet the description of “the least” brethren exactly match the Lord’s own experience in His death- one who is imprisoned (Mt. 26:50), sick (Mt. 27:26), naked (Mt. 27:35), thirsty (Mt. 26:29; 27:48), friendless like a stranger (Mt. 26:56). In responding to “the least” of the Lord’s brethren, we are responding to His cross. For our brethren, in their poverty, nakedness and imprisonment, are fellowshipping the sufferings of their Lord.
Notes
(1) However the suggestion has been made that because Jesus increased in favour with men, He may have gotten on quite well in His secular life. Paul speaks about how although Jesus was rich, yet for our sakes He became poor [a pauper, Gk.] that we through His poverty might be rich (2 Cor. 8:9). I find those words hard to conclusively interpret. Clearly the reference is to the 'poverty' of the cross, that we might be spiritually rich- for He doesn't enable us to get materially rich through following Him. And yet the context of Paul's words is about the need to give up our material riches for Christ's people, and he cites the example of Jesus to inspire us in this.
(2) Geza Vermes,
(3) Andries van Aarde,
(4) James Dunn,
(5) C.H. Dodd,
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2-8 Finding Meaning In Everyday Experience
In Jn. 10:36 there's a brief and rare window into how the Lord perceived His life before age 30. There Jesus says that He was "consecrated" [as a priest or High Priest], and then sent into the world, at age 30. That's how He looked back and understood those 30 years of mundane village life- a process of consecration, of purifying, of preparation. He saw that none of the multitude of daily frustrations was without purpose- it was all part of His preparation. And perhaps we'll look back on these brief years of our humanity in the same way. But the point in our context in these studies is that the Lord's mundane life before 30 was actually an active preparation of Him for service.
Like most Jews, He would have prayed the
This way He had of finding meaning in everyday experience is reflected in His parables, most of which have an element of unreality in them. By doing this, Jesus was telling stories which had the hearers feeling comfortable, because they were set in such well known homely contexts, but then He shows how in the midst of ordinary life, there is something arrestingly different.
No shepherd really leaves 99 sheep and goes off looking for one
But this is the extent of the searching, saving love of Christ
A mustard seed doesn't really grow into such a huge tree where birds nest. They only grow a metre or so high.
But this is the power of preaching; small beginnings have disproportionate results. A leaflet left on a bus brings a human being to eternal life...
No sower really throws out seed literally everywhere.
But this is the enthusiasm we should have to spread the message absolutely everywhere
No employer really pays the guy who worked one hour what he paid the one who worked all day
But works are so totally irrelevant to the pure grace of salvation, the penny given to all.
Nobody with a plank in front of them seeks to reach behind it to take a splinter out of another's eye
But this is how stupid we are in seeking to criticize others.
No smart trader literally sells all he has and buys a pearl, just to sit and look at it in his new poverty. He can't eat it, benefit from it materially...just have it.
So possessing relationship with the Father and the hope of salvation is something which gives no material increment; it's the joy of having it which is so wondrous, and leads us to act out of character with human wisdom, as the once wealthy trader did.
It surely wouldn't be that when the King has a marriage supper for his son, nobody wants to come
But this really is how hurtful, rude and inexplicable is humanity's rejection of the Gospel's invitation.
No father waits up all day looking for any sign of his wayward son; no woman goes so crazy and gets so extravagant when she finds a lost dowry coin
But this is the Father's searching love and eager desire for our return; and Heaven's joy at a repentance is way out of proportion with who we are. That an attitude of mind within human brain cells can result in the whole of Heaven electric with joy...
All this reflects how although the Lord was supremely 'separate' in the ways that true holiness require, yet He perceived spiritual prompts in the ordinary things of every day life. Recall how the disciples rebuked those who wanted to bring children to Jesus (Lk. 18:17). Yet He saw in them the qualities of those who would be in His Kingdom. Those kids weren't 'spiritual' in themselves. They were just Palestinian kids with well meaning mums. Yet, the Lord explained, that was no reason to disregard them. They should be seen as reminders of spiritual qualities which should be in us all. And this was how He perceived everything in His daily round of life. He raised everything to an altogether higher level. It was, for example, customary for Semitic peoples to greet each other [as it is today] with the words 'shalom!' or 'salaam!' ['peace']. But there was little real meaning in those words. The Lord said that His peace, His 'shalom', He gives to us, not as the [Jewish] world gave it. Likewise He told His disciples to say " Peace be to this house" (Lk. 10:5) when they entered a home. Yet this was the standard greeting. What He surely meant was that they were to say it with meaning.
Jesus focused on the essential whilst still being human enough to be involved in the irrelevancies which cloud the lives of all other men. Just glancing through a few random chapters from the Gospels reveals this tremendous sense of focus which He had, and His refusal to be distracted by self-justification. In all of the following examples I suspect we would have become caught up with justifying ourselves and answering the distractions to the point that our initial aim was paralyzed. Focus Distraction Resumed Focus
The sick woman touches His clothes, and He turns around to see her. He wants to talk to her.
The disciples tell Him that this is unreasonable, as a huge crowd is pressing on to Him
" He looked round about [again] to see her that had done this thing" (Mk. 5:30-32). He talks to her.
He says that the dead girl is only sleeping; for He wants to raise her.
" They laughed Him to scorn"
" But..." He put them all out of the house and raised her (Mk. 5:40,41).
He was moved with compassion for the crowds, and wants to feed them and teach them more.
The disciples tell Him to send the people away as it was getting late
He tells the disciples to feed them so that they can stay and hear more (Mk. 6:35-37)
Again He has compassion on the hunger of the crowd
The disciples mock His plan to feed them
He feeds them (Mk. 8:3-6)
He explains how He must die
Peter rebukes Him
He repeats His message, telling them that they too must follow the way of the cross (Mk. 8:31-34)
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2-9 Jesus The Intellectual
As the Son of God, Jesus was an intellectual without compare. The way He spoke is evidence enough. His stories and images were simple and yet tax the finest intellect to fully interpret. They spoke to all men. His debating skills were extraordinary. In a split second, it seems, He could turn a question back on His interrogators to confound them in the profoundest way. His words often contain allusions to 5 or 6 Old Testament passages in the same sentence, all perfectly and compellingly in context. If He had so allowed His mind to wander down the paths of science, He would have easily grasped the principles of gravity, relativity etc. that took a Newton or an Einstein of later centuries to uncover. And who knows, maybe He did figure all this. Maybe He mused about the surface tension on the water in His cup as He took a break with the guys at work. This would have resulted in an ineffable loneliness, as He lived and worked amongst the simplest and poorest human beings. There must have been so many things that He troubled over that He could share with nobody. Nobody, apart from His Father in prayer. Here we take a breath in sheer admiration. For He could relate so well to them, He was one of them, yet He was so far above them. We tend to relate well only to those of our own type. Whereas the Lord was truly all things to all men. And this, it seems to me, is the essence of powerful preaching and influencing of others for good, to be able to truly relate to them, as one of them, and yet have earnt enough respect from them to be able to lead them to higher levels. Further, if you feel, as we all do to some extent, to be essentially different from those around you, to think in different ways from them to the point you just pine away inside your own personality...think of Jesus. He " came down" from Heaven to earth for us- not literally, of course, but in His manifestation of Heavenly things in the terms of flesh.
The remarkable nature of Jesus wasn't, it seems, recognized by those He grew up with. When He began His public ministry by standing up in the synagogue, both the villagers and His own family were scandalized [Gk.] that He was claiming to be anything other than the Jesus-ben-Joseph they had always known. Yet they had all heard the stories about the strange conception of John, the belief he was the Elijah prophet heralding Messiah, who was to have been Jesus, the Angel's visit, etc. They shouldn't have been
The Messianic Ps. 40:9 predicted how the Lord would preach or proclaim righteousness; and yet He never allowed Himself to be loudly preached in the streets, and the people He lived with considered Him so ordinary. Yet He proclaimed righteousness; “to the great congregation” (LXX
The parables are to me the greatest window onto the Lord's intellectual genius. They meant one thing for those who heard them; and yet even those with no idea of the cultural milieu in which the Lord spoke them can still learn so much from them. The more we struggle to interpret them, the more layers of meaning and Old Testament allusion we perceive; and the more bitingly personally relevant they become to us. The Old Testament scriptures were clearly in the bloodstream of Jesus, allusions to them just flow out in all kinds of ways, at all sorts of levels. He was the word made flesh. I believe the Lord didn't just open His mouth and the stories flowed out, by some Divine impulse. They were clearly rooted in His own life experience amongst the peasants of Galilee; His genius was in the way He so deeply reflected upon mundane life and brought it all to such glorious and vivid spiritual life. I submit that He had spent years developing those stories, and of course the ideas behind them. They are an art form, quite apart from the reflection they give of the Lord's spiritual insights. Paul spoke in theological terms, using conceptual language. But the parables address those same issues, e.g. of grace and forgiveness, in a simple and pictorial form. As the exquisite art form which they are, they reveal to us the huge creative energy and achievement of Jesus. We all have creative potential; but we are held back from painting that picture, penning that poem, writing that book, finishing that project... because of the mundane. The cat's puked on the carpet, the kids are crying, we're worried about cash flow this month because the gutter broke... but the Lord Jesus was assailed by all these things, and far more. And yet He didn't allow all this 'humanity' to impede His creativity; He in fact used all those very mundane things as fuel for His thinking, mixing them in with His constant meditations upon the text of God's word to produce the parables. I salute Him and bow before Him for this. What a joy it will be to meet Him, to see / perceive Him as He is... and, quite simply, to experience the truth of the fact that 'We shall be like Him'. The emphasis must be on the word "Him"- we shall be like
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2-10 The Naturalness Of Jesus
The naturalness which Jesus had with people reflects His respect for the freedom which God has given His people to chose for themselves. He was Himself supremely free, due to His pure conscience before the Father. He was the red heifer “upon which never came yoke” (Num. 19:2). We were set free from sin by Christ through “freedom” (Gal. 5:1 RV). But we were set free by Him as a person. His freedom, His freedom from sin and the freedom that must have characterized His person, is what liberates us too. And it is the experience of that freedom, the freedom from sin that comes through forgiveness (Jn. 8:32), which can be ‘used’ to love others (Gal. 5:13).
He didn't spell things out to His followers in the detailed way many religious leaders do. And yet it is surely related to a sense one gets from re-reading the Gospels that Jesus was in tune with nature. He so often uses examples and parables grounded in a perceptive reflection upon the natural creation. He spoke of the carefreeness of birds and other animals; and yet He had the shadow of the cross hanging over Him. The way He was evidently so relaxed with people is a tremendous testimony to Him, bearing in mind the agony ahead. All this is what makes and made Jesus so compelling. On one hand, an almost impossible standard- to be perfect, as the Father is. And yet on the other, an almost unbelievable acceptance of fallen men and women. He didn't criticize those who came to Him. He Himself was the standard by which their consciences were pricked, and yet not in such a way that they were scared away from Him. This mixture of high standards and yet acceptance of people wherever they were is what we all find so elusive. The fact none of us get it right is what turns so many away from our preaching. How compelling He was is shown by how He polarized people- He sought to provoke a final decision in people for or against Him personally- not a yes or no to a particular dogma, rite or law. His compelling power is associated with the sense of urgency which there was in His teaching. The Lord repeatedly spoke of His return as being imminent- and surely His intention was to inspire in us a sense of urgency about His return, a living for His kingdom today rather than delaying till tomorrow.
The Lord was unlike any other Rabbi- He wasn’t a verse-by-verse expositor of the Old Testament, neither did He like to argue case law. He told parables to exemplify and clarify His message- not in order to explain an Old Testament verse, as the Rabbis tended to. He drew lessons from nature in a way the Rabbis simply couldn’t do. Rabbi Jakob, a first century Rabbi, stated: “He who walks along the road repeating the Law and interrupts his repetition and says: How lovely this tree is! How lovely this field is! To him it will be reckoned as if he had misused his life” (The Mishnah,
Jesus died because He gave out His Spirit, as an act of the will. He gave His life, it was not taken from Him by murder. The fact the Lord died not just because events overtook Him and happened to Him is perhaps reflected in Paul’s speaking in Rom. 6 of “the death that he died…the life that he liveth”. He died a death; he Himself died it; and yet just as truly, He lived a life. He didn’t just let events happen to Him. He was not mastered in His life by human lusts and selfish desires; He was in that sense the only ultimately free person to have ever lived. When He “bowed his head”, the same Greek is used as in Mt. 8:20: “The Son of man has no place to lay / bow his head”. It was as if He only lay His head down, giving out His life, when He knew it was time to rest from a day’s work well done. He lived a surpassingly free life, and freely gave that life up; it was not taken from Him.
On one hand, the Lord was totally in tune with the thinking of those around Him. Yet on another, He was so out of step with them to an extent that must have led to great temptations of frustration and loneliness. The disciples drove away the children; but Jesus wanted them to come to Him. He spoke of having food to eat which they didn't know, referring to the stimulation of His conversation with the Samaritan woman; and they thought someone had sneaked Him a packed lunch. They thought that Mary had wasted the valuable ointment; whereas He perceived it as a highly appropriate gift of love and understanding. It was as if He spoke a different language, was on a different level, was out of sync with those around Him. And yet on the other hand, it was His very humanity and realness which attracted people to Him. The tension between these two aspects of Jesus provides real insight into His personality and daily mental experience amongst us.
And consider the way He was accused of being a glutton and drunkard. He clearly had no problem in making wine at Cana. Would He have shared a mug of wine with the boys when, say, someone had a birthday? And therefore would a 21st century Jesus have shared a beer with His fellow workers? Now in my image of Jesus I'm not sure He would have done. But perhaps in your image of Him, He would have. Apart from the memorial meeting, I don't drink, and haven't done for many years. I know how in many cultures this seems to erect a barrier between me and those I seek to make contact with. But when Jesus made the water into wine, He provided about 180 gallons [400 litres] of it. At a time when surely some were already rather the worse for wear from alcohol- for the master of the feast pointed out that the best wine [i.e. with higher alcohol content!] was brought out only when people couldn't tell the difference, because they had "well drunk" (Jn. 2:10- Gk.
And He encouraged others to likewise 'be themselves'. He spoke much of not being a
The 'naturalness' of Jesus becomes all the more powerful when we grasp Biblically that Jesus is our representative; exactly because He was really, genuinely human, He is such a natural and powerful imperative to us in our behaviour. Take, for example, His perception of His own baptism. Surely why He went through with it was to show His solidarity with us, who would later be baptized. He lined up along the banks along with big time sinners, nobodies, dear old grannies, weirdos, starry-eyed youngsters, village people stuck in the monotony of a hand-to-mouth existence, all of them standing there probably half-naked...and took His turn to be baptized. When asked later to account for His authority, Jesus asked whether His questioners accepted John's baptism as from Heaven or from men (Mk. 11:30). This wasn't merely a diversionary question; it was dead relevant. His authority was [partly] because He had been baptized by John. This was how much John's baptism inspired Him. It meant so much to Him, to have been thus identified with us. And it was that very identification with humanity, as the " son of Man" , that gave Him His authority.
It could even be argued from Rom. 8:3 ("in the likeness of sinful flesh") that the Lord Jesus appeared to be a normal sinful human being, although He was not a sinner. This would explain the amazement of the townspeople who knew Him, when He indirectly declared Himself to be Messiah. Grammatically, "it is not the noun "flesh" but the adjective "sinful" that demands the addition of "likeness"" (1). He appeared as a sinner, without being one. Of course we can conveniently misunderstand this, to justify our involvement with sinful things and appearing just like the surrounding world, in order to convert them. But all the same, it was exactly because the Lord Jesus appeared so normal, so closely part of sinful humanity, that He was and is our Saviour and compelling example.
Child-likeness
There was a child-likeness about the Lord. Not in that He was naieve- He was the least naieve of all men. But rather did He have an innocence about sin, as if He were a sweet child caught up within the web of sinful men around Him. Indeed the point has been made that when Paul spoke of the Lord as being one “who knew no sin” (2 Cor. 5:21), he was using the very phrase used in rabbinic and other contemporary writings to describe children, who were too young to ‘know sin’ (2). This child-likeness was beautifully related to His utter naturalness of which we have earlier spoken.
Notes
(1) F.F. Bruce,
(2) R. Bultmann,
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2-11 Perceiving Others’ Needs
You will have noticed how often the Gospels record that Jesus "answered and said...". Yet it's often not clear whether anyone had asked a question, or said anything that needed a response (Mt. 11:25; 22:1; Mk. 10:24, 51; 11:14,22,33; 12:35; 13:2; 14:48; Lk. 5:22; 7:40; 8:50; 13:2; 14:3,5; 17:17; 22:51; Jn. 1:50; 5:19; 6:70; 10:32; 12:23,30; 16:31). If you go through this list, you will see how Jesus 'answered' / responded to peoples' unexpressed fears and questions, their unarticulated concerns, criticisms, feelings and agendas. This little phrase reveals how sensitive Jesus was. He saw people's unspoken, unarticulated needs and responded. He didn't wait to be asked. For Jesus, everybody He met was a question, a personal direct challenge, that He responded to. And of course this is how we should seek to be too. He treated each person differently. Jesus approved Zacchaeus' distribution of only half of his possessions- whilst demanding that the rich young man give away literally all. And He never seems to have demanded that those of His followers who owned houses should sell them.
Even though Jesus never sinned, He reveals a remarkable insight into the process of human sin, temptation and subsequent moral need. This was learnt not only from reflection on Old Testament teaching, but surely also by a sensitive seeking to enter into the feelings and processes of the sinner. This is why no sinner, ourselves included, need ever feel that this perfect Man is somehow unable to be touched by the feeling of our infirmities. Consider how He spoke of looking upon a woman to lust after her; and how He used the chilling figure of cutting out the eye or hand that offended (Mt. 5:29)- the very punishments meted out in Palestine at the time for sexual misbehaviour. He had surely observed men with eyes on stalks, looking at women. Although He never sinned, yet He had thought Himself into their likelihood of failure, He knew all about the affairs going on in the village, the gutter talk of the guys at work...yet He knew and reflected upon those peoples' moral need, they were questions to Him that demanded answers, rather than a thanking God that He was not like other men were. Reflect on the characters of the Lord's parables. They cover the whole gamut of first century Palestinian life- labourers and elder sons and officials and mums and dads. They were snapshots of typical human behaviour, and as such they are essays in the way Jesus diagnosed the human condition; how much He had reflected upon people and society, and perceived our tragic need as nobody else has.
I once listened to an old Russian telling me how he was a soldier in the 2nd world war. Whilst fighting in the ruins of Germany in 1945, he got to know well a British soldier. He was impressed with the man's morality and kindness. One day, he observed his British friend sitting down on a curb in a burnt out German village. He took a big bar of chocolate out of his pack and started eating it. A young malnourished German boy came up and watched him at close range, mesmerized by the chocolate. The British soldier didn't give him any, and ate it all. Afterwards, my Russian friend explained, he asked him why he hadn't given the boy anything, when he had seen this same man show untold kindness and sensitivity to friend and foe alike for several weeks past. 'Well, he didn't ask me for any' was the answer, said, apparently, with total and evident honesty. And this is how we can all be, even though we may need to see ourselves from outside ourselves to perceive it. Generous, perhaps, when asked, but not actively imagining nor seeking out the needs of others and responding to them, unless we are confronted with them face to face. This was the warning I took from the old man’s story. Not only did Jesus 'answer' to the needs of others, but He Himself was a silent, insistent question that had to be responded to. He came and found the disciples sleeping, and they didn't know what to
The Sensitivity Of Jesus
The sensitivity of the Lord is reflected in how He frequently sensed and foresaw human behaviour and objections / response to His teaching and actions. You can read the Gospels and search for examples. Here’s a classic one: “But John would have hindered [Jesus]… but Jesus answering said…” (Mt. 3:14 RV). Jesus ‘answered’ John’s objection even before John had properly expressed it. His sensitivity is further revealed in how He comments upon the Jews’ question: “Art thou then the Son of God?”. He replies: “Ye say it because I am” (Lk. 22:70 RVmg.). The Lord perceived that men ask a question like that because subconsciously, they perceive the truth of the matter, and in their conscience, they already know the answer to their question. Perhaps for this reason He simply ceased answering their questions as the trial went on (Lk. 23:9). He realized that the questions they asked were actually revealing the answers which were already written in their consciences. For a man of this psychological insight to have lived and died amidst and for such a primitive rabble is indeed amazing.
The way the Lord Jesus 'knew' things because of His extreme sensitivity, rather than necessarily by some flash of Holy Spirit insight, isn't unparalleled amongst other men. Elisha knew what Gehazi had done when Gehazi went back to ask Naaman for a reward- Elisha commented: "Went not my heart with you, when the man turned again from his chariot to meet you?" (2 Kings 5:26). Elisha imagined Naaman dismounting from his chariot, etc. And he could guess that the request had involved "money... garments" etc. That the Lord's knowledge wasn't necessarily automatic is reflected in the way we read things like "When he saw their faith... when Jesus heard it..." (Mk. 2:5,17). He 'saw' and knew things by the sensitivity of His perception.
The altogether lovely manner of the Lord is shown in how He dealt with immature understanding and ambition amongst others. James and John wanted to sit on either side of the Lord in His Kingdom glory. Instead of telling them to be more humble, the Lord gently went along with them- so far. He said that this great honour would be given to “them for whom it is prepared” (Mk. 10:40). And whom is this?
I think the extraordinary sensitivity of the Lord Jesus is reflected in the many examples of Him displaying extraordinary perception and precognition of what had happened or was going to happen. He had felt that Nathanael was sitting under a fig tree before they even met (Jn. 1:48); He knew the Syro-Phoenician woman’s daughter had been cured (Mk. 7:29); He knew the thoughts of men, etc. Now all this may have been due to the Father directly beaming that knowledge into Him through a Holy Spirit gift of knowledge. Maybe. And this was the explanation I assumed for many years. But I have noticed in myself and others that at times, we too have flashes of inexplicable precognition; we somehow know something’s happened. I remember sitting next to a sister, and she suddenly came over looking distressed. She simply said: “John Barker’s mother has just died”. And so indeed it was. I think we’ve all had such things happen. And we share the same nature which the Lord had. So my restless mind wonders, and no more than that, whether His extraordinary precognition was not simply a result of a bolt of Holy Spirit knowledge, but rather an outflow of His extraordinary sensitivity to other people and their situations. This Lord is our Lord, the same today as He was back then yesterday. In any case, living as such a sensitive person in such a cruel and insensitive and blunt world would itself have been almost unbearable. And yet He was like that for us, the insensitive, the ignorant, the selfish and the uncaring, in so many moments of our lives.
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2-12 Jesus The Radical
There's a radical in each of us, even if the years have mellowed it. The way to express it is surely through radical devotion to the Father's cause. On one hand, Jesus spoke to men as they were able to hear it, not as He was able to expound it. Yet on the other, He gave His radicalism free reign. The Sabbath miracles seem to have purposefully provoked the Jews. When He encouraged His men to rub the corn heads and eat them like peanuts as they walked through a field one Sabbath, He knew full well this was going to provoke confrontation. And he said what was anathema to the Jews: " The Law was made for man and not man for the Law" . Where there is human need, the law can bend. This was a startling concept for a Jew. Jesus described the essence of His Kingdom as mustard seed, which was basically a weed. It was like a woman putting leaven [both symbols of impurity] into flour. Surely the Lord was trying to show that His message was not so Heavenly that it was unrelated to earthly life. It was real and relevant to the ordinary dirty business of life. The woman who have everything she had was noted by the Lord as His ideal devotee. He taught that it was preferable to rid oneself of an eye or a limb and to sacrifice sex if that is for us the price of entry into the Kingdom (Mk. 9:45-47). The parable of the man who built bigger barns taught that in some senses we should in His service like there's no tomorrow. He expected His followers to respond immediately, to pay the price today rather than tomorrow, with no delay or procrastination. There is an emphasis in His teaching on immediacy of response, single-mindedness and unrestrained giving. This is radical stuff for 21st century people in the grip of manic materialism.
His simple claim that God can forgive men all sins was radical (Mk. 3:28)- for the Rabbis had a whole list of unforgivable sins, like murder, apostasy, contempt for the Law, etc. But the Lord went further. His many words of judgment weren’t directed to the murderers and whores and Sabbath breakers; they were instead directed against those who condemned those people, considering themselves righteous. He calls those who appeared so righteous a ‘generation of vipers’. The publican, not the Pharisee, finds God’s acceptance, according to Jesus. And again, the Lord is making a telling point- because Rabbis held that repentance for publicans was almost impossible, because it was impossible for them to know exactly all the people they’d cheated. Very clearly, the Lord’s message was radical. He was out to form a holy people from whores and gamblers, no-good boys and conmen. And moreover, He was out to show that what God especially judges and hates are the things that humanity doesn’t think twice about: hypocrisy, self-righteousness, judgmentalism, exclusion of others… Another example of the Lord’s radical collision course with the Rabbis is in His comment that God’s care even embraces sparrow (Mt. 10:29). For the Rabbis explicitly forbad prayers that mentioned God’s care for birds, because they argued that it was dishonouring to God to associate Him with something so small as a bird (
Judaism focused repentance and forgiveness around the temple; but Jesus offered forgiveness to all and sundry, out there on the street. The realness of His person backed up the truth of His claims to grant forgiveness. And it was a forgiveness they evidently
Presenting The Radical Jesus
The essential spirit of the great commission was “Go!”, following on as it does from the repeated commands to “go” and share the glorious news that Christ had risen. And yet so many congregations of believers seem to stress instead “Come in to us!”. And every manner of carrot is dangled before the public to entice them to ‘come in’ to some church event. But the emphasis was clearly, and should still be, upon ‘going’ to people. Our turning of ‘Go!’ into ‘Come to us’ is all part of a wider picture, whereby the group of hard core, desperate men who first followed Jesus, the whores, the gamblers, the mentally ill, the marginalized women… have all been diluted into a religion of conformists, a spiritual bubble in which we risk nothing, sacrifice nothing, and comfortably continue in the way of our fathers who were also members of the same church as we are.
It’s this mindset which is in my view our most serious problem as a community. We need a shake up. Perhaps we need to remember that the teaching of Jesus was actually not directed initially at irreligious people; it was rather to the people of God, to those within the ecclesia. We need to read the Gospels from that viewpoint. They are a radical call to a radical life, a life and way of thinking that’s not about sitting around in a church doing humanly sensible things, taking the safe decisions and options, raising our children in a cocoon of safety and ‘fun’, often to see them walk out into life either indifferent to Jesus, or as merely passive members of a church. It’s not about ‘a religion that makes sense’. It’s not about God always keeping us safe on the roads if we pray regularly and go to meeting on time and read the Bible now and again. It’s about a call to do that which is humanly nonsensical, but to give and give up things in faith, to risk, to aim high, to leap in faith. I see this spirit in those newly baptized. But so often I see it quenched by their attendance at church driving them into the status quo, the utter monotony of civilized church life, within a nominally Christian culture. I’m not against churches; to be together in the body of Christ is a vital part of our growth. But it has to be said that all too often, the structure ends up rationalizing apathy, and absolving the newly converted individual from the great weight of personal responsibility which they feel to take Christ to their world. Somehow we have to ensure that we all keep in personal contact with our Lord, with the spirit of the Gospels, that we never lose that sense of personal encounter with Him. For this will ever keep us from worrying too much what others think of us, doing what is smart and acceptable and right in the eyes of men… rather we will think only of what is right in His eyes. We’ll get the spirit of David as he danced before the Lord, being himself, with his wife mocking him for what he was looking like in the eyes of men (2 Sam. 6:21,22). The cause of the Kingdom must be forcefully advanced by “violent men” (Mt. 11:12). This was the sort of language the Lord used. He wasn’t preaching anything tame, painless membership of a comfortable community.
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2-13 Radical Demands Of Jesus
The very high standards which He demanded of His followers would only have had meaning if it was evident that He was Himself a real human who all the same was sinless. This was [and is] why the words of Jesus had a compelling, inspirational power towards obedience; for He Himself lived out those words in human flesh. The Lord of all grace was and is amazingly demanding in some ways. And He has every right to be. Just reflect how in Jn. 3:10, He expected Nicodemus to have figured out the Old books/dhament’s teaching about the new birth (presumably from Ps. 51:10; Is. 44:3; Ez. 11:19; 18:31; 36:26; 37:14; 39:29; Ecc. 11:5). And the Lord castigates Nicodemus for not having figured it out. In the first century, family and the family inheritance was everything. The way the Lord asked His followers to reject family and follow Him was far more radical than many of us can ever appreciate. Likewise His command to sell everything and follow Him (Lk. 18:22) implied so much- for the Middle Eastern family estate was the epitomy of all that a person had and stood for. And to be asked to give the proceeds of that inheritance to poor strangers... was just too much. It could seem, once one gets to know Middle Eastern values, that to abandon both family and the village home in favour of Jesus was just impossible- those things were more valuable to a Middle Eastern peasant than life itself. But still He asked- and people responded.
Consider how He spoke of the man with the splinter in His eye trying to cast the beam out of his brother's eye. He prefaces this mini-parable by saying that the blind can't lead the blind. For Him, a man with even slightly impaired vision was effectively blind. In this very context He speaks of the need to be " perfect...as his master" . Only the perfect, by implication, can criticize their brethren. And the final reason He gives for not attempting to cast out the plank from our brother's eye is that " For a good tree bringeth not forth corrupt fruit" . This is rather hard to understand in the context. But on reflection, it seems that He is teaching that if we are good trees, we will have no corrupt fruit, no splinters in our eye- and because none of us are like this, there is corrupt fruit on each of us, we aren't perfect as our Master, therefore we shouldn't think of trying to cast out the plank from our brother's eye (Lk. 6:39-43). And of course He bids us to be perfect as our Father is. These high standards of demand were mixed with an incredible grace. Only a man who was evidently perfect could speak like this with any realness or credibility. Otherwise His words would just have been seen as the ravings of a weirdo. But there was a realness to His perfection that made and makes His demands so piercingly appropriate to us. The way He handled His perfection is a wonderful insight into His character. He knew that He was without sin; and He knew that the life He lived moment by moment was to be the pattern for all God’s people. Yet somehow, He handled this in a manner which was never arrogant, never proud, and never offputting to sinners; but rather, actually inviting to them. He usually speaks of Himself in the third person- e.g. “the son”; but in Jn. 17:3 He refers to Himself in prayer to the Father as “Jesus Christ”, as if He was consciously aware of how we would later see Him.
There is something demanding and almost intrusive about the true personality of Jesus. In this sense, the knowledge of Jesus can never really be denied. There is something compelling about Him. Grasping the fact that Jesus was a real, credible human who was somehow so much 'more than man' ought to empower our preaching. For this is just what people are looking for- a Man to idolize, to follow, who is real and credible and won't let us down, not again dashing dreams and expectations as all else does. Young people worldwide [and within our own community and families] hunger for authentic relationships. They despise the superficiality of both irreligious materialism and religious conformity; they sense there is an awesome 'reality' far bigger than the trivialities of bourgeois socializing which surround them, far beyond the utter, trivial boredom of middle class life which most human beings either experience or tacitly aspire to. And the real, human Jesus whom we preach really can be their answer- depending how we put Him over to them. Many of the younger generation are unwilling to accommodate themselves to the status quo, or acclimatize themselves to the prevailing culture. They have a quest for a 'counter-culture', real and credible, every bit as much as Jesus to this day forms a radical counter-culture (1).
And the true Christianity, based on the real Jesus, which we preach- this is surely what at least some of them ought to be satisfied with. They fumble for words in their music and writing to express the reality for which contemporary youth seek. Yet they perceive, in different words and tones, the essence of Jesus' words: 'What does it profit a man that he should gain the whole world and lose his soul?'. It's a bit like the men who worshipped an idol for 'the unknown God'. We have to declare Him to them. Today's youth are looking for the right things (meaning, peace, love, reality etc.) but in the wrong places (drugs, religions etc.); whereas all these things are to be found in the man Jesus. Instead of a counter-culture, they find in most churches mere conformity; whereas the true church / ecclesia should be in radical tension with the culture of the world. But we should be offering them the radical Jesus; not just another mere religion. If ever we are told 'But you're just like all the others...'- we ought to be seriously worried. But I'm proud to say that time after time, I am told by those who join us that we are truly different. Not only are young people looking for right things in the wrong places; but they have more interest in moral subjects than they have the capacity for handling moral ideas. It is that capacity, that apparatus, which the true teaching of the Lord Jesus will give them.
The counter-culture of which Jesus is Lord is indeed radical. The Sermon on the Mount, and so much of Jesus' later teaching, revolves around " us" [His people] acting one way whilst the world acts in another. We are to love all men, whereas the world loves only its friends; we are to pray meaningfully, whilst the Gentile world merely heap up empty phrases; we are to seek the things of God's Kingdom, whilst the world seeks only for material things. Human values are radically reversed in Christ. The humble are exalted and the proud debased; the first are put last, the servant made the greatest. But Jesus also contrasts His followers not only with " the Gentiles" but with the contemporary religious people- the 'scribes and Pharisees'. Thus we are to be radically different both from the nominal church, and the secular world in general. Repeatedly Jesus speaks of " they" and " you" ; and yet He also spoke of the handful of Palestinian peasants who really grasped His teaching as being the salt of the earth [Israel?] and the light of the [whole Gentile] world. It was their separateness from the world that was to be a part of the world's salvation. So Jesus was certainly not teaching a bunker mentality, an island existence, but rather a reaching out into the world of others for their salvation. The true radicalism is the radicalism of love- love lived out in ordinary life. Whether we strive for absolute truthfulness, what place we seek at a feast, the struggle to grant real and total forgiveness- this is the radicalism of love.
The religion of Jesus was radically different from that of both the ecclesia and the world of His day. For them, prayer was to take place within the synagogue and temple. Yet Jesus prayed in a desert, in a garden, on mountains...but He is never recorded as praying in the temple or synagogue. The biography of any other religious Jew of the first century would have included a mention of his prayers in those places. But not with Jesus. His prayer life was radically at variance with that of his contemporaries. Strangely and paradoxically, the generation contemporary with Jesus were one of the most legalistically obedient, Law-honouring generations in Israel's sad history. The Lithuanian Jew Jacob Neusner commented: " It was not a sinning generation, but one deeply faithful to the covenant and the Scripture, perhaps more so than [any other]" (2). Yet this generation that sought more than any other to keep the Law and be serious about their obligations to God were the very ones who murdered His Son. The world of Jesus was in collision with that of the ecclesia and world of His day. And who is to say that the true spirit of Jesus may not be the same today, in these last days. The true vision of Jesus calls the true ecclesia to be
“Let the dead bury their dead”
The Lord’s comment: “Let the dead bury their dead” (Mt. 8:22) reveals how He had a way of so radically challenging the positions held by normal people of the world, to a depth quite unheard of- and He did it in so few words. And even more wondrous, the Lord appeared to have come out with this so pithy and semantically dense statement almost ‘off the cuff’, when presented with a man declining to follow Him immediately because he had to bury his father. So let’s see in what ways the Lord’s comment was so radical. Respect for parents as expressed in burying them “was at the heart of Jewish piety… under Hasidic-Pharisaic influence the last offices for the dead had gained primacy among all good works… the duty to participate in a funeral procession could even override study of the Torah”(3). And of course the Lord
But there are other radical elements in those words of the Lord. Lev. 21:11 forbad the High Priest to be polluted by the corpse of his parents, which would’ve precluded him from the usual Jewish manner of burying the dead in the first century. By asking His followers to act as if under the same regulation, the Lord was inviting His followers to see themselves, each one, as the High Priest. We may merely raise our eyebrows at this point, as a matter of mere expositional interest. But to those guys back then, this was major and radical, a man would have to sum up every ounce of spiritual ambition in order to rise up to this invitation. And psychologically, we could say that those first century illiterate Jews were subject to a very powerful systemic spiritual abuse. By this I mean that they were so emotionally hammered into the ground by the oppressive synagogue system that they felt themselves unworthy, no good, not up to much, awful sinners, woefully ignorant of God’s law, betrayers of Moses and their nation… and the Lord addresses these people and realistically asks them to feel and act like the High Priest! No wonder people just ‘didn’t get’ His real message, and those who did were so slow to rise up to the heights of its real implications. And we today likewise toil under a more insidious systemic abuse than we likely appreciate, with the same sense of not being ultimately worth much… until the Lord’s love and high calling bursts in upon our lives, releasing us from the mire of middle class [or aspired-to middle class] mediocrity into a brave new life. Another example of the challenging way in which the Lord treated His men is to be found in Jn. 15:16: “I have chosen you and ordained [Gk.
The Spirit Of The Prophets
And further. ‘The prophets’ were painted by Judaism rather like the Orthodox church paints ‘the saints’ today- white faced men of such spirituality that they are to be revered and worshipped as icons, rather than seen as real examples to us today. The Lord by contrast saw them as working models of the sort of spiritual life and walk with God which we too can just as realistically attain to. In Ez. 24:13-24, God forbad Ezekiel to carry out the mourning rituals associated with his wife’s funeral. Likewise Jeremiah was forbidden to participate in lamentation for the dead in a house of mourning (Jer. 16:5-7). And again, the man who was bidden “let the dead bury their dead” was being invited to see himself on that level, of an Ezekiel or Jeremiah, being called to this behaviour by a person who could speak directly on God’s behalf. And why were those prophets bidden do those things? It was in order to be a witness to Israel, proclaiming judgment to come. And this was exactly the same reason the Lord bid His potential follower to ‘let the dead bury the dead’- in order that the man could urgently proclaim the Gospel to Israel. Yet if we press further with the question as to
Israel was a society bound together by ‘norms’ of behaviour and taboos regarding cleanliness. Yet prophets like Jeremiah and Ezekiel had been asked to openly break with the conventions of their environment, in order to draw attention to the message they were preaching- which was that God is likewise outside of the conventions of human environments, and His message is a radical call to quit them and be ourselves,
The Urgency Of Our Task
There is to be an urgency about following the Lord, an urgency that can’t be put off. This was one of the things which was so unique about the Lord’s teaching style. It’s been observed: “There is nothing in contemporary Judaism which corresponds to the immediacy with which he [Jesus] teaches”(5). Or as the Gospel records themselves put it: “Never man spake like this man”. The total unusualness of His teaching style and content was enough in itself to make soldiers sent to arrest Him simply give up and turn back. If we ask
The idea of leaving family and putting them last was uncommon but not unknown within Jewish circles. Again, the Lord was using familiar ideas, but with a radical and thoroughly unique twist to them. The schools of the Rabbis and Pharisees were full of both stories and examples of where men had indeed quit their families and given up their jobs in order to fanatically study the Torah, and had ended up materially and socially advanced(6). It’s apparent from the Gospels that the Scribes and Pharisees were socially and economically better off than the mass of the population in Palestine. But the radicalness of the Lord’s demand was that He asked people to leave all and ‘follow Him’- in order to achieve an actual
Following Him
And there was yet more radical, paradigm breaking demand within the Lord’s words: “Follow me, and let the dead bury their dead”. To ‘Follow me’ and be an itinerant student of the teacher Jesus of Nazareth was not unknown in first century Palestine. But to stop a man on the way to his dad’s funeral and insist he had to join up right
The Violence Within
The real battle was not against Rome, but against sin in all its forms, against human weakness and dysfunction, rooting out cherished habits, secret sins, the innermost fantasies of the heart, and reaching out to the salvation of others and the advancement of the things of God’s Kingdom. The ultimate battle we are led to is the battle of truly accepting the cross in our lives, of realizing and living out the truth of the fact that losing now is winning, dying now is living… In the moments, the seconds and even half seconds of temptation, we are to fight and win, to courageously follow that bravest of men, “the captain [another of the many military allusions in the New Testament] of our salvation”. As one man sees one hell of a girl sitting lonesome on a low wall, drinking cool beer in the warm summer rain, as he fights with the ideas and associations which that sight triggers… as one woman glances at the display of alcohol in the supermarket, yearning to ‘just this once’ drown the tension of an unbearable, no-exit life… as another brother begins to slip into a rage of anger and expletives yelled in his mind at the brother who’s just demolished his cherished view of prophecy… as a sister sits at her computer keyboard tempted to write words of untruth to trash her rival… in these moments we are in the heat of battle. But it’s all a question of perceiving that this is what the war is about, and that every battle is bitterly contested and fought out to the end, with no easy victories. The battle is above all against ourselves, not some brother with suspected wrong teaching or Rome or the Moslems or the JWs round the corner. In this was the essential difference between the Lord’s teaching and that of the contemporary Rabbis, who saw the struggle as a literal one by the righteous, those justified by their correct reading of Torah, against an external pagan enemy. There
The Call Of God
But this radical call to ‘follow me’ is thrown out by the Lord in an almost casual way- or so it can seem. The usual way was for a man to observe and reflect upon a rabbi’s words and ideas, and then ask to join in his inner circle of followers. But the Lord wasn’t like that. He called men, arresting them with His radical call in the very midst of daily life, at the most utterly inconvenient moment, even the most humanly inappropriate moment- such as being on the way to your father’s funeral. And again, the Son of God was actually acting as His Father had done. Gideon was called whilst in the middle of threshing wheat in a time of famine (Jud. 6:1), Saul whilst he was out looking for lost cattle (1 Sam. 9:10) and again whilst he was coming home from work one evening (1 Sam. 11:5); David whilst he was looking after the sheep; Samuel whilst he was asleep; Amos whilst he was leading the flocks to water (Am. 7:14); and see too 1 Kings 11:29; 19:16; 2 Kings 9:1-13,18. In other words, the call of God comes to us right in the midst of ordinary, mundane life. Of this there can be no doubt. And the Lord Jesus called men in just the same way. This was what was and is so unusual and startling about the ministry of the Lord. His love sought men out, He didn’t wait for them to come to Him [for none of us would ever come without God’s gracious initiative]. Of course, it was only those who perceived that He spake on God’s behalf who could take His invitation as a real call from God which had to be obeyed.
And again, every Old Testament ‘call of God’ was for someone to do something dramatic, often in extreme crisis and physical danger, inviting them to rise up to the challenge of the moment. Yet as we have shown, the call of the disciples had the call of the prophets as its prototype. And the Lord Jesus went around Palestine and goes about this world today, calling people with that same call. We are ordinary folk, nothing special women, average fellas… just like those invited in the first century. And yet we are ‘called’ in the same way as people were called to heroic things in Old Testament times. To encounter Jesus as we have is to be called by God. The struggle and fight and victory and eternal cause and glory to which the Lord Jesus calls us to rise up to… is just as real now as it is ever was, and just as bitingly urgent to respond to. Perceiving it imparts a spirit of heroism to our otherwise formless and unachieving lives. To e.g., conquer gluttony or repressed anger and bitterness over a lost relationship, to lead a friend to Christ… these are the victories, the real ones, which have eternal consequence and glory.
So to sum up, I don’t think that we should skip a relative’s funeral in order to ‘do’ things for the Lord. And I don’t think that was the intention of the Lord’s words. Rather is He teaching us of the sense of urgency which there must be in our service of Him, our willingness to ‘follow’ Him whatever it takes, to place no restrictions upon our service to Him and what it may demand of us. We are to see our lives as to be totally dedicated to Him, making use in some way of all the precious seconds granted us, rather than letting them slip away between our fingers. We are to realistically grasp the fact that His mission and ministry is in fact ours. And the total insecurity, exposure to danger, misunderstanding, slander, sudden calls of God to change direction and move way out of our comfort zone etc. are all part of participating in the short term fate and eternal victory of the One whom we follow. His call to each of us to preach Him is radical. He sent out His preachers with
Notes
(1) For more on this see Theodore Roszak,
(2) Jacob Neusner,
(3) Martin Hengel,
(4) C.K. Barrett,
(5) Gunter Bornkamm,
(6) See Joachim Jeremias,
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2-14 The Radical Language Of Jesus
Because of the gracious words and manner of speaking of Jesus, therefore God so highly exalted Him (Ps. 45:2). The Father was
The Lord's choice of language was therefore radically different. Indeed, the Father Himself has inspired His word in a way which uses language quite differently to how we do. Thus there are many examples in Scripture of where even basic rules of grammar are broken- an obvious example is the way Leviticus and Numbers begin with “And…”, what scholars call a “
He asked us to drink His blood, another idea repellent to Jewry. His healings broke all the purity boundaries of His social world. He touched lepers and hemorrhaging women. He ate with the outcasts and well known sinners. Women followed Him around the country, yet He was unmoved by all the scandal mongering which inevitably must have gone on. He allowed Mary to wash Him with her hair, and to speak with Him in public- even though the hair, legs and voices of women were felt by Judaism to be especially enticing. Jesus refused to share the usual Jewish fears of female sexuality. Believing that sexual desire was evil and uncontrollable, the Jewish world coped with women by secluding them. The Lord, however, accepted women into His company of disciples. He was comfortable with His humanity, He wasn’t paranoid about the ‘thin end of the wedge’. And moreover, He expected His responsible and comfortable-with-his-humanity attitude to rub off upon the men He’d chosen to be with those women. He valued persons for who they were, and this had radical results in practice. And yet He spoke with " authority" in the eyes of the people. What gave Him this? Surely it was His lifestyle, who He was, the way there was no gap between His words and who He was. The word of the Gospel, the message, was made flesh in Him. There was a perfect congruence between His theory and His practice. The repeated amazement which people expressed at the Lord's teaching may not only refer to the actual content of His material; but more at the way in which He expressed it, the unique way in which word was made flesh in Him. The way the Lord could ask men to follow Him, and they arose and followed (Mk. 2:14), is surely testimony to the absolute, direct and unaccountable authority of Jesus. It was surely His very ordinariness which made Him so compelling.
Jesus juxtaposed ideas in a radical way. He spoke of drinking His blood; and of a Samaritan who was good, a spiritual hero. It was impossible for Jews to associate the term 'Samaritan' and the concept of being spiritually an example. And so the stark, radical challenge of the Lord's words must be allowed to come down into the 21st century too. Lk. 6:35 has Jesus speaking of " children of the Most High" and yet Mt. 5:45 has " children of your father" . What did Jesus actually say? Perhaps: " Children of
“Amen” was what you usually said in the first century about the words of someone else. To use it about your own words was, apparently, unthinkable (3). But the Lord Jesus was so quietly sure of Himself that He could say this of His own words. Without being conceited or proud, the Lord valued His own person to this extent. Truly “Never [did a] man spake like this man”.
The Sting In The Tail
The radical nature of the Lord Jesus is reflected in His teaching style. His parables work around what I have elsewhere called "elements of unreality". They involve a clash of the familiar, the comfortable, the normal, with the strange and unreal and radical. The parables are now so well known that their radical nature has been almost buried under the avalanche of familiarity. The parables begin by getting the hearers sympathetic and onboard with the story line- and then, in a flick of the tail, the whole punch line is turned round against their expectations, with radical demands. Take the good Samaritan. The story of a man travelling the Jerusalem-Jericho road alone would've elicited sympathy and identity with the hearers- yes, that road
It's the same with Nathan's parable to David. It elicited David's sympathy- and then it was turned back on David: "You are the man!". But he didn't quit the parable. He acted on it, as we have to. The parable of the self-righteous older son is just the same. The parable's story line leads us to expect that the wayward son repents and is accepted back by his father. But then right at the end, the whole thing takes a biting twist. We suddenly realize that the prodigal son and the need to forgive your wayward son isn't the point of the story- for that's something which comes naturally to any father and family. The whole point is that the son who played safe, who stayed home and behaved himself...
Jesus And The Temple
It was the Lord's radical usage of language which led to the huge, seething anger which He provoked, culminating in the demand for His death. He seems to have purposefully reinterpreted and reapplied symbols and ideas which spoke of Jewish national pride, and applied them to something quite different. His triumphal entry into Jerusalem on an ass, not a war horse, and in order to die... led to so much anger exactly because He had subverted such a familiar and longed for hope and symbol. We have to remember the huge value of symbols in the first century, living as we do in an age when the written word has become paramount. For the illiterate, symbols and acted parables were of far greater importance than the written word. We may think of 'Jesus' in terms of His teachings recorded at a specific chapter and verse of our Bibles. To the illiterate first century Jew, they thought of Him in terms of what He
The memories of the Maccabean heroes and their rebellion were strongly in the minds and consciousness of first century Israel. Their exploits were recited yearly at the feast of Hanukkah. Yet the Lord purposefully subverts the history of the Maccabees. Mattathias had taught violent resistance to Gentile occupation in the slogan: "Repay the Gentiles in their own coin" (1 Macc. 2:68 N.E.B.). But the Lord alludes to this, at least to the LXX form of the saying, when He advocated paying the Roman temple tax, giving the coin to them, and not violently resisting. The Hebrew writer likewise alludes to and subverts the defiant language of the Maccabees in repeatedly describing Christ as "priest for ever" (Heb. 5:6; 6:20; 7:3,17,21)- when this was the term applied to Simon Maccabaeus in 1 Macc 14:41. The Lord's Olivet prophecy as recorded by Mark has so many allusions to the Maccabean revolt under Mattathias ("the abomination", flight to the hills, "let the reader understand" and many other phrases are all quotations from 1 Macc. 1-3). But in this context the Lord warns of false Messiahs- as if He considered the Maccabean heroes to be just that. And interestingly it is Mark more than any other Gospel writer who stresses the Messiahship of Jesus throughout the crucifixion record. A crucified Messiah was to the Jews a contradiction in terms. The idea of Jewish revolutionaries marching triumphantly to Jerusalem to liberate it was common in Jewish thought at the time (9)- but Luke emphasizes that Christ's last journey to Jerusalem and triumphant entry to it was in fact in order to die the death of the cross there. The battle had been redefined by the Lord Jesus- not against Rome, but against internal sin and Jewish religious hypocrisy. Victory was by self-crucifixion, not military might. This was just too much for Jewish nationalism, just as legalists today end up baying for the blood of those who preach grace and not works.
Notes
(1) J.H. Moulton & G. Milligan
(2) Joachim Jeremias,
(3) J.D.G. Dunn,
(4) Robert Funk,
(5) Marcus Borg,
(6) N.T. Wright,
(7) Jacob Neusner,
(8) N.T. Wright,
(9) N.T Wright,
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2-15 The Radical Authority Of Jesus
The Lord often began His statements with the word " Amen" - 'truly', 'certainly', 'surely...I say unto you...'. Yet it was usual to
Notes
(1) See the article " Amen" in Joachim Jeremias,
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2-16 The Radical Acceptance Of Jesus
His demands upon those who would follow Him were radical- to take up a cross and follow Him, to hate father and mother, to sacrifice all worldly ambition for Him. Jesus often spoke of breaking with ones natural family; and His own example showed as ever what He meant. Yet the family was the primary social unit in 1st century Palestine, the basis of identity and security. The man who wanted to first bury his father before following the Lord was rejected by the demanding Jesus- when to properly bury one's dead was among the most sacred obligations of Judaism. His standards were sometimes unbelievably high. Whoever called his brother a fool (Gk.
Consider how He asks Zacchaeus to eat with Him- a public sign of religious fellowship in first century Palestine. This acceptance of the man for who and where he was, inspired Zacchaeus to then start changing his life in practice- he then offered to give back what he had stolen. When quizzed as to why He ate / fellowshipped with sinners, the Lord replied that He had come to call sinners to repentance (Lk. 5:32). Think through the implications of this. He fellowshipped with those who were so weak within the ecclesia of Israel so as to bring them to repentance; His eating with them was like a doctor making a home visit. The religious attitude of the Pharisees was that one only fellowshipped someone who was repentant; whereas the Lord said that He fellowshipped with people to bring them to repentance. Note how in Lk. 19:1-10, the Lord offered salvation to sinners
Time and again His parables sought to justify His association with outcasts (Lk. 14:15-24; 15:1-32; Mt. 18:23-25; 20:1-15; 21:28-32). When the nobleman came to ask Jesus to cure his son, Jesus agreed; and the man went home. But it was only on the way home that he really believed. He came to faith spontaneously, and not because Jesus insisted on it. Or remember the woman who had had five men in her life, and presumably a number of children to go with each of them. Her face and body would have reflected the story of her life. She was living with someone not her husband. Jesus didn't tell her to break up with the guy. He knew full well that if a woman left her man, she had nowhere to go. Here was a woman who had been 'married' five times. Who would want her? There were children involved. Probably even her family had rejected her. Jesus accepted the real life situation, and human failure to rise up to higher standards. One wonders whether the very lack of specific demand from Jesus maybe motivated her to somehow normalize her life. The gentle way Jesus treated these cases shows not so much approval, but an understanding of the frailty of human nature. And this is what enabled Jesus to be so unwaveringly committed to His own perfect standards, and yet be so natural and at ease with the lowest of the low.
Notes
(1) Joachim Jeremias,
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2-17 Jesus: A Man Misunderstood
The Gospel writers three times bring out the point that people perceived that the Lord Jesus didn't "care" for people. The disciples in the boat thought that He didn't care if they perished (Mk. 4:38); Martha thought He didn't care that she was left in an impossible domestic situation, doubtless assuming He was a mere victim of common male insensitivity to women (Lk. 10:40); and twice it is recorded that the people generally had the impression that He cared for nobody (Mt. 22:16; Mk. 12:14). And yet the Lord uses the very same word to speak of the hired shepherd who cares not for the sheep- whereas He as the good shepherd cares for them so much that He dies for them (Jn. 10:13). I find this
It has been so often pointed out that the crowd who welcomed the Lord into Jerusalem with shouts of “Hosanna!” were the very people who days later were screaming “Crucify him!”. It’s been suggested that the crowds were comprised of two different groups; those who shouted “Hosanna!” were those who had come up from Galilee, and the Jerusalem crowd shouted “Crucify Him!”. But Jn. 12:13 and Jn. 19:14,15 seem to encourage us to make a connection between the two scenes, for “the crowd”
The answer, I suggest, lies in the way that they misunderstood Him. They liked Him; the Jewish authorities despaired even just prior to His death that “the world is gone after him”, because so many of the Jews were [apparently] “Believing in him” (Jn. 12:11,19); His popularity seems to have resurged to an all time high on his final visit to Jerusalem. The crowds liked some aspects of the idea of this man Jesus of Nazareth; they are described in John’s Gospel as “believing on him”, and yet John makes it clear that this was not the real belief which the Lord sought. John makes this point within Jn. 6:14,26: “When therefore the people saw the sign which he did, they said, This is of a truth the prophet that cometh into the world… Jesus answered them and said, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Ye seek me, not because ye saw signs, but because ye ate of the loaves, and were filled”. The crowd appeared to respond and perceive the significance of the sign-miracles; but the Lord knew that they had not properly understood. They apparently “believed”, but would not confess Him before men (Jn. 12:42)- and such ‘confession’ is vital for salvation (Rom. 10:9,10 s.w.). For all their liking of Jesus and some of the things that He stood for, they willingly closed their hearts to the radical import of His essential message of self-crucifixion, of a cross before the crown, of a future Kingdom which inverts all human values, where the humble are the greatest, the poor in spirit are the truly rich, the despised are the honoured...
They welcomed Him into Jerusalem with the waving of palm fronds. These were a symbol of Jewish nationalism- hence the palm appeared on the coins of the Second Revolt (AD 132-135). Back in 164 BC when Judas Maccabeus rededicated the temple altar, palms were brought to the temple (2 Macc. 10:7); and Simon Maccabeus led the Jews back into Jerusalem with palm fronds in 1 Macc. 13:51. The crowd were therefore welcoming Jesus, expecting Him to announce His Messianic Kingdom there and then. The “Hosanna!” of Jn. 12:13 was used in addressing kings in 2 Sam. 14:4; 2 Kings 6:26. It meant literally “Save
It seems that only after the crowd had started doing this, that the Lord sat upon the donkey, to fulfill the prophecy of Zech. 9:9 that Israel’s King would come to them “humble, and riding upon a donkey”- not a warhorse. And, moreover, Zechariah says that He would come commanding peace [and not bloodlust]
All this would explain perfectly why the awful torture and mocking of Jesus in His time of dying was based around His claims to be a King. The crown of thorns, the mock-royal robe, the ‘sceptre’ put in His hand, then taken away and used to beat Him with, the mocking title over His body “This is the King of the Jews”, the anger of the Jewish leaders about this even being written as it was, the jeers of the crowd about this “King”- all this reflects the extent of anger there was with the nature of His ‘Kingship’. All the parables and teaching about the true nature of His Kingship / Kingdom had been totally ignored. The Lord had told them plainly enough. But it hadn’t penetrated at all… The Lord was not only misunderstood by the crowds, but His very being amongst men had provoked in them a crisis of conscience; and their response was to repress that conscience. As many others have done and do to this day, they had shifted their discontent onto an innocent victim, artificially creating a culprit and stirring up hatred against him. Their angry turning against Him was therefore a direct outcome of the way He had touched their consciences.
Such tragic misunderstanding of persons occurs all the time, to varying intensities. One frequently finds married couples with such anger against each other that it seems hard for an outsider to appreciate how two such nice people could be so angry with each other. The source of that anger is often traceable to a misunderstanding of each other during courtship. Each party built up an idealized or simply incorrect image of the other; and once they really got to know the other, in the humdrum of daily life, there was a great release of anger- that the spouse was not the person the other partner had imaged. The goodness of who they really goes unperceived and is readily discounted- simply because they don’t live up to the mistaken image which the spouse had of them in other areas.
And we have seen this in the life of our community. I knew a fine brother, well known for his preaching and Biblical expositions in a conservative circle of ecclesias in the 1950s and 1960s. He was by anyone’s standards a conservative, a hard liner, ever eager to point out how all other Christians would be damned and we alone ‘had the truth’. He preached a very graphic Gospel of a future Kingdom, where the Lord would return and gleefully crush all opposition and other dissenting churches under His feet. Much applauded at the time, his articles in conservative magazines remain to this day, gathering dust on shelves. Then, the brother changed. He started explaining that such an attitude had been wrong. He emphasized the spiritual graces of the Kingdom, exploring more fully the present aspect of the Lord’s Kingship and Lordship over us, teaching tolerance for those who are misbelievers, and a loving, corrective rather than judgmental attitude towards “those who oppose themselves”. And the anger of the community became focused upon him. Slandered, hated and humiliated, he was effectively crucified by his brethren. And we have all probably seen something similar go on in our own lives, when someone has a false perception of us and then finds we stand for different things than they thought we did. So often, there is an expression of anger. And it is this kind of anger which has been so destructive, and responsible for so much of the shameful division in the true church. This anger is, it seems to me, largely related to fear- fear that our understanding was a misperception, fear that we were actually wrong, that our judgments were incorrect, fear that who our brethren really are, and who the Lord Jesus really is, might reveal us in a poorer light. And it is this fear which paralyzes all meaningful growth in understanding and relationships, be it of our Lord or of our brethren, family or friends.
Paul Tournier comments with true insight upon these phenomena: “…the preacher who thunders loudly from the pulpit in order to drown out his own haunting doubts…the confusion of minds is such that many men, in order to reassure themselves, cling with cramped fanaticism to some curious doctrine. In order to still the voice of their inner illness they cast themselves into that sectarian intolerance which involves opposing parties in strife and controversy…when a man is not sure of himself, he pretends to be the man who is unshakably convinced…the more living faith grows weaker in the church, the more the church takes refuge in formalism and intolerance”. This was why Joseph’s brothers turned against him, prefiguring the Jewish destruction of Jesus; it’s why to this day, the Jews so strongly reject Jesus. It’s why apparently devout Christians are capable of the most awful vendettas and campaigns against those who tweak their guilty consciences. To quote Tournier again: “Moral malaise and unconscious guilt feelings…release vicious reactions of perversity and that particular form of refined and insatiable compulsion which we call hate. None are so likely to become violent polemicists and to exhibit a violence, tenacity and formidable dynamism, accompanied by denigration, accusation and calumny, as those who have something on their conscience”(1). Thus the strong of this world are in fact the weak; and thus the Biblical paradox that the weak are the strong and vice versa has a definitely true psychological basis.
But returning to the misunderstood Jesus, welcomed by the crowds with palm fronds in hope of an immediate Messianic Kingdom. Surely John intends us to think back to that when we read in Rev. 7:9 that the Lord will be welcomed by another large crowd, from every nation, carrying palm fronds and calling out praise to Him for dying on the cross and redeeming them. Here are those who truly understand Him. The Lord had in mind this contrast between the crowd and those who would truly understand Him when He said that “Now is the son of man glorified” in the things of the cross (Jn. 12:23) in contrast to the crowds who were shouting “Glory in the highest!” at the prospect of Him there and then inaugurating the Messianic Kingdom (Lk. 19:38). The true glory to God was to be through the lonely rejection of the cross. He who quietly honours / glorifies the Father (Jn. 5:23; 8:49) in the life of self-crucifixion will be honoured / glorified by the Father quietly in this life, and openly in the age to come (Jn. 12:26); such is the mutuality between a man and his God.
And the Lord had earlier taught the crowds to focus more on the gift of Him as a person and His sacrifice, than on the literal achievement of the Kingdom there and then. The Jews understood the coming of manna to be a sign that the Messianic Kingdom had come. Their writings are full of this idea:
- “You shall not find manna in this age, but you shall find it in the age that is coming” (Midrash Mekilta on Ex. 16:25)
- “As the first redeemer caused manna to descend…so will the latter redeemer cause manna to descend” (Midrash Rabbah on Ecc. 1:9)
- “[The manna] has been prepared for…the age to come” (Midrash Tanhuma,
Yet the Lord told them in Jn. 6 that the true manna was His flesh, which He was to give for the life of the world. Some have supposed from Josh. 5:10-12 cp. Ex. 16:35 that the manna fell for the first time on the eve of the Passover, thus adding even more poignancy to the Lord’s equation of the manna with His death. Yet all this painstaking attempt to re-focus the crowds on the spiritual rather than the literal, salvation through His death rather than an immediate benefit for them, patient eating / sharing in His sufferings rather than eternity here and now…all this went so tragically unheeded. And it does to this day.
If you feel misunderstood, and a victim of others’ anger because of it, realize that you are directly fellowshipping the sufferings of your Lord. You can enter somewhat into the ultimate tragedy, of the misunderstood love of God as it was poured out in the Lord Jesus to an uncomprehending and misunderstanding world. Don’t minimize what you’re going through. You really are suffering with Him. And just as surely as you went into the water at baptism and came up out of it, so you will share in His resurrection life, both now and eternally. But further. The danger is that we can be like the Jewish crowds, apparently “believing in him”, when all we are believing in ever more strongly is a mixture of our own perception of Jesus, mixed with some aspects of His true personality which appeal to us. He faces us, with His whole person and history. We are to believe in the
Notes
(1) Paul Tournier,
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2-18 The Real Cross: Today Is Friday
The idea that the Lord Jesus ended the Law of Moses on the cross needs some reflection. That statement only pushes the question back one stage further- how exactly did He ‘end’ the Law there? How did a man dying on a cross actually end the Law? The Lord Jesus, supremely in His death, was “the end of the law” (Rom. 10:4). But the Greek
The sheer and utter reality of the crucifixion needs to be meditated upon just as much as the actual reality of the fact that Jesus actually existed. A Psalm foretold that Jesus at His death would be the song of the drunkards. Many Nazi exterminators took to drink. And it would seem almost inevitable that the soldiers who crucified Jesus went out drinking afterwards. Ernest Hemingway wrote a chilling fictional story of how those men went into a tavern late on that Friday evening. After drunkenly debating whether “Today is Friday”, they decide that it really is Friday, and then tell how they nailed Him and lifted Him up. ''When the weight starts to pull on 'em, that's when it gets em... Ain't I seen 'em ? I seen plenty of 'em . I tell you, he was pretty good today" . And that last phrase runs like a refrain through their drunken evening(1). Whether or not this is an accurate reconstruction isn't my point- we have a serious duty to seek to imagine what it might have been like. Both Nazi and Soviet executioners admit how vital it was to never look the man you were murdering in the face. It was why they put on a roughness which covered their real personalities. And the Lord’s executioners would have done the same. To look into His face, especially His eyes, dark with love and grief for His people, would have driven those men to either suicide or conversion. I imagine them stealing a look at His face, the face of this man who didn’t struggle with them but willingly laid Himself down on the wood. The cross struck an educated Greek as barbaric folly, a Roman citizen as sheer disgrace, and a Jew as God's curse. Yet Jesus turned the sign of disgrace into a sign of victory. Through it, He announced a radical revaluation of all values. He made it a symbol for a brave life, without fear even in the face of fatal risks; through struggle, suffering, death, in firm trust and hope in the goal of true freedom, life, humanity, eternal life. The offence, the sheer scandal, was turned into an amazing experience of salvation, the way of the cross into a possible way of life.
The risen Christ was and is just as much a living reality. Suetonius records that Claudius expelled Jewish Christians from Rome because they were agitated by one Chrestus; i.e. Jesus the Christ. Yet the historian speaks as if He was actually alive and actively present in person . In essence, He was. All the volumes of confused theology, the senseless theories about the Trinity. would all have been avoided if only men had had the faith to believe that the man Jesus who really died and rose, both never sinned and was also indeed the Son of God. And that His achievement of perfection in human flesh was real. Yes it takes faith- and all the wrong theology was only an excuse for a lack of such faith.
It is in our reflections upon the cross that we see revealed the real nature and quality of our relationship with the Lord Jesus. When we survey the wondrous cross… there ought to be that sense of wonder, of love for Him, of conviction of our personal sins, and also conviction of the reality of His forgiveness. As we survey that wondrous cross, all commentary is bathos. It’s like trying to describe the Ninth Symphony in words. It is so much easier, so less challenging, to respond to the cross by seeking to describe it in the words of atonement theory. All the ink pointlessly spilt in this area is indicative of this; there seems an obsession with ‘the doctrine of the atonement’. But the essential response to the cross is not any commentary in words; for as I’ve said, grasping it for what it is convicts us that all commentary is bathos. Not words, not theories of explanation, but feelings, belief deep in the heart, challenge to our habits and traits of character, real, actual, concrete and practical change, a transformation that is empowered by the Man hanging there.
Notes
(1) " Today is Friday'' in
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. The Real Christ...
2-19 The Same Yesterday And Today
The relevance of all this is that Jesus Christ is the same today as He was yesterday. The Jesus of history is the Christ of faith. The
And there’s another rather nice indicator of the Lord’s conscious effort to show His ‘humanity’ even after His resurrection. It’s in the way the risen Lord calls out to the disciples at the lake, calling them “lads” (Jn. 21:5). The Greek
Significantly, both Luke and John conclude their Gospels with the risen
Lord walking along with the disciples, and them ‘following’ Him (Jn. 21:20)-
just as they had done during His ministry. His invitation to ‘Follow me’
(Jn. 21:19,22) is the very language He had used whilst He was still mortal
(Jn. 1:37,43; 10:27; 12:26; Mk. 1:18; 2:14). The point being, that although
He was now different, in another sense, He still related to them as He
did when He was mortal, walking the lanes and streets of 1st century Palestine.
Elsewhere [Chapter 15,
Even in His mortal life, the Lord was eager to as it were close the gap
between Himself and His followers, so that they didn't feel He was an
unattainable, distant icon to admire, but rather a true friend, leader,
King and example to realistically follow. Thus when He cursed the fig
tree, having prayed about it and firmly believing that what He had asked
would surely come about, Peter marvelled: "Master, behold, the fig
tree you cursed is withered!". The Lord replies by urging Peter to
"Have faith in God. For truly I tell you,
The Lord will essentially be the same as the Gospels present Him when we see Him again. This is why Jesus even in His earthly life could be called " the Kingdom of God" , so close was the link between the man who walked Palestine and the One who will come again in glory. “They see the Kingdom of God come” (Mk. 9:1) is paralleled by “They see the Son of man coming” (Mt. 16:28). Indeed it would seem that the references in the Synoptic Gospels to the ‘coming’ of the Kingdom are interpreted in the rest of the New Testament as referring to the personal ‘coming’ of the Lord Jesus (e.g. 1 Cor. 16:22; Rev. 22:20). In that very context of referring to Himself as "the Kingdom of God", the Lord speaks of His return as 'the days of the Son of man'- the human Jesus. And yet He also speaks in that context of how after His death, men will long to see one of the days of the Son of Man, i.e. how He had been in His mortal life (Lk. 17:20-26). As He was in His mortal days, so He will essentially be in the day of His final glory. It just isn't true that He came as a meek, gentle person, but will roar back as an angry lion. At His second coming, He will reveal " the wrath of the lamb" . Can you imagine an angry lamb? Yes, lambs can get angry. But it's a lamb-like anger. He came as the lamb for sinners slain, and yet He will still essentially be a lamb at His return. The Jesus who loved little children, sensitive to others weaknesses, desperate for their salvation, is the same one who will return to judge us. Even after His resurrection, in His present immortal nature, He thoughtfully cooked breakfast on the beach for His men (Jn. 21;9,12). And this is the Lord who will return to judge us. After His resurrection He was recognized by the Emmaus disciples in the way that He broke bread. The way He handled the loaf, His mannerisms, His way of speaking and choice of language, were evidently the same after His resurrection as before (Lk. 24:30,31). The Lord is the same today as yesterday.
Our tendency to value, indeed to worship, human works leads to great frustration with ourselves. Only by realizing the extent of grace can we become free from this. So many struggle with accepting unfulfilment- coping with loss, with the fact we didn’t make as good a job of something as we wanted, be it raising our kids or the website we work on or the book we write or the room we decorated… And as death approaches, this sense becomes stronger and more urgent. Young people tend to think that it’s only a matter of time before they sort it out and achieve. But that time never comes. It’s only by surrendering to grace, abandoning the trust in and glorying in our own works, that we can come to accept the uncompleted and unfulfilled in our lives, and to smile at those things and know that of course, I can never ‘do’ or achieve enough.
Realizing that we are in the grace of God, justified by Him through our being in Christ, leads us to a far greater and happier acceptance of ourselves as persons. So many people are unhappy with themselves. It’s why we look in mirrors in a certain way when nobody else is watching; why we’re so concerned to see how we turned out in a photograph. Increasingly, this graceless world can’t accept itself. People aren’t happy or acceptant of their age [they want to look and be younger or older], their body, their family situation, even their gender and their own basic personality. I found that when I truly accepted my salvation by grace, when the wonder of who I am in God’s sight, as a man in Christ, really dawned on me… I became far happier with myself, far more acceptant. Now of course in another sense, we are called to radical transformation, to change, to rise above the narrow limits of our own backgrounds. This is indeed the call of Christ. But I refer to our acceptance of who we are, and the situations we are in, as basic human beings.
Jesus is right now "quick to discern the thoughts and intents of
[our hearts]" in mediating for us (Heb. 4:12 RV). But this is how
He was in His mortal life here- for then He was "of quick understanding"
too (Is. 11:3). He would have had a way of seeing through to the essence
of a person or situation with awesome speed- and this must have made human
life very irritating for Him at times. But who He was then is who He is
now. It's the same Jesus who intercedes for us in sensitivity and compassion.
Note carefully the tense used in Heb. 4:15: "We have not an high
priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities"
. It doesn't say 'which could not have been touched...', but rather "
which cannot [present tense] be touched" . It's as if He is
It's this feature of the Lord Jesus which enables Him to be such a matchless mediator. Stephen saw Him
“The Kingdom of God” was a title used of Jesus. He ‘was’ the Kingdom because He lived the Kingdom life. Who He would be, was who He was in His life. At the prospect of being made “full of joy” at the resurrection, “therefore did my heart rejoice” (Acts 2:26,28). His joy during His mortal life was related to the joy He now experiences in His immortal life. And this is just one of the many continuities between the moral and the immortal Jesus. Pause for a moment to reflect that the Lord’s resurrection is a pattern for our own. This is the whole meaning of baptism. “God has both raised the Lord and will raise us up through his power” (1 Cor. 6:13,14). Yet there were evident continuities between the Jesus who lived mortal life, and the Jesus who rose again. His mannerisms, body language, turns of phrase, were so human- even after His resurrection. And so who we are now, as persons, is who we will eternally be. Because of the resurrection, our personalities in the sum of all their relationships and nuances,
If who we are now is who we will eternally be, in essence... then some of life's most crucial questions are begged of us. If we don't know what to do with ourselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon, if we go back to work on retirement sheerly for something to do, if our hours are spent on endless soap operas and crossword puzzles... is that what we wish to spend
The Lord had such a wide experience of human life and suffering so that not one of us could ever complain that He does not know in essence what we are going through. This is my simple answer to the question of why, exactly why, did Jesus have to suffer so much and in the ways that He did. Take one example of how His earthly experiences were the basis of how He later administered “grace to help in time of need” for a believer. The Lord’s one time close friend Judas is described as " standing with" those who ultimately crucified Jesus in Jn. 18:5. Paul says that none of the brethren 'stood with' him when he was on trial, but " the Lord [Jesus] stood with me" (2 Tim. 4:16,17). It seems to me that the Lord knew exactly what it felt like to be left alone by your brethren, as happened to Him in Gethsemane and at His trials; and so at Paul's trial He could 'stand with' him, based on His earthly experience of being left to stand alone. In our lives likewise, the Lord acts to help us based on His earthly experiences; He knows how we feel, because He in essence went through it all. John maybe has the image of Judas and Peter standing with the Lord's enemies in mind when he writes that the redeemed shall stand with Jesus on Mount Zion (Rev. 14:1), facing the hostile world.
Who the Lord Jesus was is who He will be in the future; in the same way as who
Note that whilst flesh and
The continuity between the mortal, human Jesus and the exalted Lord of all which He became on His ascension is brought out quite artlessly in Heb. 4:14: “Our great high priest, who has passed through the heavens”. The picture is of “this same Jesus”, the man on earth, passing through all heavens to ‘arrive’ at the throne of God Himself to mediate for us there. His ascension to Heaven was viewed physically like this by the disciples, and is expressed here in that kind of language of physical ascent, to bring home to us the continuity between the man Jesus on earth, and the exalted Lord now in Heaven itself. The same Jesus who once experienced temptation can thereby strengthen us in our temptations. We need to realize that nobody can be tempted by that which holds no appeal; the Lord Jesus must have seen and reflected upon sin as a possible course of action, even though He never took it. And for the same reason, several New Testament passages (e.g. 1 Tim. 2:5) call the exalted Lord Jesus a “man”- even now. Let’s not see these passages merely as theological problems for trinitarians. The wonder of it all is that Jesus after His glorification is still in some sense human. He as “the pioneer of our faith” shows us the path to glory, a glory that doesn’t involve us becoming somehow superhuman and unreal. Charles Hodge marvelled: “The supreme ruler of the universe is a perfect man”(2). Charles Wesley caught some of this in his hymn:
The Glory Of The Lord
The continuity of personality between the human Jesus and the now-exalted Jesus is brought out by meditation upon His “glory”. The glory of God refers to His essential personality and characteristics. When He ‘glorifies Himself’, He articulates that personality- e.g. in the condemnation of the wicked or the salvation of His people. Thus God was " glorified" in the judgment of the disobedient (Ez. 28:22; 39:13), just as much as He is " glorified" in the salvation of His obedient people. God glorified Himself in redeeming Israel, both in saving them out of Babylon, and ultimately in the future. Thus He was glorified in His servant Israel (Is. 44:23; 49:3). There are therefore both times and issues over which the Father is glorified. He was above all glorified in the resurrection of His Son. Each of these 'glorifications' meant that the essential Name / personality of the Father was being manifested and justified. The glory of the Lord Jesus was that of the Father. He was glorified in various ways and at different times within His ministry (e.g. Jn. 11:4); but He was also glorified in His resurrection and exaltation (Jn. 7:39). As the Lord approached the cross, He asked that the Father's Name be glorified. The response from Heaven was that God had already glorified it in Christ, and would do so again (Jn. 12:28). At the last Supper, the Lord could say: " Now is the Son of man glorified, and God is glorified in him" (Jn. 13:31). And yet various Scriptures teach that the Son of man was to be glorified in His death, in His resurrection (Acts 3:13), at His ascension, in His priestly mediation for us now (Heb. 5:5), in the praise His body on earth would give Him, in their every victory over sin, in every convert made (Acts 13:48; 2 Thess. 3:1), in every answered prayer (Jn. 14:13), and especially at His return (2 Thess. 1:10)... So the glorification of the Lord Jesus wasn't solely associated with His resurrection, and therefore it wasn't solely associated with His nature being changed or His receiving a new body. In each of these events, and at each of these times, the Name / glory / personality of the Father is being manifested, justified and articulated.
The Lord Jesus had that “glory” in what John calls “the beginning”, and he says that he and the other disciples witnessed that glory (Jn. 1:14). “The beginning” in John’s Gospel often has reference to the beginning of the Lord’s ministry. There is essentially only one glory- the glory of the Son is a reflection or manifestation of the glory of the Father. They may be seen as different glories only in the sense that the same glory is reflected from the Lord Jesus in His unique way; as a son reflects or articulates his father’s personality, it’s not a mirror personality, but it’s the same essence. One star differs from another in glory, but they all reflect the same essential light of glory. The Lord Jesus sought only the glory of the Father (Jn. 7:18). He spoke of God’s glory as being the Son’s glory (Jn. 11:4). Thus Isaiah’s vision of God’s glory is interpreted by John as a prophecy of the Son’s glory (Jn. 12:41). The glory of God is His “own self”, His own personality and essence. This was with God of course from the ultimate beginning of all, and it was this glory which was manifested in both the death and glorification of the Lord Jesus (Jn. 17:5). The Old Testament title “God of glory” is applied to the Lord Jesus, “the Lord of glory” (1 Cor. 2:8; James 2:1). It is
What all this exposition means in practice is this. There is only “one glory” of God. That glory refers to the essential “self”, the personality, characteristics, being etc. The Lord Jesus manifested that glory in His mortal life (Jn. 2:11). But He manifests it now that He has been “glorified”, and will manifest it in the future day of His glory. And the Lord was as in all things a pattern to us. We are bidden follow in His path to glory. We now in our personalities reflect and manifest the one glory of the Father, and our blessed Hope is glory in the future, to be glorified, to be persons (note that-
And so the Man who walked dusty Galilee streets is the very same one, in essence, whom we will meet in judgment day. The ultimate question for each of us, is whether we will be accepted by Him. In the Gospels, we see the Son of man, Son of God, so acceptant of others, so patient with their weaknesses, passionately dying for our salvation. Will He turn as it were another face on us at the day of judgment, showing Himself suddenly and unpredictably to be someone else? Like people we know, who suddenly surprised us one day by showing a completely different aspect to their character? I believe He won’t. Because integrity and consistency of character, sharing His Father’s characteristic of not changing, is what He is essentially about. He won’t show another face then, that we’ve not seen now. The same basic Jesus, who so wished and wishes to eternally save us, will be the One whom we meet in the final day.
If we truly love the Lord, we will fantasize about our moment of meeting with Him. I suspect that His very appearance of ordinariness and evident human aspect will impress me in that first moment of meeting. Perhaps it will be that He appears to me in the midst of everyday life, when I’m desperately consumed with doing something, and interrupts me. And He’ll seem like an ordinary local person, speaking with the same accent, wearing normal clothes, just as He did after His resurrection. And then He’ll say with a very slight, cultured kind of smile: “Duncan, I’m Jesus…”. Who knows how it will be. But if you love Him, you’ll fantasize of that moment, as you love His appearing.
Notes
(1) Raymond Brown,
(2) Charles Hodge,
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2-20 The 21st Century Jesus
It was so hard for the Jewish mind to conceive that a man walking down a dusty Galilee street was the awesome God of Sinai manifested in flesh. And it's hard for us too. This is why the whole struggle over the trinity has come about; people just can’t find the faith to believe that a real man could have been the just as real perfect Son of God. It’s our same struggle when we come to consider the cross; that a body hanging there, covered with blood, spittle, dirt and flies, an image as palatable as a hunk of meat hanging in a butcher’s shop... was and is the salvation of the world, the real and ultimate way of escape for us from the guilt of our iniquity. The life the Lord Jesus lived was 'the sort of life that was in the Father's presence' (1 Jn. 1:2 Gk.). The sort of life God Almighty lives, the feelings and thoughts He has, were the life and feelings and thoughts and words and deeds of the man Jesus. This has to be reflected upon deeply before we grasp the huge import which this has. That a Man who walked home each day along the same dusty streets of Nazareth was in fact living the sort of life that was and is the life of God in Heaven.
And so we must try to image Him as He might be today. If He lived in your town, how would He be? 'Jesus' was a fairly common name in first century Palestine. So the Anglo-Saxon 21st century Jesus would be called Steve, or a Russian one Vladimir, or a Hispanic one Jose. He'd be a manual worker, maybe a mechanic at a gas station, living in some dumb village. Talking with a rural accent, but with gently piercing eyes set in a smiley, bearded face. Anyone who worked with Him was struck by His intelligence and sensitivity, yet nobody in the workplace felt threatened by Him in any way. Remember how the Lord grew in favour with men; He was popular, and yet nobody guessed that He was the perfect, sinless Son of God. There were no girlie posters in the mechanic's workshop. Not because Jesus had asked for the guys to take them down. But they just sensed His feelings, and somehow felt His eyes looking right through them (consider how often the Gospels mention how Jesus turned and looked at people). So they'd taken them down. He rode to work on a bike [or did He drive to work in a beat up Honda Civic?]. Sometimes His bike got a puncture and He had to push it home in the rain. He did the shopping for His mum, a reclusive figure with an unclear past, and balanced the bags on His handlebars. Once they fell off and the eggs broke...but His body language exuded a patience and almost enjoyment of being human as He cleared it all up. This essential joy within Him is perhaps reflected in the 30 or so passages which record the Lord’s use of humour in His teaching(1) . He sometimes forgot the number of his mobile; once He sat on it and broke a key. When some guy stopped and asked Him for a light, He'd grin and say He didn't smoke; but then He got into carrying a lighter just in case He was asked. And forgetful old Joe used to say He just loved asking Jesus for a light because you just got into such a nice chat with Him. He wore faded Levi's jeans, which He passed down to His kid brothers. Whenever they lost something (like the house keys) and got frustrated, He'd help them look for it until it was found. He helped them with their homework- them kids considered Him a real brainbox. Sometimes He'd hang out with them, He'd be goalie up at the recreation ground while a bunch of village kids played soccer, 4 against 4, with goalposts made up of piles of jackets. Even though He was busy, so busy... and part of His mind was in Heavenly places, on spiritual things. But that never, ever, not once, I am convinced...showed.
Notes
(1) See Elton Trueblood,
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2-21 The Importance Of The Humanity Of Christ
The extent of Christ's humanity is brought out by the RV translation of 1 Tim. 2:5. "There is one God, and one mediator between God and men, himself man, Christ Jesus". Paul is writing this
Fear Of Death
And exactly because of that, He had a quite genuine "fear of death" (Heb. 5:8). This "fear of death" within the Lord Jesus provides a profound insight into His so genuine humanity. We fear death because our human life is our greatest and most personal possession... and it was just the same with the Lord Jesus. Note that when seeking here to exemplify Christ's humanity, the writer to the Hebrews chooses His fear of death in Gethsemane as the epitome of His humanity. Oscar Cullmann translates Heb. 5:7: "He was heard in his fear (anxiety)". That very human anxiety about death is reflected in the way He urges Judas to get over and done the betrayal process "quickly" (Jn. 13:28); He was "straitened until it be accomplished" (Lk. 12:50). He prayed to God just as we would when gripped by the fear of impending death. And He was heard. No wonder He is able therefore and thereby to comfort and save us, who lived all our lives in the same fear of death which He had (Heb. 2:15). This repetition of the 'fear of death' theme in Hebrews is surely significant- the Lord Jesus had the same fear of death as we do, and He prayed in desperation to God just as we do. And because He overcame, He is able to support us when
The Lord's fear of death was, it seems to me, to a far greater extent than what even we experience- doubtless because He knew all that was tied up with
Contrast all this with the words of Ignatius at the start of the 2nd century A.D.: "Our God, Jesus the Christ, was carried in Mary's womb" (
The Real Jesus
We non-trinitarians understand, quite correctly, that Jesus saved the world on account of being human- for all His Lordship and spiritual unity with the Father. If He had been of any other nature, salvation would not have been possible through Him. He in all ways is our pattern. It is our humanity that enables us to go into this world with a credible, convincing and saving message. We have to be enough of a man himself in order to save a man. We are not asking our hearers to be super-human. The way senior churchmen seem to lack a genuine, complete humanity has led so many to conclude that because they cannot rise up to such apparently austere and white-faced levels, therefore Christianity for them is not an authentically human possibility. Our message is tied to
If the message of Jesus is defined by us merely as ideas and principles, then we will inevitably find that ideas and principles lack the turbulence of real life- they are abstract. The principles of Bible Truth will be found to be colourless and remote from reality- unless they are tied in to the real, concrete person of Jesus. God forbid that our faith has given us just a bunch of ideas. The principles of the Truth, every doctrine of the Truth, is lived out in Jesus- and it is this fact, this image of Him, which appeals to us as live, passionate, flesh and blood beings. A person cannot be reduced to a formula. It is a living figure and not just dry theories that actually
Jesus is our representative- a distinctive Bible doctrine. We are counted as being in Him. This means that His life is counted as being our life- and only because He was human and we now are human can this become true. The wonder of this is that so many people have acquired a new personal quality through their association with the risen Jesus- for all their human failures, humiliations, setbacks. No longer is it so important for them to ask 'Who am I? What have I achieved in this dumb life?'. Rather it is all important that we are in fact in Christ, and sharing in
By losing our life, we gain it. But the life we gain is the life of Jesus. And therefore life has meaning and purpose, not only in successes but also in failures. Our lives then make sense; for we have and live the
Genuine Humanity
I remember the cold, Russian winter’s day when it finally burst upon me that the Lord Jesus really was human. Because He was genuinely human, so genuinely so, I suddenly started thinking of all sorts of things which must have been true about Him, which I’d never dared think before. And in this, I believe I went up a level in knowing Him. He was the genuine product of the pregnancy process. He had all the pre-history of Mary in his genes. He had a genetic structure. He had a unique fingerprint, just as I have. He must have been either left-hand or right-handed (or ambidextrous!). Belonged to a particular blood group. Fitted into one psychological type more than another. He forgot things at times, didn't understand absolutely everything (e.g. the date of His return, or the mystery of spiritual growth, Mk. 4:27), made a mistake when working as a carpenter, cut His finger. But He was never frustrated with Himself; He was happy being human, comfortable with His humanity.
And as I walked through that long Moscow subway from Rizhskaya Metro to Rizhsky Vokzal, the thoughts were coming thick and fast. Why did He look on the ground when the woman [presumably naked] caught in the act of adultery was brought before Him? Was it not perhaps from sheer embarrassment and male awkwardness? Did He… ever know sexual arousal? Why not ask these questions? If He was truly human, sexuality is at the core of personhood. He would have known sexuality, responding to stimuli in a natural heterosexual manner, “yet without sin”. He was not a cardboard Christ, a sexless Jesus. He shared the same unconscious drives and libido which we do, with a temper, anxiety and ‘anxious fear of death’ (Heb. 5:7) as strong as ours. He was a real man, not free from the inner conflict, effort, temptation and doubt which are part of our human condition. No way can I subscribe to a Trinitarian position that “there was [not] even an infinitely small element of struggle involved” when the Lord faced temptation (1). He was tempted just as we are- and temptation surely involves feeling the pull of evil, and having part of you that feels it to be more attractive than the good. The record of Jn. 8:8 seems to imply that it was the way Jesus stooped down and wrote in the dust which convicted the accusers of the adulteress in their consciences. As He kept on writing, they one by one walked away. It's been speculated that He was writing their deeds or names there, fulfilling Jeremiah's prophecy of how the names of the wicked would be written in the dust. But I'm not so sure they'd have just let Him do that with no further recorded comment. My suggestion is that He stooped down and looked at the ground out of simple male embarrassment, but His 'writing' in the dust was simply Him doodling. If this is so, then there would have been an artless mix of His Divinity, His utter personal moral perfection, and His utter humanity. Embarrassed in front of a naked woman, crouching down on His haunches, doodling in the dust... that, it seems to me, would've been the ultimate conviction of sin for those who watched. It would've been surpassingly beautiful and yet so challenging at the same time. And it is that same mixture of utter humanity and profound, Divine perfection within the person of Jesus which, it seems to me, is what convicts us of sin and leads us devotedly to Him. Maybe I'm wrong in my imagination and reconstruction of this incident- but if we love the Lord, surely we'll be ever seeking to reconstruct and imagine how He would or might have been.
The fullness of the Lord's humanity is of course supremely shown in His death and His quite natural fear of that death. Perhaps on no other point do human beings show they are humans than when it comes to their reaction to and reflection upon their own death. I would go further and suggested that the thought of suicide even entered the Lord's mind. It's hard to understand His thought about throwing Himself off the top of the temple in any other way. His almost throw away comment that "My soul is very sorrowful, even to death" (Mt. 26:38-
I suspect I can see through that huge gap between writer and reader, to sense your discomfort and alarm, even anger, that I should talk about the Lord Jesus in such human terms. I can imagine the splutter and misunderstanding which will greet these suggestions. I am not seeking to diminish in any way from the Lord’s greatness. I’m seeking to bring out His greatness; that there, in this genuinely human person, there was God manifest in flesh. The revulsion of some at what I’m saying is to me just another articulation of our basic dis-ease when faced with the fact the Lord Jesus really was our representative. I believe that in all of us, there’s a desire to set some sort of break between our own humanity, and that of Jesus. But if He wasn’t really like us, then I see the whole ‘Christ-thing’ as having little cash value in our world that seeks so desperately for authenticity and human salvation. The human, Son of God Jesus whom we preach is actually very attractive to people. There’s something very compelling about a perfect hero, who nevertheless has a weak human side. You can see this expressed in novels and fine art very often. Some examples would be novels like D.H. Lawrence,
He wasn’t a God who came down to us and became human; rather is He the ordinary, very human guy who rose up to become the Man with the face of God, ascended the huge distance to Heaven, and received the very nature of God. It’s actually the very opposite to what human theology has supposed, fearful as they were of what the pattern of this Man meant for them. The pre-existent view of Jesus makes Him some kind of Divine comet which came to earth, very briefly, and then sped off again, to return at the second coming. Instead we see a man from amongst men, arising to Divine status, and opening a way for us His brethren to share His victory; and coming back to establish His eternal Kingdom with us on this earth, His earth, where He came from and had His human roots. Take a passage must beloved of Trinitarians, Phil. 2. We read that Jesus was found (
The relationship of the Lord Jesus with His Father was evidently intended by Him to be a very real, achievable pattern for all those in Him. He wasn't an aberration, an uncopyable, inimitable freak. John's Gospel brings this out very clearly. The Father knows the Son, the Son knows the Father, the Son knows men, men know the Son, and so men know both the Father and Son (Jn.10:14,15; 14:7,8). The Son is in the Father as the Father is in the Son; men are in the Son and the Son is in men; and so men are in the Father and Son (Jn. 14:10,11; 17:21,23,26). As the Son did the Father's works and was thereby "one" with Him, so it is for the believers who do the Father's works (Jn. 10:30,37,38; 14:8-15). Whilst there obviously was a unique bonding between Father and Son on account of the virgin birth, the Lord Jesus certainly chooses to speak as if His Spirit enables the relationship between Him and His Father to be reproduced in our experience.
The Challenge Of Christ’s Humanity
The undoubted need for doctrinal truth about the nature of Jesus can so easily lead us to overlooking the need for obedience to His most practical teaching. As Adolf Harnack put it: “True faith in Jesus is not a matter of credal orthodoxy but of doing as he did (4). In this sense we need “to rescue Jesus from Christianity (5). We need to reconstruct in our own minds the person of Jesus and practical teaching of Jesus which so perfectly reflected His own life, free from the theology and creeds which have so often surrounded Him. As a result of this, our preaching of Christ so often ends up stressing those elements which the unbeliever or misbeliever finds most difficult to accept, rather than focusing on the Lord’s humanity and His practical teachings, which they are more likely to accept because as humans they have a natural affinity with them. The Lord Jesus was not merely human, as a theologically correct statement. He passionately entered into human life to its’ fullest extent. Thus B.B. Warfield comments: “[Jesus] knew not mere joy but exultation, not mere passing pity but the deepest movements of compassion and love, not mere surface distress but an exceeding sorrow even unto death" (6).
There is an incredible challenge in the fact that the Lord Jesus had human nature and yet never sinned. He rose above sin in all its forms, and yet was absolutely human. It seems to me that many Christians feel that their calling is to rise above both sin, and also their own human nature. And this results in their belief that spirituality is in fact a denial of their humanity. In extreme forms, we have the white faced nun who has been led to believe that being spiritual equals being white faced, passionless, and somehow superhuman. In a more common expression of the same problem, there are many elders who believe it to be fatal to show any emotional conviction about anything, no chinks in their armour, no admission of their own human limitations or understanding. For this reason I see a similarity between the ‘lives of the saints’ as recorded in Catholic and Orthodox writings (replete with white faces and large holy eyes, hands ever folded in prayer, never making a slip)- and the glossy biographies of Evangelical leaders which jump out at you from the shelves of Protestant bookstores. They too, apparently, never set a foot wrong, but progressed from unlikely glory to unlikely glory. All this arises from an over-emphasis upon the Divine rather than the human side of the Lord Jesus. The character of the Lord Jesus shows us what it’s like to be both human and sinless. It has been truly commented that “if we believe in the fact of his humanity, we must affirm our own”. And the same author perceptively points out that “Just as we have sought a mythical model of Jesus Christ whose humanity is a sham, so we have sought a mythical model of the Christian life” ( 7). Because we seek to rise above being human, we are aiming for something that doesn’t exist. The Lord Jesus wasn’t and isn’t ‘superhuman’; He was and is the image of God stamped upon humanity, and in this sense the New Testament still calls Him a “man” even now. We need not take false guilt about being human. We should be happy with who we are, made in the image of God. Yes we are human, with all that this involves, negatively and positively. I interpret the image of the baby Jesus maybe rather differently from how the Christmas cards do. For a baby and young child to survive, there is an element of desperate selfishness from the first struggling breath. The Lord would've been no different, and obviously shared this basic instinct to preserve self, right up to His death on the cross. And yet somehow He would've stood apart from other people, even as a young person, as He never allowed what Richard Dawkins has termed "the selfish gene" to predominate in Him (8). It was
The Preference Of Jesus To Be Seen As Human
When the Lord spoke of how "the son of man has nowhere to lay his head" (Mt. 8:20), He was apparently alluding to a common proverb about how humanity generally ["son of man" as generalized humanity] is homeless in the cosmos (9). In this case, we see how the Lord took every opportunity to attest to the fact that what was true of humanity in general was true of Him. Perhaps this explains His fondness for describing Himself as "son of man", a term which can mean both humanity in general, and also specifically the Messiah predicted in Daniel. He understood Himself as rightful judge of humanity exactly because He was "son of man" (Jn. 5:27)- because every time we sin, He as a man would've chosen differently, He is therefore able to be our judge. And likewise, exactly because He was a "son of man", "the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins" (Mk. 2:10). If it is indeed true that "'Son of Man' represents the highest conceivable declaration of exaltation in Judaism" (10), then we can understand the play on words the Lord was making- for the term 'son of man' can also without doubt just mean 'humanity generally'. Exactly because He was human, and yet perfect, He was so exalted. It's perhaps noteworthy that in the wilderness temptation, Jesus was tempted "If you are the Son of
Him And Us
Heb. 2:6-9 is an example of the inspired writer using expected reader response and expectations in order to make a point. Having spoken of how the world to come will be given to redeemed human beings and not to Angels, the writer goes on to quote from the Psalms to prove that point: "Now it was not to angels that God subjected the world to come, of which we are speaking. It has been testified somewhere, "What is man, that you are mindful of him, or the son of man, that you care for him? You made him for a little while lower than the angels; you have crowned him with glory and honor, putting everything in subjection under his feet." Now in putting everything in subjection to him, he left nothing outside his control. At present, we do not yet see everything in subjection to him. But we see him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death". We begin reading the quotation assuming it's talking about humanity generally; but as it goes on, we realize it's talking about the pre-eminent Son of Man, i.e. the Lord Jesus. Notice how He is called "Jesus", with no 'Lord' or 'Christ' added on. The point of it all is to make us perceive how totally identified is Jesus with humanity as a whole; a passage which speaks in its context of humanity generally is allowed to quite naturally flow on in meaning to apply to the Lord Jesus personally. It's a majestic, powerful way of making the point- that the Lord Jesus was truly one of us.
Throughout the Gospels, it’s apparent that both explicitly and implicitly, the Lord was almost desperate to persuade His followers to see Him as their brother, one to whom they could realistically aspire- and not a superhuman icon to be trusted in to get them out of temporal problems. We've noted His preference for the title ‘Son of man’ rather than any more direct reference to His Divine Sonship- although to the Old Testament mind, ”son of man” was a title which upon closer reflection associated Him with the glorious Son of man of Daniel’s visions. The Lord’s struggle was prefigured in the way Joseph-Jesus had to urge his brothers “Come near to me, I pray you”, and begged them to believe in His grace and acceptance of them (Gen. 45:4; 50:18-21). This is in essence the plea of Jesus to Trinitarians today.
Take the incident of the withered fig tree in Mark 11:20-24 as an
example of what I mean. The disciples were amazed at the faith of Jesus in God’s power. He had
commanded the fig tree to be withered- but this had required Him to pray to God
to make this happen. As the disciples looked at the withered fig tree and then at Him, wide eyed with amazement
at His faith, the Lord immediately urged
Repeatedly, the Lord Jesus carefully worded His teaching in order to
use the same words about Himself as about His disciples. He was the lamb of
God; and He sent them forth as lambs amongst wolves; He was “the light of the
world”, and He stated that they too must be likewise. As He was the source of
living water to us, so we are to be to others (Jn. 4:10,14). I have tabulated
many examples of this kind of thing in
I suppose most challenging of all is the Lord’s invitation to us to
take up our cross and follow after Him, in His ‘last walk’ to the place of
crucifixion. This image would’ve been chilling to those who first heard it, who
were familiar with a criminal’s walk to his death. Quite rightly, we associate
the cross of Jesus with our salvation. But it is also a demand to us to be like
Him, not only in showing the courtesy, politeness, thoughtfulness etc. which is
part of a truly Christ-like / Christian culture, but in the utterly radical
call to self-sacrifice unto death. It is in this matter of bearing the cross
after Him that we would so dearly wish for the crucified Christ to be just an
item in history, an act which saved us which is now over, an icon we hang
around our neck or mount prominently on our study wall- and no more. But He,
His cross, His ‘last walk’, His request that we pick up a cross and walk behind
Him, the eerie continuous tenses used in New Testament references to the
crucifixion- is so much more than that. If He washed our feet, we
Notes
(1) F.D.E. Schliermacher,
(2) Nikolay Gorodetsky,
(3) John Knox,
(4) A. Harnack,
(5) R.W. Funk,
(6) B.B. Warfield, ‘The Emotional Life Of Our Lord’ in
(7) Nigel Cameron,
(8) Richard Dawkins,
(9) Oscar Cullmann,
(10) Cullmann,
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2-22 The Divine Side Of Jesus
In many discussions with Trinitarians, I came to observe how very often, a verse I would quote supporting the humanity of Jesus would be found very near passages which speak of His Divine side. For example, most 'proof texts' for both the 'Jesus=God' position and the 'Jesus was human' position- are all from the same Gospel of John. Instead of just trading proof texts, e.g. 'I and my father are one' verses 'the Father is greater than I', we need to understand them as speaking of one and the same Jesus. So many 'debates' about the nature of Jesus miss this point; the sheer wonder of this man, this more than man, was that He was so genuinely human, and yet perfectly manifested God. This was and is the compelling wonder of this Man. These two aspects of the Lord, the exaltation and the humanity, are spoken of together in the Old Testament too. A classic example would be Ps. 45:6,7: “Thy throne, O God, is for ever [this is quoted in the New Testament about Jesus]…God, thy God, hath anointed thee [made you Christ]”.
The juxtaposition of the Lord’s humanity and His exaltation is what is so unique about Him. And it’s what is so hard for people to accept, because it demands so much faith in a man, that He could be really so God-like. The juxtaposition of ideas is seen in Hebrews so powerfully. Here alone in the New Testament is His simple, human name “Jesus” used so baldly- not ‘Jesus Christ’, ‘the Lord Jesus’, just plain ‘Jesus’ (Heb. 2:9; 3:1; 4:14; 6:20; 7:22; 10:19; 12:2,24; 13:12). And yet it’s Hebrews that emphasizes how He can be called ‘God’, and is the full and express image of God Himself. I observe that in each of the ten places where Hebrews uses the name ‘Jesus’, it is as it were used as a climax of adoration and respect. For example: “… whither the forerunner is for us entered, even Jesus” (Heb. 6:20). “But you are come unto… unto… to… to… to… to… and to Jesus the mediator” (Heb. 12:22-24). The bald title ‘Jesus’, one of the most common male names in first century Palestine, as common as Dave or Steve or John in the UK today, speaking as it did of the Lord’s utter humanity, is therefore used as a climax of honour for Him. The honour due to Him is exactly due to the fact of His humanity. John’s Gospel uses exalted language to describe the person of Jesus- but actually, if one looks out for it, John uses the very same terms about all of humanity. Here are some examples: About Jesus About humanity generally or other human beings
Came into the world (9:39; 12:46; 16:28; 18:37)
1:9 [of “every man”]; 6:14. ‘Came into the world’ means ‘to be born’ in 16:21; 18:37
Sent from God (1:6; 3:28)
3:2,28; 8:29; 15:10
A man of God (9:16,33)
9:17,31
‘What I saw in my Father’s presence’ (8:38)
The work of ‘
God was His Father
8:41
He who has come from God (8:42)
8:47
The Father was in Him, and He was in the Father (10:37)
15:5-10; 17:21-23,26
Son of God (1:13)
All believers are ‘the offspring of God Himself’ (1:13; 1 Jn. 2:29-3:2,9; 4:7; 5:1-3,8)
Consecrated and sent into the world (17:17-19)
20:21
Jesus had to listen to the Father and be taught by Him (7:16; 8:26,28,40; 12:49; 14:10; 15:15; 17:8)
All God’s children are the same (6:45)
Saw the Father (6:46)
The Jews should have been able to do this (5:37)
Not born of the flesh or will of a man, but the offspring of God Himself
True of all believers (1:13)
Juxtaposition
Hebrews 1 can be a passage which appears to provide perhaps the strongest support for both the ‘Jesus is God’ and ‘Jesus is not God’ schools. Meditating upon this one morning, I suddenly grasped what was going on. The writer is in fact purposefully juxtaposing the language of Christ’s humanity and subjection to the Father, with statements and quotations which apply the language of God to Jesus. But the emphasis is so repeatedly upon the fact that God did this to Jesus. God gave Jesus all this glory. Consider the evidence: It is God who begat Jesus (Heb. 1:5), God who told the Angels to worship Jesus (Heb. 1:6), it was “God, even your God” who anointed Jesus, i.e. made Him Christ, the anointed one (Heb. 1:9); it was God who made Jesus sit at His right hand, and makes the enemies of His Son come into subjection (Heb. 1:13); it was God who made / created Jesus, God who crowned Jesus, God who set Jesus over creation (Heb. 2:7), God who put all in subjection under Jesus (Heb. 2:8). And yet interspersed between all this emphasis- for that’s what it is- upon the superiority of the Father over the Son… we find Jesus addressed as “God” (Heb. 1:8), and having Old Testament passages about God applied to Him (Heb. 1:5,6). The juxtaposition is purposeful. It is to bring out how the highly exalted position of Jesus was in fact granted to Him by ‘his God’, the Father, who remains the single source and giver of all exaltation, and who, to use the Lord’s very own words, “is greater than [Christ]” (Jn. 14:28).
This juxtaposition of the Lord’s humanity and His exaltation is found all through Bible teaching about His death. It’s been observed that the ‘I am’ sayings of Jesus, with their obvious allusion to the Divine Name, are in fact all found in contexts which speak of the subordination of Jesus to God(1). He was ‘lifted up’ in crucifixion and shame; and yet ‘lifted up’ in ‘glory’ in God’s eyes through that act. We read in Is. 52:14 that His face was more marred, more brutally transmogrified, than that of any man. And yet reflecting upon 2 Cor. 4:4,6, we find that His face was the face of God; His glory was and is the Father’s glory: “The glory of Christ, who is the image of God… the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ”. Who is the one who redeems His people? Isaiah calls him “the arm of the Lord”: “to whom has
The mixture of the Divine and human in the Lord Jesus is what makes Him so compelling and motivational. He was like us in that He had our nature and temptations; and yet despite that, He was different from us in that He didn't sin. Phil. 2 explains how on the cross, the Lord Jesus was so supremely "in the likeness of men"; and yet the same 'suffering servant' prophecy which Phil. 2 alludes to also makes the point that on the cross, "his appearance was so unlike the sons of Adam" (Is. 52:14). There was something both human and non-human in His manifestation of the Father upon the cross. Never before nor since has such supreme God-likeness, 'Divinity' , if you like, been displayed in such an extremely human form- a naked, weak, mortal man in His final death throes.
Even after His resurrection, in His moment of glory and triumph, the Lord appeared in very ordinary working clothes, so that He appeared as a gardener. The disciples who met Him on the Emmaus road asked whether He ‘lived alone’ and therefore was ignorant of the news of the city about the death of Jesus (Lk. 24:18 RV). The only people who lived alone, outside of the extended family, were drop outs or weirdos. It was almost a rude thing for them to ask a stranger. The fact was, the Lord appeared so very ordinary, even like a lower class social outcast type. And this was the exalted Son of God. We gasp at His humility, but also at His earnest passion to remind His followers of their common bond with Him, even in His exaltation.
The Lord Jesus often stressed that He was the only way to the Father; that only through knowing and seeing / perceiving Him can men come to know God. And yet in Jn. 6:45 He puts it the other way around: “Every man therefore that hath heard, and hath learned of the Father, cometh unto me”. And He says that only the Father can bring men to the Son (Jn. 6:44). Yet it is equally true that only the Son of God can lead men to God the Father. In this we see something exquisitely beautiful about these two persons, if I may use that word about the Father and Son. The more we know the Son, the more we come to know the Father; and the more we know the Father, the more we know the Son. This is how close they are to each other. And yet they are quite evidently distinctly different persons. But like any father and son, getting to know one leads us to know more of the other, which in turn reveals yet more to us about the other, which leads to more insight again into the other… and so the wondrous spiral of knowing the Father and Son continues. If Father and Son were one and the same person, the surpassing beauty of this is lost and spoilt and becomes impossible. The experience of any true Christian, one who has come to ‘see’ and know the Father and Son, will bear out this truth. Which is why correct understanding about their nature and relationship is vital to knowing them. The wonder of it all is that the Son didn’t automatically reflect the Father to us, as if He were just a piece of theological machinery; He made a supreme effort to do so, culminating in the cross. He explains that He didn’t do
The Path To Glory
The Lord’s path to glory culminated in the Father ‘making known unto Him the ways of life’ (Acts 2:28). That statement, incidentally, is a major nail in the coffin of trinitarianism. But more significantly for us personally, in this the Lord was our pattern, as we likewise walk in the way to life (Mt. 7:14), seeking to ‘know’ the life eternal (Jn. 17:3). In being our realistic role model in this, we can comment with John: “The Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding, that
Notes
(1) P.B. Harner,
The Father And Son
The Wrath Of God
I want to look at the relationship between the Father and Son by considering some of the Father’s characteristics, and how His articulation of them has been affected by His experience of His Son.
God can be provoked to anger (Dt. 9:7; Ezra 5:12), His wrath ‘arises’ because of sinful behaviour (2 Chron. 36:16). He drove Israel into captivity in anger and fury (Jer. 32:37). The wrath of God ‘waxes hot’ against sinful men, and Moses begged God to ‘turn’ from that wrath (Ex. 32:11,12). The whole intercession of Moses with God gives the impression of God changing His mind because of the intercession of a mere man. Admittedly the idea of anger flaring up in God’s face and then Him ‘turning’ from that wrath is some sort of anthropomorphism. The very same words are used about Esau’s wrath ‘turning away’, i.e. being pacified, as are used about the pacification of God’s wrath (Gen. 27:45). But all the same, this language must be telling us something. The wrath of God did come upon Israel in the wilderness (Ps. 78:31; Ez. 22:31), but Moses ‘turned’ God from executing it as He planned (Ps. 106:23). Many times He turned away from the full extent of His wrath (Ps. 78:38). It is by righteous behaviour and repentance that the wrath of God turns away (Dt. 13:17; 2 Chron. 12:12; 29:10; 30:8). Ezra 10:14 speaks of God’s wrath turning away because those who had married Gentile women divorced them. God’s wrath is also turned away by the death of the sinner- the heads of the sinners in Num. 25:4 were to be ‘hung up’ before the Lord so that His wrath would turn away. A similar example is to be found in Josh. 7:26. Jeremiah often comments that God’s wrath is turned away by the execution of judgment upon the sinner (e.g. Jer. 30:24). In this sense His anger and wrath are poured out or ‘accomplished’, i.e. they are no more because they have been poured out (Lam. 4:11).
Turning Away Wrath
The fact that men such as Moses and Jeremiah (Jer. 18:20) turned away God’s wrath without these things happening , or simply by prayer (Dan. 9:16) therefore means that God accepted the intercession of those men and counted their righteousness to those from whom His wrath turned away. We shouldn’t assume that these righteous men merely waved away God’s wrath. That wrath was real, and required immense pleading and personal dedication on their behalf. Thus we read in 2 Kings 23:26 that despite Josiah’s righteousness, the wrath of God against Manasseh was still not turned away. Truly „wise men turn away wrath” (Prov. 29:8). And they evidently pointed forward to the work of the Lord Jesus- perhaps, like the sacrifices, those men only achieved what they did on account of the way they pointed forward to the Lord Jesus. He delivered us from God’s coming wrath (1 Thess. 1:10)- the wrath of God is frequently spoken of in the New Testament as being poured out with devastating physical effects in the last days. All those not reconciled to God through the Lord Jesus are „by nature the children of wrath” (Eph. 2:3). The very existence of the law of God creates His wrath, because we break that law (Rom. 4:15). Romans has much to say about the wrath of God; and the letter begins with the reminder that we are all sinners, and the wrath of God will be revealed against all forms of sin (Rom. 1:18). It is only through the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus that we are saved from this wrath and ‘reconciled’ to God (Rom. 5:8-10). The wrath of God abides on all who don’t accept Christ (Jn. 3:36)- confirming the truth of Paul’s statements that all of us before our conversion were „by nature the children of wrath”. God isn’t unrighteous because He will take vengeance- this is how He will judge the world in the last day (Rom. 3:5).
The Other Side Of God
But... and it’s a big but. There’s another side to this apparently angry God. He is a God of untold love, who is almost unbelievably slow to His anger. The whole Old Testament exemplifies this in His dealings with Israel. This is the God who presents Himself to us as appointing our sympathetic Lord Jesus as both our judge and our advocate. The God who will almost compromise, apparently, His own statements in order to save us, whose grace in Christ finds a way around the law that sin leads to death, freeing us from that principle (Rom. 8:2), the God who revealed Himself through the senseless love of Hosea for the worthless Gomer. The harder side of God is there, undoubtedly. But it is there in order to give depth and meaning to His amazing grace and desire to save us. Without the reality of God as a God of wrath and judgment of sin, His grace in saving us would be far cheaper to our eyes, and far harder to deeply appreciate.
Beyond Mechanics
So the question arises, how could the death of the Lord Jesus as a perfect man turn away God’s wrath from us, just because we place ourselves ‘in’ Him? It is far too primitive to suggest that the sight of the red blood of Jesus somehow appeased an angry God. For starters, God isn’t an angry God. He is a God of love who delights to show mercy and grace. But on the other hand, as Old Testament men turned away the wrath of God, so the Lord Jesus turned away that wrath from us; He saved us from it. That is the Biblical position. But how and why was this possible? What was so special about Jesus? The standard answer would be along the lines that the Lord Jesus shared our nature, was our representative, and yet was perfect, dying for us to show how we deserve death, but rising again because it wasn’t possible that a perfect man could remain dead, and if we are ‘in Him’ then we are counted as being ‘Him’, and thereby our sins are overlooked and we will share the resurrection and eternal life now enjoyed by Him personally. And I stand by all that. But it only throws the essential question a stage further back. Why and how is this so? Why would God operate like that, given the part of His character that exacts judgment for sin, and experiences the emotion of wrath against sinners? Why go through that process of atonement that required the death of His Son to achieve it- when He could have achieved our salvation in any way He liked? Maybe I have too restless a mind. But a valid explanation of what happened doesn’t explain to me ultimately why it had to be the way it was; and what was it about the death of Jesus that so uniquely moved the Father for all time to forgive us our sins and save us.
Perhaps our problem is that we are inclined to see the tragedy in Eden as a ‘problem’ for God, which He had to devise a very clever means of getting around, whilst leaving His essential principles uncompromised. The fact that the Lord Jesus in a sense was slain from the foundation of the world, the ‘word’ / logos of Jesus was in the very beginning with God, surely indicates that God didn’t in any sense think up some plan to save us when faced by Adam’s sin. To me, we’re coming at this the wrong way around, assuming that God had a problem which He needed to solve. Not at all. God’s basic principles don’t change, but He also reveals Himself as a loving Father who has all the emotions of a human father- again, the manifestation of God in Hosea exemplifies all this, with God presented as having the feelings of the wounded lover, the anger mixed with senseless love and acceptance of the betrayed husband, the God who makes statements in His fury and then by His grace and love doesn’t carry them out (1). It is this passionate and emotional side of the Father which is our salvation.
But back to our question. In what sense did the life and death of His Son somehow turn God’s wrath away from us, and why did it all work out the way that it did? For me, dry atonement theory doesn’t provide any ultimate explanation. It describes a mechanism. But the questions of why and how remain- for me at least. My explanation of what happened due to the life and death of God’s Son is best initially illustrated by a human explanation.
Father And Son
My father is in his 70s as I write this. Recently we had literally the conversation of a lifetime, one of those en passant chats which turns into a profound interchange. He explained to me how I had influenced him. How his basic life and faith principles had never changed, but what he had seen of himself in me, in failure and success, had led him to act and feel very differently towards others; and thus he had changed from being a legalistic defender of the faith to being a far more gracious individual. Not so much because of any grace or otherwise I showed; but because he saw himself played out through me, through my failures and successes, triumphs and failures. He shared with me how well he knew my mother; but it was only by seeing her in me, again, in both triumph and failure, in good and bad, that he came to more deeply understand and appreciate her. That conversation remains an abiding memory. And I am thankful to God that we both lived long enough in this lonely world to be able to have it.
My point of course from all this is that God’s having a son influenced Him. God isn’t static. I’m pinned down under the tyranny of words here, but something like ‘growth’, ‘deeper experience’ (or whatever word we find appropriate) surely is a facet of His nature, as it is of us who are made in His image. And there’s no doubt that God can be influenced to change His mind. Both Moses and Jonah demonstrated that clearly. God’s experience in Christ led Him to a deeper insight into the nature of His creation, just as my very existence gave my father greater understanding of my mother. I’m not saying that God somehow changed between the Old Testament and the New Testament. But the life and death of His Son, the way His Son gave His life for us His brethren, influenced God. It saved us from His wrath- not in that the sight of the red blood appeased an angry God, but in that He perceived again ever more forcibly how in His own personality, grace outweighs judgment, and thus He became committed to hearing our desperate pleas for that grace. The wrath of God simply couldn’t be against those who chose to be in this wonderful Son of His, who voluntarily identified themselves with Him, who believed in and were baptized into that death and seek to share in it by their own feeble lives of self-crucifixion. Such behaviour from God isn’t unexpected- because in Old Testament times He had been ‘turned from’ His wrath by men far beneath the status of the Lord Jesus. It was their lives and their prayerful intercession which affected Him. But it’s been pointed out that their ‘intercession’ was a mediating of God’s principles and blessings to men, rather than ‘mediation’ in the sense of settling a quarrel between two parties (2). How, then, did their manifestation of God to men so influence God Himself? Surely because as He saw e.g. Moses telling Israel of Him, pleading with them to repent, He saw Himself in Moses. And Moses was also Israel’s representative. And so He was moved to turn from His wrath. When it came to the ‘intercession’ of His own Son, the effect was even the more powerful. Not just Israel but any from all nations would be saved; and the Son of God ever lives to make this kind of intercession both for and to us. Moses died, but the Lord Jesus lives for evermore in God’s presence, the example of His life, the nature of His very being, having ‘persuaded’ the Father to turn away from His wrath, to not stir up all His anger [to use an Old Testament figure], and exercise to the full extent the wonderfully gracious aspect of His character towards us. God is presented to us in the Old Testament as a person, and a person with a struggle within them. He speaks in Hosea of how His heart is kindled in ‘repentings’, in changes of mind, over whether to reject or redeem His wayward people; how His very soul is grieved to decide. It seems to me that the Father’s experience of His Son leads Him to resolve this struggle, to come down on the side of goodness / grace rather than severity, with those of us who are idenitified with His Son.
Admittedly we have trodden upon ground which Scripture doesn’t explicitly open up to us. But there is some Biblical indication of the nature of the Son’s influence upon the Father, and His relationship with Him. Remember that whilst Father and Son were one in purpose, the will of the Father wasn’t always that of the Son. The agony in Gethsemane was proof enough of that. In the parable of Lk. 13:7,8, the servant [=Jesus] is commanded by his master [= God] to cut down the fig tree. Not only does the servant take a lot of initiative in saying that no, he will dig around it and try desperately to get it to give fruit; but, he says, if even that fails, then you, the Master, will have to cut it down… when he, the servant, had been ordered to do it by his master! This servant [the Lord Jesus] obviously has a most unusual relationship with the Master. He suggests things on his own initiative, and even passes the job of cutting off Israel back to God, as if He would rather not do it. In the parable of Lk. 14:22, the servant [= Jesus] reports to the master [= God] that the invited guests wouldn’t come to the supper [cp. God’s Kingdom]. The master tells the slave to go out into the streets and invite the poor. And then we’re hit with an incredible unreality, especially to 1st century ears: “The servant said, Lord, it is done as thou hast commanded, and yet there is room”. No slave would take it upon himself to draw up the invitation list, or take the initiative to invite poor beggars into his master’s supper. But this servant did! He not only had the unusual relationship with his master that allowed this huge exercise of his own initiative- but he somehow knew his master so well that he guessed in advance what the master would say, and he went and did it without being asked. In all this we have a wonderful insight into the relationship between the Father and Son, especially in the area of inviting people to His supper [cp. salvation]. The point of all this is to demonstrate how the Lord Jesus has His influence upon the Father, and can at times change His stated purpose [e.g. with regard to the rejection of Israel- just as Moses did]. And this is the same Father and Son with whom we have to do, and whose matchless relationship is the basis and reason of our salvation.
Real Relationship
The parable of the fig tree appears to show the Lord Jesus as more gracious and patient than His Father- the owner of the vineyard (God) tells the dresser (Jesus) to cut it down, but the dresser asks for another year’s grace to be shown to the miserable fig tree, and then, he says, the owner [God] Himself would have to cut it down (Lk. 13:7-9). But in Jn. 6:37-39 we seem to have the Lord’s recognition that the Father was more gracious to some than He would naturally be; for He says that He Himself will not cast any out, exactly because it was the Father’s will that He should lose nothing but achieve a resurrection to life eternal for all given to Him. And the Lord observed, both here and elsewhere, that He was not going to do His own will, but rather the will of the Father. Now this is exactly the sort of thing we would expect in a truly dynamic relationship- on some points the Father is more generous than the Son, and in other cases- vice versa. And yet Father and Son were, are and will be joined together in the same judgment and will, despite Father and Son having differing wills from one viewpoint. But this is the result of process, of differing perspectives coming together, of a mutuality we can scarcely enter into comprehending, of some sort of learning together, of a Son struggling to do the will of a superior Father rather than His own will, of conclusions jointly reached through experience, time and process- rather than an automatic, robot-like imposition of the Father’s will and judgment upon the Son. And the awesome thing is, that the Lord invites us to know the Father, in the same way as He knows the Father. His relationship with the Father is a pattern for ours too.
Notes
(1) See http://www.aletheiacollege.net/ww/4-5-1extent_of_grace.htm
(2) John Launchbury, 'The Present Work Of Christ' ,
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2-23 Christ-centredness
The Gospel of the Lord Jesus isn't a collection of ideas and theologies bound together in a statement of faith. It is, rather, a proclamation of facts (and the Greek words used about the preaching of the Gospel support that view of it) concerning a flesh and blood historical person, namely the Lord Jesus Christ. The focus is all upon a concrete and actual person. Paul in Gal. 2:20 doesn't say: 'I live by faith in the idea that the Son of God loved me'. Rather: "I live in faith, the faith which is in the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself up for me" (RV). Faith is centred in a person- hence the utterly central importance of our correctly understanding the Lord Jesus. We are clearly bidden see the man Jesus as the focus of everything. Think about how Mark speaks of Jesus " sitting in the sea" teaching the people on the shore (Mk. 4:1). All else was irrelevant- even the boat He was in. The focus is so zoomed in on the person of Jesus. And Paul in his more 'academic' approach sees Jesus as the very core of the whole cosmos, the reason for everything in the whole of existence. God's whole purpose, according to Paul, is that we should become like His Son-and to this end all things are directed in God's plan for us (Rom. 8:28,29). To achieve the " measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ" is the 'perfection' or maturity towards which God works in our lives. As we read of Him day by day, slowly His words and ways will become ours. The men who lived with Jesus in the flesh are our pattern in this; for the wonder of the inspired record means that His realness comes through to us too. Time and again, their spoken and written words are reflective of His words, both consciously and unconsciously. Note how John repeats his Lord’s use of the term “little children”; and how He appropriates the Lord’s phrase “that your joy may be complete” (Jn. 16:24; 17:13) to the way
The extent to which we are intended to be Christ-centred is reflected in how John speaks of Him as “the truth”. Indeed, He appears to refer to the Name of Jesus with the same sensitivity with which a Jew would refer to the Name of God. John seems to use
In the first century, you usually began a letter with a preface, saying who you were and to whom you were writing. The letter to the Hebrews has a preface which speaks simply of the greatness of Christ (Heb. 1:1-3). The higher critics speak of how the preface has been lost or got detached. But no, the form of Heb. 1:1-3 is indeed that of a preface. The point is that the greatness of Christ, of which the letter speaks, is so great as to push both the author and audience into irrelevancy and obscurity. It’s significant that the New Testament writers speak so frequently of Jesus as simply “the Lord”. Apparently, this would’ve been strange to first century ears. Kings and pagan gods always had their personal name added to the title ‘the Lord’- e.g. ‘the Lord Sarapis’. To just speak of “the Lord” was unheard of. The way the New Testament speaks like this indicates the utter primacy of the Lord Jesus in the minds of believers, and the familiarity they had with speaking about Him in such exalted terms.
Reading Luke and Acts through together, it becomes apparent that the author [Luke] saw the acts of the apostles as a continuation of those of the Lord Jesus. This is why he begins Acts by talking about his " former treatise" of all that Jesus had
Luke describes the " amazement" at the preaching and person of Jesus (Lk. 2:47,48; 4:36; 5:26; 8:56; 24:22), and then uses the same word to describe the " amazement" at the apostles (Acts 2:7,12; 8:13; 9:21; 10:45; 12:16). This is why the early brethren appropriated prophecies of Jesus personally to themselves as they witnessed to Him (Acts 4:24-30; 13:5,40). The same Greek words are also used in Luke and Acts about the work of Jesus and those of the apostles later; and also, the same original words are used concerning the deeds of the apostles in the ministry of Jesus, and their deeds in Acts. Thus an impression is given that the ecclesia's witness after the resurrection was and is a continuation of the witness of the 12 men who walked around Galilee with Jesus. He didn't come to start a formalized religion; as groups of believers grew, the Holy Spirit guided them to have systems of leadership and organization, but the essence is that we too are personally following the Lamb of God as He walked around Galilee, hearing His words, seeing His ways, and following afar off to Golgotha carrying His cross. Luke concludes by recording how the Lord reminded His men that they were " witnesses" (23:48); but throughout Acts, they repeatedly describe themselves as witnesses to Him (Acts 1:8,22; 2:32; 3:15; 5:32; 10:39,41; 13:31; 22:15,20; 26:16). This is quite some emphasis. This too should fill our self-perception; that we are witnesses to the Lord out of our own personal experience of Him. They were witnesses that Christ
Knowing the Lord Jesus as a person will excite real passion and feeling in response. Our reactions to the tragedy of the way He was rejected, and is rejected and mocked to this day, will be like those of the woman who was a sinner whom Luke records in Lk. 7. The Lord was invited to the home of a Pharisee, who clearly had only invited Him to insult and mock Him. For the Pharisee hadn't kissed Him, nor arranged for His feet to be washed- things which simply
Notes
(1) I.H. Marshall,
(2) Joachim Jeremias,
(3) Kenneth Bailey,
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2-24 The Spirit Of Jesus
I observe in many new converts something which was also in me for far too long: a perception of the Lord Jesus as somehow passive, sitting dutifully at the Father's right hand until the day on the calendar comes when He will return to take us unto Himself. This really couldn't be further from the truth. The Spirit of Jesus is
The Work Of The Spirit Of Jesus
The Greek and Hebrew words translated 'spirit' don't
" The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit which is given unto us" (Rom. 5:5)
" The Kingdom of God is not meat and drink; but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit. For he that in these things (i.e.
" The God of patience and consolation
" Now the God of hope
" Eye (the natural eye) hath not seen, nor (the natural) ear heard, neither have entered into the (unregenerate) heart of (the natural) man, the things which God hath prepared...but God hath revealed them unto us by His Spirit...for what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God. For we have received...the spirit which is of God: that we might freely know the things that are freely given to us (of the Spirit) of God. Which things also we speak...in the words...which the Holy Spirit teacheth" (1 Cor. 2:9-13)
" Your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit which is in you, which ye have (been given) of God" (1 Cor. 6:19)
" He which stablisheth us with you in Christ, and hath anointed us, is God; who hath also sealed us, and given the earnest of the Spirit in our hearts" (2 Cor. 1:21,22)
" He that hath wrought us for the selfsame thing is God, who also hath given unto us the earnest of the Spirit" (2 Cor. 5:5)
" Thanks be to God, which
" The communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all" (2 Cor. 13:14)
" That we might receive the promise of the Spirit (a reference to the Comforter?) through faith...that the promise by faith of Jesus Christ (what Jesus Christ promised: the Comforter?) might be given to them that believe" (Gal. 3:14,22)
" After that ye believed, ye were sealed with that (i.e. the specific, promised) holy Spirit of promise (the Comforter? when else was the Spirit promised?), which is the earnest of our inheritance (which we possess) until the redemption of the purchased possession...the exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward who believe, according to the working of his mighty power" (Eph. 1:13,14,19)
" For through him we both have access by one Spirit [of Jesus] unto the Father" (Eph. 2:18)
" I bow my knees...that he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man;
" Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption" (Eph. 4:30)
" Be (let yourselves be) filled with the Spirit [of Jesus]" (Eph. 5:18)
" This shall turn to my salvation, through your prayer, and the supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ" (Phil. 1:19)
" (I) do not cease to pray for you, that ye may be filled (by him) with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding: that ye might walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing...strengthened with all might, according to his glorious power, unto all patience" (Col. 1:9-11)
" Ye became followers of us, and of the Lord, having received the word in much affliction with joy of the Holy Spirit" (1 Thess. 1:6)
" ...God, who hath also given us his holy Spirit" (1 Thess. 4:8)
" God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit, and belief of the Truth...now our Lord Jesus Christ himself...comfort your hearts, and stablish you in every good word and work" (2 Thess. 2:13,17)
" God hath not given us the spirit of fear, but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind" (2 Tim. 1:7)
" That good thing which was committed unto thee keep by the Holy Spirit which dwelleth in us" (2 Tim. 1:14)
" God peradventure will
" Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Spirit, which he shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ...that being justified by his grace, we should be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life" (Tit. 3:5-7)
" I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts" (Heb. 8:10; this is a condition of the new covenant which we are now in)
" The God of peace...make you perfect in every good work to do his will, working in you that which is wellpleasing in his sight through Jesus Christ" (Heb. 13:20,21)
" If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally...and it shall be given him" (James 1:5)
" Elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father through sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience...who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation" (1 Pet. 1:2,5).
This catena of passages could be easily extended. There can be no doubt that the operation of God's Spirit upon men is a major N.T. theme.
" The Lord the Spirit"
The Lord Jesus is " the Lord the spirit" (2 Cor. 3:18 RV); and " the Spirit" is one of Jesus' titles in Revelation, so closely is He identified with the work of the Spirit. The Lord calls men and women to Him, having first prepared their way to Him, guiding the preachers of His word. He brings people to baptism, enters into a husband-wife relationship with them (Eph. 5:24), has children by them (i.e. spirituality develops in our characters, Rom. 7:4), strengthens them afterwards, keeps them in Him, " in everything...co-operates for good with those that love God" (Rom. 8:28 NEB), saves them in an ongoing sense, develops them spiritually, and then finally presents them perfect at His return. He is actively subduing " all things" , even in the natural creation, unto Himself (1 Cor. 15:27,28 Gk.). However, the NT focuses on His work amongst us, the ecclesia. Where two or three are gathered, He manifests Himself in the midst of them (Mt. 18:20). He is like a priest constantly on duty, bringing His people to the Father (Mt. 26:29 cp. Lev. 11:9).
The lampstand is a symbol of the ecclesia; the lamps are us. The oil is the spirit of Jesus. Aaron was as Jesus. He daily ‘orders’ us, enabling us to shine (Lev. 24:4). Jesus understood this to be so in saying that He came to fan mens’ lamps into brighter light, to mend smoking flax, not give up on it. And He is actively about this work on a daily basis as were the priests.
The Lord The Preacher
The Lord Jesus has compassion upon those who are ignorant of His Gospel, just as He does upon those who fall out of the way to life (Heb. 5:2, alluding to Christ as the good Samaritan who comes to stricken men). It is He who brings men to faith in God (1 Pet. 1:21; 3:18), revealing the Father to men (Lk. 10:22; Jn. 14:21), calling and inviting them to the Kingdom (1 Pet. 5:10; Rev. 22:17), going out into the market place and calling labourers (Mt. 20:3-7), almost
The Lord Who Blesses
Baptism is to be associated with the ancient rite of circumcision. The Lord Jesus Himself as it were circumcises men at their baptism, cutting off the flesh of their past lives, and thereby inviting them to live in a manner appropriate to what He has done for them (Col. 2:11-13). He wishes us to be like Him, to have
He walks among the ecclesias He is building up (Rev. 2:1), opening up the hearts of individual members for examination (Heb. 4:13), searching our motives (2 Cor. 8:21; 10:18) by the spirit of Jesus, noting the good and bad points (Rev. 2:3,4), measuring their growth (Rev. 2:5,19), washing and pruning the vine so that it gives more fruit (Jn. 15), chastening so that the fruit of spirituality improves (Rev. 3:19), giving space to repent (Rev. 2:21) and punishing the apostate (Rev. 2:5). He even works with parents, nurturing and admonishing their children in spiritual growth (Eph. 6:4). Pause to reflect- that this is what He is doing with you, and the brethren with whom you meet and mix regularly. I would go so far as to suggest that as the Lord hung on the cross, He was motivated by the thought of all this future work which His sacrifice would enable Him to do. " He gave himself for us,
The Saviour Lord
The Lord Jesus both was
The Lord Jesus is truly alive and active amongst us and within us. Paul saw the Lord Jesus always before his face in ecclesial life. He recognized that we can sin against Him (1 Cor. 8:12), tempt Him (1 Cor. 10:9), provoke Him to jealousy (1 Cor. 10:22). In his final writings, Paul charges his brethren before the Lord Jesus (e.g. 1 Tim. 5:21; 6:13; 2 Tim. 2:14; 4:1). This may suggest that at the end of his life, Paul felt ever more strongly the real presence of the Lord. It is one thing to believe that Jesus of Nazareth rose again and was exalted; it is quite another to know Him as an ever-present, ever-working reality in our lives; the man, the more-than-man, whom we should see as our Lord and Master, our Captain, the One who leads by example hour by hour, the One who died for us and rose again: the One whom we are dedicated to serving (2 Cor. 8:5; Eph. 6:6). The language of serving, ministering to, attending upon the Lord Jesus
Footnote: The Lord Jesus In Acts
The Gospel records, Luke tells us, were a record of all the Lord Jesus
Another related theme of Acts is that the work of the Father and Son are paralleled (e.g. 16:31 cp. 34; 15:12; 26:17 cp. 22). They are working
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3-1 Elements Of Unreality
There were times when the Lord used shock tactics to get His message over. He did and said things which purposefully turned accepted wisdom and understanding on its head. Thus He touched the leper, spoke of drinking His blood...and used leaven, the usual symbol for sin, as a symbol of the quiet influence of His Gospel. And His parables feature the same element. Because the parables are so familiar to us, we can overlook the fact that their true character is intended to be shocking and disturbing- they are most definitely not just comfortable, cosy, moralistic tales. Consider the way He chooses to take a lesson from a crook who fiddles the books. The 'hero' of the story was a bad guy, not a good guy. Yet the point of the story was that we must realize how critical is our situation before God, and do literally anything in order to forgive others. We can't let things drift- disaster is at the door unless we forgive others
Perhaps the most obvious signpost to this feature of elements of unreality in the parables is in that of the lost sheep: “What man of you…” would leave ninety and nine sheep in the wilderness and go searching for the one lost one? Answer: none of you would do that. And perhaps likewise, “What woman…” having lost just one piece of silver would be so obsessive about finding it, and so ecstatic with joy upon finding it (Lk. 15:4,8)? Perhaps the answer is also meant to be: “Not one of you”. Yet this is the Father’s passion for saving the lost, and rejoicing over them.
The parables reveal how the Lord was so sensitive to us. He realized that his audience thought in pictures; and so He turned concepts and ideas into imaginable pictures in a truly masterful way. He wanted to radically change people; and He realized that the way to do this was not by a catechism, not by pages or hours of intellectual, abstract droning, but by helping them to relate real, imaginable life to the things of His Kingdom. Truly did W.H. Auden reflect: " You cannot tell people what to do, you can only tell them parables; and that is what art really is, particular stories of particular people and experiences"(1). The way the Lord Jesus constructed and taught His parables was indeed an art form, of exquisite beauty. He took ordinary, homely stories and introduced into them the elements of unreality which we will explore in this study. By being so normal, He created the possibility of participation in the minds of His hearers; because they could relate to the very normalcy of the stories. And so when the unreal elements are perceived- e.g. the mustard seed becomes not just a bush but a huge tree- there is an element of surprise and joy. Out of, and indeed right within, the most ordinary things of life, there await for the believer the surprise and joy of 'the Gospel of the Kingdom' intersecting with their ordinary lives.
The Lonely Rich Man
The rich fool reasoned that because he had had a big harvest, he would build bigger barns and relax, because he had enough to last him “many years” (Lk. 12:18,19). The unreal element here is that a harvest doesn’t last many years, especially in a Middle Eastern climate with no way of effectively preserving it. And the lesson, on reflection, is obvious. Riches don’t last for ever, he who earns big wages puts them into a bag with holes in… and yet there is the genuine conviction that they will last much longer than they do. Another unreal element here is that the rich man is described as speaking
Servants And Masters
The relationship between servants and master in the parables is also at times somewhat unreal. It’s hard for us to imagine how slaves belonged to their masters and had to do their will and not their own. Yet in the parable of Lk. 13:7,8, the servant is commanded by his master to cut down the fig tree. Not only does the servant take a lot of initiative in saying that no, he will dig around it and try desperately to get it to give fruit; but, he says, if even that fails, then
The Succesful Widow
First century Palestinian peasant courts have been described in some detail (2). They involved a mass of men shouting at the judge, who usually decided cases according to who gave the largest bribe. Women never went to court. It was a man's world there. This woman had no male in her extended family to speak for her. She had no money to pay a bribe. But still she went to court and sought to persuade the judge. In this element of unreality we see the bravery of prayer, the height of the challenge; that we who have nothing and no human chance of being heard, will indeed be heard. It would've struck the initial peasant hearers of the story as strange that above all the male shouting, somehow this heroic woman was heard- and was heard repeatedly. Again, we see an encouragement to prayer. And to liken powerful praying to a woman was in itself unusual in that male dominated age. The Lord did the same thing when He spoke of how the tax collector stood far off from the other worshippers in the temple and beat on his breast. Usually men prayed with hands crossed over their chest. But men even at funerals don't usually beat upon their breast: "The remarkable feature of this particular gesture is the fact that it is characteristic of women, not men" (3). The man was quite exceptionally upset and in grief- because of his sins. And personal recognition of private sin wasn't a big feature of first century life. The Lord's initial audience would've been amazed at the contrition and grief which this man had because of his secret sins; and this is the lesson for us. The times of prayer in the temple coincided with the offering of the daily sacrifices. The man asks for God to 'have mercy on me' (Lk. 18:13). But he uses a different word to that in Lk. 18:38, where the same translation commonly occurs.
The Poor Neighbour
The parable of the friend at midnight uses an element of unreality, but in a reverse way. The Lord paints the picture of a guest coming to a person who has no bread, and so they go and disturb their neighbour at midnight, asking for bread (Lk. 11:5-8). The Middle Eastern peasant who appreciated the huge burden of responsibility to give food to a visitor would say that no, he couldn't possibly imagine that the person who was asked for food would say 'No'. He would not only give bread, but whatever was needed. And so it is with God. It's unthinkable, as unthinkable as it is in a Palestinian village to not be hospitable, that our Father will not answer a prayer for resources with which to help others. This has been my own experience time and again. And further, the villager would respond not just because it is his neighbour asking him, but because he realizes that the responsibility to entertain the needy person actually falls upon the whole community. And God too sees our requests for others as partly His personal and communal responsibility. However let it be noted that the poor neighbour asks only for bread- for the very bare minimum with which to provide for the need of another. And the richer neighbour responds with far more. Again, a pattern for our own prayers for resources with which to help others. The poor neighbour asks with "importunity" (Lk. 11:8)- with shamelessness. He is confident of being heard and has no shame or hesitation to his request because he knows he really does have nothing to give the visitor. This is of course the prerequisite for prayer which will be heard. The Lord drives the point home that whoever asks in this way, receives. And yet the Lord addresses this comment to those who although "evil", knew how to give gifts to their kids. Surely the Lord was speaking to the Pharisees present, who prayed regularly. Perhaps He is saying that they had never really prayed the prayer of earnest desire, motivated by others' needs.
Omitted Details
In addition to the elements of unreality in the parables, there are other features which shout out for our attention. Often details are omitted which we would expect to see merely as part of the story. For example, the parable of the ten girls says nothing at all about the bride; the bridegroom alone is focused upon, along with the bridesmaids. Where’s the bride in the story? Surely the point is that in the story, the bridesmaids are treated as the bride; this is the wonder of the whole thing, that we as mere bridesmaids are in fact the bride herself. Another example would be the way in which the sower’s presence is not really explained. No reference is made to the importance of rain or ploughing in making the seed grow. The preacher is unimportant; we are mere voices, as was John the Baptist. But it is the type of ground we are which is so all important; and the type of ground refers to the type of heart we have (Mt. 13:19). The state of the human heart is what is so crucial. Yet another example is in the way that there is no explanation for exactly why the tenants of the vineyard so hate the owner and kill His Son. This teaches of the irrational hatred the Jews had towards the Father and Son. And why would the owner send His Son, when so clearly the other servants had been abused? Why not just use force against them? Here again we see reflected the inevitable grace of the Father in sending the Son to be the Saviour of the Jewish world.
Notes
(1) Quoted in M.K. Spears,
(2) H.B. Tristram,
(3) Kenneth Bailey,
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3-2 End Stress
Another feature we need to bear in mind is the almost constant stress on the end of the story as the part which makes the main point which the Lord is seeking to get over. Likewise the emphasis is often upon the last person mentioned in the story, the last action, the last words (1). Think of the parable of the prodigal; or how the Samaritan, the last man on the scene, is the example for us. “Go and do likewise” (Lk. 10:37) invites us to go forth and be like the Lord Jesus in bringing salvation to others. Or the man who buried his talent and did nothing with it; the crux of the story is that indifference to our potential is
The prodigal son parable has as its end stress the problem of the self-righteous elder son. This is in fact the crux of the whole story. He refuses the invitation from his father to come in to the feast- an image used elsewhere in the parables to describe rejection of God’s invitation. To refuse such an invitation was a public insult and rejection of his Father. He refuses to address his father as “Father” and refuses to call his brother “brother” [cp. “thy son”]. By breaking his relationship with his brother, he broke his relationship with his Father. As we do likewise. And the end stress of the whole wonderful parable is that we are left wondering how the story finished. The elder brother is left standing there, temporarily rejecting his father, wondering…whether to storm off into the evening darkness, or to turn back and go in to the feast and accept his brother. And this is really the essential point of the story, and the appeal which it makes to us. We may just mindlessly forget some disfellowship case of years ago, leave the decision to others, forget in our own minds that there is a brother or sister begging for our renewed fellowship and forgiveness. Yet it is exactly these issues and our response to them which may decide our eternal destinies. And this was the end stress of the parable…
All these appear to be reasons why we shouldn’t seek to over-interpret every element of a parable- although such approaches often yield very fruitful lessons. Indeed, here is the difference between parables and allegories- an allegory requires every symbol to be interpreted, but parables aren’t like this. It’s a different genre. The focus is often on the end stress, not the details of the parable itself. And so I submit that rather do we need to seek to perceive the main issues which the Lord is seeking to get over to us, through these special features of His stories. Indeed, when the Lord
Notes
(1) This so-called ‘end stress’ in the parables is discussed well in A.M. Hunter,
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3-3 The Sower Parable
The sower parable has 75% of the seed sowed on bad ground, due to the almost fanatic way the sower throws the seed so far and wide, evidently without too much attention to whether it lands on responsive soil or not. His emphasis was clearly on broadcasting the seed far and wide, rather than sowing like any normal sower would do. This taught that even if some preaching work appears not to bear fruit, this shouldn't discourage us from the essentially outgoing spirit we should have in spreading the word far and wide. To reach “all men” must be our brief; all types of men and women, including those who are obviously going to respond poorly (1). Yet the parable talks of one grain of corn that yields one hundredfold (Mk. 4:8). Any farmer would pick up on this impossibility. An average yield in 1st century Palestine was about ten fold (2). What kind of response was
In another parable, the mustard seed becomes a tree so big that all the birds of the air can live in it (Mk. 4:32). But mustard trees aren't
The parable of the wheat and weeds features another unlikely happening. Someone sows weed seeds on top of the wheat seeds. The farm workers who were sleeping aren’t upbraided as we might expect. The weeds can’t be uprooted because the roots are intertwined; and anyone walking into the field to remove them would trample the wheat. So how, therefore, can they be rooted up at the time of the harvest? It can only be by some super-human reapers- i.e. the Angels. It is totally and utterly beyond
There is a fine point of translation in Lk. 8:8 which needs to be appreciated: “
Notes
(1) In fairness, this parable can be read another way. In Palestine, sowing precedes ploughing. The sower sows on the path which the villagers have beaten over the stubble, since he intends to plough up the path with the rest of the field. He sows amongst thorns because they too will be ploughed in. And it has been suggested that the rocky ground was land with underlying limestone which barely shows above the surface.
(2) This has been carefully worked out by R.K. McIver ‘One Hundred-Fold Yield’,
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3-4 The 11th Hour Worker
The servant goes at the 11th hour and hires the men who others had refused, presumably because they didn't look strong enough for the work. And they get paid the very same wage as those who had worked all day. This element of unreality serves to highlight the (humanly) irrational zeal of the Lord for the spread of the Gospel in the last days before His return. He will take on anyone who is willing to work, no matter how feebly, no matter for how short a time; the fact they are standing there ready and willing to do their little bit is what is important to Him. A man does not usually go out between 4 and 5 p.m. looking for more labourers, with sunset approaching. He must have had an unusually great need for workers, racing against time to get the harvest in. And this is the very urgency of the Gospel, and the passion of the Lord's desire to get the harvest reaped. God could reap the harvest of the earth, requiring not help from man. But He has chosen to work through men in the preaching of the Gospel, and therefore the number of workers and their zeal reflects the amount of harvest of souls that can be reaped. The eternal destiny of others is therefore seen to depend on our extent of labour in preaching. It’s also apparent that the amount of harvest was unreally huge- hence the unusual running backwards and forwards to get more workers. One expects the manager to know the size of the harvest and hire the right number of labourers at the start of the day. But in this parable, he doesn’t. The awesome size of the potential harvest out there in this world means that
The parable also yields the lesson that those men would not normally work for one hour. We are to imagine those men with families at home who needed feeding. No pay that day, no food. But they were willing to do at least something. And their generous Lord simply pitied their poverty, so he gave them a day's wage- even to the 11th hour workers. And this is the Lord who has graciously hired us. Likewise, no rich King who finds that the wedding of his son will be poorly attended would go out and invite beggars. The element of unreality is that he so wants every place filled. No human King, nor his son, would want riff raff at the wedding, just because his own class of people turned down the invitations. But the King of Heaven is unlike any human king. He wants others to share in the joy of His Son, and absolutely nobody is too low to share; and moreover, He has a compelling desire to fill those places. The implication is that the net is being spread wider and more compulsively as the days shorten unto the supper.
No employer really pays all workers the same amount as the 11th hour worker; no creditor would really cancel debts simply because the debtors can’t afford to pay, and take nothing at all from them; no father would really give preferential treatment to a wayward son over a son who had never disobeyed him. But the point is, God acts in the very opposite way to how we do or would do. His grace to sinners makes no human sense. And He asks us through these parables of His Son to walk out against the wind and follow His example in our treatment of sinners. Our own natural sense cries out that he who works most should have the most pay; but the unreality of the parable teaches us that this principle is set aside in the way God deals with us.
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3-5 The Two Carpenters
The Lord foresaw the problems we would have within our community; from the schisms of the first century to the struggles of latter day believers. Consider the story He told of the carpenter with a beam in his own eye who is so keen to extract the splinter from the eye of his fellow worker (note how he almost forces himself upon his brother to do this!). There is something grotesque, absurd, over the top in this story. In this story of the two carpenters there is something not only unreal, but almost cartoon-like. We read it and think 'The Lord's obviously exaggerating, nobody would really be so foolish'. But that's exactly how He knew we would think! Our attempts to sort out our brother really are that absurd! Christ is effectively saying: 'Now, I know you'll think I'm exaggerating- but I'm not' (Lk. 6:41,42). Often it seems the Lord intends us to think His parables through to their end, imagining the necessary details. A splinter will come out of the eye naturally, it's presence will provoke tears which ultimately will wash it out. 'The grief of life will work on your brother to solve his problem, there are some spiritual weaknesses which time and the experience of life will heal; but I know you people will want to rush in and speed up the spiritual growth of your brother. But you can't do it!'. Christ even foresaw how we will stress the fact that our fellow believer is our " brother" as we try to do this; as if we'll try to be so righteous in the very moment when in God's eyes we do something grotesquely foolish. Doubtless the Lord's carpenter years were the time when He formulated this story of the two carpenters. Significantly they both had wood in their eye- as if a brother will tend to seek to correct another brother who has in essence the same weaknesses, but the ‘helping’ brother considers that the other brother’s is so much greater than his. Perhaps the Lord intends us to take it further, and pick up the implication that these two carpenters couldn't help each other; but there's another one who can...
The story of the indebted steward likewise stresses the importance of true forgiveness. The master commends the steward because he had told others that their debts to his master were reduced. No
The need for peace amongst ourselves as a community is brought out in the parable of the salt that lost its saltiness. Straight away, we’re faced with a paradox- for true salt can’t lose its saltiness, seeing that sodium chloride is a stable compound, free of impurities. Salt was a symbol in the Lord’s teaching for having peace with one another. If we don’t have this, we’re not salt. If we’re not any influence upon others, we’re not salt. It’s as simple as that.
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3-6 The Fanatic Shepherd
At the time of Jesus, it was taught (
And of course the element of unreality is seen in the way the shepherd takes the sheep
Jn. 10:12 implies that Christ, the good and fanatic shepherd, saw the wolf coming. He didn't flee, but fought with this ferocious beast until the death. He says that if He had not done this, the sheep would be scattered. The struggle between Christ and the devil / flesh was therefore at its most intense on the cross, in His time of dying. The cross was not only a continuation of His struggle with the (Biblical) devil. It was an especially intensified struggle; and the Lord foresaw this fight coming. There is an element of unreality in this story that serves to make two powerful points. Firstly, no normal shepherd would give his life in protecting his sheep. The near fanaticism of this shepherd is also found in Am. 8:4, which describes the Lord as taking out of the mouth of the lion the legs or piece of ear which remains of the slain sheep; such is the shepherd's desperate love for the animal that now is not. The love of Christ for us on the cross, the intensity and passion of it, is quite outside any human experience. Hence the command to copy His love is a new commandment. And secondly, wolves don't normally act in the way the story says. They will only fight like this when they are cornered, and they aren't
This point about the strength of sin, and thereby the extent of the Lord’s victory, is brought out by another unreal element in the Lord’s picture of “a strong man fully armed [guarding] his own court” (Lk. 11:21 RV). This householder is fanatic; he wanders around fully armed to protect his own courtyard and his goods, rather than getting servants or guards to do it. The Lord being “stronger than he” through the cross was therefore indeed strong. The amazing extent and power of the Lord Jesus is further brought out in the story of the worker in the vineyard who can almost direct His boss- the Father- not to cut down the barren fig tree of Israel until it has more chance to bear spiritual fruit- “if not, then after that thou shalt cut it down” (Lk. 13:9). Speaking to crowds of day labourers and farm workers, this would have struck them as strange- that this worker had such power over his boss.
Not only is the shepherd unreal. The sheep are, too- once we perceive the link back to Ez. 34:17-22. They tread down the good pasture so others can't eat from it; having drunk clean water themselves, they make the rest of the water dirty by putting their feet in it; and the stronger sheep attack the weaker ones. This isn't how sheep usually behave! But these sheep are unusually badly behaved. And they are symbols of us, for whom this unusual shepherd gave His life.
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3-7 Parables Of Israel
The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ is perhaps most clearly seen in His attitude to Israel. So many of the parables refer in some way to the love of God and Christ for Israel; and their love for rebellious, indifferent Israel is the supreme example of pure grace. He felt towards them as a hen for her chicks (Lk. 13:34). Here again is an element of unreality; a hen whose very own chicks won't be gathered under her wings. This seems to go right against nature; the pain of the rejected parent was there in the experience of the Lord. He wasn't just passively enduring the polemics of the Pharisees; they were His chicks, He really wanted them under His wings (cp. Israel dwelling under the wings of the cherubim). We must ever remember this when we read the records of Him arguing with them and exposing their hypocrisy. He wasn't just throwing back their questions, playing the game and winning, just surviving from day to day with them. He was trying to gather them, and their rejection of His words really hurt Him. The elder brother in the prodigal story shows an unbelievably self righteous attitude. Yet, this truly is the position of the legalists of Christ's day and this. The love of the Father [God] for the son [repentant Israel] is quite something. Would a father really rush out and kiss him, i.e. forgive him (Lk. 15:20 cp. 2 Sam. 14:33) without first requiring an explanation and specific repentance? For this unusual Father, the mere fact the son wanted to return was enough. And when the vineyard workers refused to work and beat and killed the Owner’s servants that were sent, the response we expect is that the Owner sends in some armed men and re-establishes control. But He doesn’t. Why ever keep sending servants after some are killed? But this is the loving, almost desperate persistence of the Father for our response. This is what the parables of Israel teach. In the end, He does something humanly crazy. He sends a single Man walking towards them- His only Son. Or think of the parable of the older son. The loving Father divides all that He has between the two sons- and the son who remained at home therefore ended up with
The Lord’s initial Palestinian hearers were well used to the scenario of absentee landlords. The parables of Israel would have been easily understood by them. The landlords lived far away, were never seen, and sometimes their workers took over the whole show for themselves. The Lord’s parable of the absentee landlord in Lk. 20:9-16 alludes to this situation. He sends messengers seeking fruit from the vineyard, but the tenants abuse or kill them, and he does nothing. When his son shows up, they assume that he’s going to do just as before- ignore whatever they do to him. After all, they’d got away with not giving him any fruit and ignoring his messengers for so long, why would he change his attitude? He was so far away, he’d been in a “far country” for a very long time (Lk. 20:9), they didn’t really know him. The Lord asked the question: “What therefore shall the lord of the vineyard do unto them?” (Lk. 20:15). The obvious answer, from the context provided within the story, would be: “Judging on past experience, not much at all”. But then the Lord presented the element of unreality in the story, as a sudden, biting trick of the tail: No, the lord of the vineyard would actually personally come and destroy them, and give the vineyard to other tenants. Even though his experience of having tenants farm his land had been a fruitless and painful experience that had cost him the life of his son. And it was that element of unreality that brings home to us the whole point of the story. The Father does appear distant and unresponsive to our selfishness, our rebellion, and our refusal to hear his servants the prophets. But there is a real judgment to come, in which He will personally be involved. And yet even His destruction of the Jewish tenants hasn’t taken away His almost manic desire to have workers, in His desperate desire for true spiritual fruit. The parables of Israel surely speak encouragement to each of us.
The parable of the absentee landlord has a telling twist to it. Absentee landlords who had never visited their land for ages, and found the people they sent to the property beaten up, would usually just forget it. They wouldn’t bother. In the parable which draws on this, the Lord asks what the landlord will do (Lk. 20:15). The expected answer was: ‘Not much. He got what he could, he was never bothered to go there for years anyway’. But
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3-8 Parables Of The Call Of The Gospel
It was totally scandalous that the majority of guests refused an invitation by the King (Mt. 22:9; Lk. 14:21-23), and that whilst the dinner was cold on the table, a desperately urgent expedition was sent to get people to come in and eat it. This is the urgency of our Gospel proclamation. And no King or wealthy man would really invite riff-raff off the street into his party; yet this is the wonder of God’s grace in calling us through the Gospel. And such is the tragedy of humanity's rejection of the Gospel. To reject a royal invitation was tantamount to rejecting a royal command. It was unheard of in the time of Jesus. Yet people just don't perceive the honour of being invited by the King. Notice too how it is the King Himself who makes all the arrangements- not, as the initial hearers would have expected, a senior steward or his wife. But the King Himself. And this reflects the extraordinary involvement of God Almighty in personally inviting each of us to fellowship with Him, through the call of the Gospel. Likewise that
That the King Himself invited beggars into His feast also stands out as strange...what kind of king is this? And what fortunate beggars. Immediately, we have the lesson powerfully brought home to us. And why ever would a guest refuse the wedding garment offered to him on entry to the feast (Mt. 22:11)? The element of unreality in the story makes it stand out so clearly. And yet ask people why they are not baptized, why they are refusing the righteous robes of Christ, the call of the Gospel...and it is anything from clear and obvious to them. The scandal of the parable hasn't struck them. And there's another strange element to the story. Whilst the supper is still getting cold, the King sends off a military expedition (Mt. 22:7,8), but this is incidental to his desire to get on with the feast with his guests. Surely the message is that what is all important for the Father and Son is our response to their invitation, our desire to be at that feast, our turning up there- and the punishment of the wicked is not that significant on their agenda, even though it has to be done.
Two Invitations
Most commentators make the point that Middle Eastern banquets feature two invitations. If a person responds to the first one, then animals are killed in accordance with the number of expected guests, and then at banquet time, a servant is sent to collect the guest and bring them to the feast (1). It is this
The host's reaction as we've noted earlier is also unusual. Instead of giving up, he allows himself to be even further humiliated in the eyes of the village by inviting yet more people- the beggars, the despised ones. He had invited people from his town- but now he invites people unknown to him, and finally, people from outside his immediate area, living under hedges. This desperate appeal, with all the mocking and shame which it would've brought with it, is surely Luke's preparation for announcing to us at the end of the Gospel our duty to now go out into all the world and invite all to God's Banquet. What we can easily fail to understand is that for those beggars, there would be a huge cultural barrier to refusing the invitation. The beggar would be amazed that he as an unknown person, from out of the host's area, was being invited to this great banquet. He'd have figured that something ain't right here, that this person can't be for real. 'What have I ever done for him? What does he expect of me? I can't pay him back in any form...'. And of course, they wouldn't have received the first invitation. They were being invited to immediately go into a great banquet with no prior invitation. And in all this, in this unreality, we have the strangeness and difficulty of acceptance of pure grace. Hence the host commanded the servants to grab them by the arm and pull them in to the banquet.
"None of those men who were invited shall taste of my banquet" may seem an obvious and even redundant thing to say- until we realize the practive of sending portions of the banquet food to those who were 'unavoidably absent' (3). They thought they could participate at a distance, not be serious about the actual feast. They thought just saying yes to the invitation and making dumb excuses was OK... that the host was so insensitive he wouldn't notice the obvious contradictions. They didn't stop to think of his pain at their rejection. But the point is, they had accepted the initial invitation, they wanted some part in all this, and the implication is that they expected to be sent their share in the banquet. Now all this becomes of biting relevance to us who have accepted the invitation to God's Kingdom. We all have a tendency to think that God somehow doesn't notice, doesn't feel, can put up with our dumb excuses for our lack of serious response. In a sense, 'All you gotta do is say yes'. I read a few sentences of T.W.Manson which just summed up my own conclusions from studying the parables, especially those in Lk. 15 which speak of the 'repentant' person as someone who is 'found' rather than does anything much: "The two essential points in [Christ's] teaching are that no man can enter the Kingdom without the invitation of God, and that no man can remain outside it but by his own deliberate choice. Man cannot save himself, but he can damn himself... Jesus sees the deepest tragedy of human life, not in the many wrong and foolish things that men do, or the many good and wise things that they fail to accomplish, but in their rejection of God's greatest gift" (4).
We're not only the invited guests, we're also symbolized by the servants. Notice how the guests address the servant as the master, and ask him directly to be excused. As we've pointed out elsewhere, in our preaching of the Gospel we are the face of Christ to this world. We should be urging those who have accepted the invitation to enter in to the Master's supper, appealing to them, feeling His hurt at their rejection. To reject those who have accepted the invitation
Notes
(1) The many references to this are listed in I.H.Marshall
(2) Kenneth Bailey,
(3) J.D.M. Derrett,
(4) T.W. Manson,
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3-9 The Parables Of Judgment
The day of judgment was an important theme with the Lord. There is an element of unreality in the way He speaks of the King as being the judge (Mt. 25:40); the implication is that our judgment will be an extremely important event; the King Himself is the judge (actually, the King of heaven and earth). The figure of judgment would suggest a grim faced judge, with all the dignity and soberness of the courtroom, whatever the verdict is. But there are elements of unreality in the pictures of judgment which are put before us in the parables. This judge is emotionally involved in each case (unheard of in a human court); He exalts: " Well done...enter thou into the joy of thy Lord" (Mt. 25:23). The picture of the happy judge, breaking down in joy at the verdict, inviting the hesitant believer to share his joy in their victory. The picture seems so imaginable; " enter thou into the joy of thy Lord" suggests a reticence, an unbelief, at the outcome. Compare this with the one hour labourers receiving a day's pay (Mt. 20:9), and the faithful almost remonstrating with their Lord that they have not done the things He reminds them of (Mt. 25:38-40). But we will overcome our reticence; we
The Lord who will judge us knows us each individually. The question arises, ‘Why would
The parable about taking the lowest seat sounds obvious to us. If a poor nobody is invited to the King’s feast, he would naturally take the lowest place, with feelings of wonderment, awe, embarrassment, joy, quiet honour, excitement that he’d been invited, that he was somewhere too good for him, by grace. The element of unreality in the story is that the man arrogantly takes a high place, and has to be demoted at the coming of the King. There’s something unreal about this. But there’s the rub. This is exactly how we are behaving when we jockey for status and ‘power’ in the ecclesia [in whatever form], when we fail to consider each man better than ourselves to be. This is how absurd we’re being. The Lord’s parable was evidently based upon Prov. 25:6,7: “Put not forth thyself in the presence of the king, and stand not in the place of great men”. The way the Lord applies this to His church implies that we should consider each of the other invited guests as “great men” of nobility. This is the level of respect which He intends there to be amongst us for our fellow brethren. The parables of judgment truly touch the very core of our spiritual being.
His many references to judgment day in the parables of judgment reveal at least two themes:
1. He puts far more emphasis on the rejected than on the accepted.
2. There is the theme of surprise in many of the parables of judgment. Both worthy and unworthy are surprised at both the process and outcome of judgment.
The day of judgment was an important theme with the Lord. There is an element of unreality in the way He speaks of the King as being the judge (Mt. 25:40); the implication is that our judgment will be an extremely important event; the King Himself is the judge (actually, the King of heaven and earth). This indicates that the Lord wishes to put before us the picture of those who have been called to the Kingdom but reject His offer. Sadly we seem to be shying away from this picture as a community, falling victim to the sloppy picture of God peddled by an apostate Christendom. This stress on rejection is only a continuation of the emphasis of the Old Testament. The real possibility of rejection at judgment day was evidently a motivator in Paul's life (e.g. 1 Cor. 9:27), and he used " the terror" of the coming day of judgment to persuade men in his teaching of the ecclesias (2 Cor. 5:11), and also in his preaching to the world (e.g. Acts 17:31). Paul's exposition of judgment to come caused Felix to tremble (Acts 24:25). I wonder whether he would if he walked into a Christian meeting today.
The parables of judgment have stress the theme of surprise at the process and outcome of the judgment. This ought to be a powerful influence on our thinking and behaviour. For all our study and preparation, that day will surprise us, it will shake us to the roots, as the newly built houses were rocked and battered to the foundations by the stormy wind and rain (representing Christ's interrogation of our conscience at judgment, Mt. 7:27). If that day is to be a surprise to us, we better have an appropriate humility now, recognizing that ultimately our perceptions of many things will be shown to be wrong. There is even the possible implication that some who will be accepted by the Lord who even at the judgment have wrong attitudes towards their brethren. Thus before the Lord of the harvest, those who thought they had worked hardest complained that those they thought had done less, were still getting a penny. They were rebuked, but they still had their penny (cp. salvation; Mt. 20:11). The subsequent comment that the first shall be last might imply that they will be in the Kingdom, but in the least place. Likewise the brother who takes the highest place in the ecclesia will be made with shame to take the lower place (Lk. 14:9). Or the bitter elder brother, angry at the Father's gracious enthusiasm for the worthless brother, is addressed by the Father (God) in language which is relevant to the Lord Jesus: " Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine" (Lk. 15:30). These sentiments are elsewhere expressed about the Lord Jesus. Is the implication that bitter elder brother is still in Christ and accepted in Him, even though his attitude to his brother is not what it should be? The least in the Kingdom will be those who break commandments
Different parables of judgment give different aspects of the judgment. It may be that we can put them all together and build up a time sequence of the process of judgment. Or it may be that the judgment will be different for each of us, and the parables reflect the different cases which the Lord (even in His humanity) foresaw coming before Him at the judgment. For the rejected, the process may be like this:
Firstly, incomprehension (Mt. 25:37) and surprised anger, then realization of the Lord's verdict.
He points out their failings,
Then they give an explanation of their behaviour (Mt. 25:24), justifying themselves (Mt. 25:44).
The Lord asks a series of questions, to which there is no answer.
Then there is the speechlessness (Mt. 22:12),
Followed by an ashamed slinking away from the judgment (1 Jn. 2:28 Gk.),
A desire to escape but having no place to run (Heb. 2:3, quoting Is. 20:6 concerning the inability of men to escape from the approach of the invincible Assyrian army). The rejected will see that the Lord is coming against them with an army much stronger than theirs, and they have missed the chance to make peace (Lk. 14:31).
It surely isn't incidental that this is exactly the pattern of events which the men went through who beheld the Lord's crucifixion. It's this correspondence which makes me lean towards the idea that the descriptions of the judgment are intended to be read as chronological fragments from the rejection of those who crucify the Lord afresh.
The Figure Of Judgment
We must ever remember that judgment as we meet it in the parables of judgment is only a figure being used to describe our meeting with the Lord. It's difficult to know how far to take the figure. Thus the question arises, Does Christ know beforehand who will be accepted, and the degree of their reward? Lk. 19:15 suggests that perhaps not; the Lord calls the servants " that he might know how much every man had gained by trading" . He is ordained
So what is the purpose of the judgment, according to the parables of judgment? My sense is that it is for our benefit, not the Lord's, although an obsession with the figure of judgment may imply the opposite. In one parable, the Lord Jesus taught that
Then we will realize our sinfulness, then we will behold the greatness of God's grace and the supremacy of Christ's victory. Then we will realize how small our understanding was, how little of God we knew, and how great is the reward we are being given, how out of proportion it is to our present experience and responsibilities. We almost get the feeling that the servants thought they had done well when they presented the pounds they had gained as a result of how they had used the pound given them. The pound (mina) given was equivalent to at most $1000 (2005). Yet the reward was way out of proportion, both to what had been given, and to what they had achieved with it: ten cities! The Master's words almost seem to be a gentle rebuke: " Because thou hast been faithful in a
" The true riches"
Lk. 16:11, in another of the parables of judgment, hammers home the same point; if we are faithful in how we use the things lent to us by God in this life, we will be given " the true riches" . What we now have is " the Truth" , because this is how the Spirit speaks of it. But Truth is relative, and the Truth God wants us to accept as Truth is doubtless designed by Him to be acceptable by mere mortals. But it isn't " the true riches" spoken of here. We are asked to be faithful in that which is God's, and then we will be given " that which is your own" (Lk. 16:12) in the Kingdom, as if we will be given " true riches" which somehow are relevant to us alone, the name given which no one knows except ourselves (Rev. 2:17). " Riches" represent the riches of wisdom and knowledge (Col. 2:13), and they are paralleled with " that which is your own" , as if somehow in the Kingdom we will be given a vast depth of spiritual knowledge and perception which is in some way relevant to us alone. To me, those few words of Lk. 16:11,12 take me to the brink of understanding what the Kingdom will be about. We can go no further.
But judgment day is not only for our personal education and humbling. It is for the enlightenment of us all as a community, in that there is fair evidence that in some sense the process of judgment will be public, and all the believers will see the true characteristics of those with whom they fellowshipped in this life. Thus the unworthy will be revealed as being without a wedding garment, and the faithful will see Him (for the first time) as walking naked and in shame (Mt. 22:11; Rev. 16:15). The evil servant will be " cut asunder" (Mt. 24:51), i.e. his hypocrisy will be openly revealed for the first time (remember, he was an ecclesial elder in mortal life, according to the parable). What we have spoken in the Lord's ear will be revealed by Him openly (" from the housetops" ) at the judgment (Lk. 12:3).
The Goats
According to another of the parables of judgment in Lk. 19:23, the Lord will shew the unworthy how they could have entered the Kingdom. Again, notice how the judgment is for the education of those judged. He will shew them how they should have given their talent, the basic Gospel, to others, and therefore gained some interest. This has to be connected with the well known prohibition on lending money to fellow Israelites for usury; usury could only be received from Gentiles (Dt. 23:20). Surely the Lord is implying that
Finally. The Lord foretells the spiritual culture which He will show even to the rejected, when He mentions how He will call the rejected " friend" (Mt. 22:12), using the same word as He used about Judas (Mt. 26:50). Vine describes it as a word meaning " comrade, companion, a term of kindly address expressing comradeship" . if this is how the Lord will address those who have crucified Him afresh- surely there is hope, abundant hope, for us.
The Sheep
The figure of judgment in the parables of judgment would suggest a grim faced judge, with all the dignity and soberness of the courtroom, whatever the verdict is. But there are elements of unreality in the pictures of judgment which are put before us in the parables. This judge is emotionally involved in each case (unheard of in a human court); He exalts: " Well done...enter thou into the joy of thy Lord" (Mt. 25:23). The picture of the happy judge, breaking down in joy at the verdict, inviting the hesitant believer to share his joy in their victory. The picture seems so imaginable; " enter thou into the joy of thy Lord" suggests a reticence, an unbelief, at the outcome. Compare this with the one hour labourers receiving a day's pay (Mt. 20:9), and the faithful almost remonstrating with their Lord that they have not done the things He reminds them of (Mt. 25:38-40) (2). But we will overcome our reticence; we
As stressed above, the purpose of the judgment is for our benefit, to develop our appreciation and self-knowledge. This is perhaps reflected by the ten pound man saying that Christ's pound had gained, had worked to create (Gk.) the ten pounds he could now offer (Lk. 19:16). The man who achieved five pounds uses a different word in describing how the pound given him had made five pounds (Lk. 19:18), while the men in Mt. 25:20,22 uses yet another word to say the same thing. This is surely a realistic picture, each of the faithful comes to the same conclusion, that what spirituality they have developed is an outcome of the basic Gospel given to each of us at our conversion; yet they express this same basic idea in different words. The place of basic doctrine as the basis for the development of all true spirituality should need no further stress, if the Lord's teaching here is appreciated. But in the present easy-going attitude of the brotherhood, the importance of basic doctrine
Attitude To Others
One of the themes of the parables of judgment is that our attitude to our brethren will have an impact on the outcome of the judgment. Mt. 25:45 seems to suggest that our attitude to the weak ones of the ecclesia will especially be considered by the Lord. Of course, He knows the verdict and why He has reached it already; but it seems that the parable is teaching that
- The 'unjust steward' was saved because he forgave others their debts after getting into a mess himself. He wasted his Lord's goods, as the prodigal did (Lk. 15:13 connects with 16:2). Seeing the prodigal represents all of us, the lesson is surely that we all waste our Lord's goods, therefore the basis of salvation is through our forgiving others as an outcome of our own faith in the Lord's grace. This is one explanation of why the parable of the steward flows straight on from that of the prodigal.
- The rich man was condemned for not helping Lazarus.
- The Pharisee was condemned not just for being self-righteous but especially for his despising of his sinful brother.
- The one talent man was rejected because he didn't give his talent to the Gentiles and earn usury for the Lord.
- The big debtor was rejected because he wouldn't forgive his brother. The Lord says that He will make such a person pay all the debt (Mt. 18:36). There is a connection here with an earlier parable, where He spoke of how unless a man agrees with his adversary quickly, the adversary will drag him to court and jail until he pays all that is due (Mt. 5:26). The adversary of the parable, therefore, is the Lord Himself. He is the aggressive invader marching against us with an invincible army (Lk. 14:31), with whom we must make peace by total surrender. Putting the Lord's teaching in context, He is showing Himself to be very harsh and demanding on the unforgiving believer, but very soft and almost unacceptably gracious to those who show forgiveness. Consider these aspects of the parables of judgment:
- The elder son went out of the Father's fellowship because he couldn't accept the return of the younger son.
- Many will be rejected at the judgment because they refused to care for their weak brethren.
- The drunken steward was condemned because he failed to feed the rest of the household and beat them.
- The lamp went out because it was kept under a bucket rather than giving light to others.
- Perhaps the hard working labourers were sent packing by the Lord because of their complaint at the others getting the same payment for what they considered to be inferior work to theirs. If the parable is meant to be read in this way, then it seems so sad that those hard working men (cp. brethren) were
The RSV renders 2 Cor. 5:10 as teaching that we will be judged according to the deeds we have done in “the body”, and it may just be that Paul had in mind ‘the body of Christ’. Our actions there, to our brethren, will be the basis of our judgment. To keep the faith to ourselves without reaching out into the world of others was therefore foreseen by the Lord as a very major problem for us. And indeed it is. Disinterest in ecclesial meetings and overseas brethren, unwillingness to really enter into the struggles of others, apathy towards preaching, all often as a result of an obsession with ones' own family...this is surely the sort of thing the Lord foresaw. We all have the desire to keep our faith to ourselves, to hold onto it personally on our own little island...and it was this attitude which the Lord so repeatedly and trenchantly criticized. And in his demanding way, He implied that a failure in this would cost us the Kingdom. He more than any other must have known the desire for a desert island spiritual life; but instead He left the 99 righteous and went up into the mountains (i.e. He prayed intensely, after the pattern of Moses for Israel?), in order to find the lost sheep (Mt. 18:12). In a sense the judgment process has already begun; Mt. 18:24 says that the Lord has " begun to reckon" now, and so now we must urgently forgive one another. He is watching our attitude to each other here and now. Mt. 18:33,35 teach that the attitude we have towards our brother deep in our heart will be revealed and discussed with us at the judgment.
The lighting of the candle is a symbol of our conversion (Mt. 25:1; Heb. 10:32). Our lamps were lit by the Lord Jesus (Lk. 8:16; Heb. 10:32) for the purpose of giving light to the house. The Lord lights a lamp in order to search for His lost coin, that weak brother or sister that means as much to Him on a deep, indescribably personal level as a woman's dowry money in the Middle East (cp. a wedding ring; Lk. 15:8). But the lamp He lights is us. This is yet another example of His parables being intended to fit together. We must burn as a candle now, in shedding forth the light, or we will be burnt at the judgment (Mt. 5:15 and Jn. 15:6 use the same words). This is but one of many examples of the logic of endurance; we must burn anyway, so why not do it for the Lord's sake and reap the reward? The ecclesias, groups of believers, are lampstands (Rev. 2:5 cp. Ps. 18:28). We must give forth the light, not keep it under a bucket, because " there is nothing hid which shall not be manifested; neither was any thing kept secret, but that it should come abroad" (Mk. 4:21,22). In other words, the very reason why God has hidden the things of His word from the world and some aspects of them from our brethren, is so that we can reveal them to them.
If we don't shine forth the light, both in the world and in the household, we are not fulfilling the purpose for which we were called. Perhaps this is the meaning of Acts 16:10, where Luke says that they preached in Macedonia because they perceived that " the Lord had called us
The Senior Slave
Mt. 24:42-50 teach that the servant who must feed the household with appropriate food represents each of us; he must watch for the Lord's return and be diligent in feeding the household; yet (it must be stressed), this parable is intended for each of us (cp. Mk. 13:37). If he doesn't do this, he is rejected. We are set a high standard here. Christ is " the goodman of the house" , i.e. the senior slave who is responsible for all the others (Mt. 20:11), but here " the goodman of the house" represents each of us (Mt. 24:43; Lk. 12:39,40). We are in Him, and therefore we must try to share His level of concern for His household. He carried His cross for us, for our salvation. And He asks us to share His cross, i.e. His devotion to the body of believers, even unto death.
The " porter" was commanded to watch (Mk. 13:34); and he represents us all (Mk. 13:37). Watching over God's household is an idea taken from Ez. 3:17; as the prophets in the Old Testament parables of judgment were the watchmen of the house of Israel, so each of us are. When the Lord had earlier told this parable, Peter (like us) asked the obvious question: " Speakest thou this parable unto us (the twelve in the first century), or even to all?" (Lk. 12:41). The Lord's basic reply was " To all" , although He didn't say so explicitly. Instead He said that if the Lord of the servant was away and came back unexpectedly, late at night, what a joy it would be to him if he found the lights on and the servant working diligently in caring for the others;
" God the judge of all"
One final feature of the parables of judgment calls for attention. They often speak of the Lord Jesus as if He is the role of God. This shows the intensity of God manifestation there will be in Christ at the day of judgment; and yet the way Christ manifests God so closely is seen in other parables too. Thus Mt. 15:13 speaks of the Father as the sower, whilst Mt. 13:24,37 applies this figure to the Lord Jesus. Likewise in the parables of Lk. 15, God the Father lost the Son, but Christ, the seed of the woman, lost the coin, and He was the shepherd who lost the sheep. In constructing these parables as He did, surely the Lord was emphasizing that the Father and Son are absolutely united in their attitude to us; it is on account of this that the Father can really know our feelings as Christ does, even though He has never been human. Many of the descriptions of Christ in the parables are taken from Old Testament passages describing the feelings of
Notes
(1) And if we consider why there will be a Millennium instead of the Kingdom just starting, surely the answer must be that it is for
(2) This all suggests that even after our acceptance at the judgment, we may be more 'human' than we may now imagine. Some will be in the Kingdom who have big questions about the justice of God (Mt. 20:12,13 " friend" ); the elder son is apparently accepted in the Father's fellowship, although his attitude to his weak brother is so wrong (Lk. 15:31); the wise virgins, apparently selfishly, won't give any oil to the others; some will sit in the Kingdom in " shame" because they thought they were greater than other brethren (Lk. 14:9- cp. the elder brother?); some remonstrate that a highly rewarded brother already has ten pounds, and surely doesn't need any more exaltation (Lk. 19:25).
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3-10 Divine Delegation
The parables several times speak of the relationship between our Master and ourselves. They do so in somewhat unreal and arresting terms. It would’ve made everyone think when the Lord spoke of how a master handed over a total of eight talents to His servants and told them to use them as best they could. This was, humanly speaking, a huge and unreal risk for a master to take. He
The Lord was addressed as ‘Rabbi’ and to some extent acted like one. It was the well known duty of a rabbi’s pupils to serve their teacher and do menial chores for him; the Jewish writings of the time and the Mishnah are full of references to this. Yet the Lord treated His ‘servants’ radically differently- His behaviour at the Last Supper was just the opposite (Lk. 22:26). And He even taught that He, the Lord of all, would be so happy that His servants were waiting for Him that He would “come forth and serve them” (Lk. 12:37). He was a most unusual “Lord and Master”, one who served His servants, and whose death for them was His ultimate act of service. The Lord speaks of how we are not so much slaves, as friends of His, who are obedient to His commands (Jn. 15:15). To the Lord’s first hearers, a slave was defined by his or her obedience to the master’s commands. The Lord says that His followers are His friends, who do His commandments- but they’re not slaves. He seems to be saying that they were indeed His slaves- but a new kind of slave, a slave who whilst being obedient to the Master, was also His personal friend. It’s lovely how the Lord speaks of such well known ideas like slavery, and shows how in the humdrum of ordinary life, He gives an altogether higher value to them. It’s like in the imagery of sheep. This unreal shepherd not only dies for the sheep but gives them eternal life, making them eternal sheep (Jn. 10:28). We’d understand it more comfortably if He spoke of giving His life for people, and then them living for ever. But He speaks of giving eternal life to a sheep, who wouldn’t have a clue what that really entailed. But that’s just how it is with us, who by grace are receiving an eternal Kingdom, the wonderful implications of which are beyond our appreciation, due to the intrinsic limitations of who we are as sheep.
The Father has given us huge freewill and an amazing amount of self determination. Divine delegation is one of His great characteristics as a Father. It would have been highly unusual for any father to agree to liquidate part of the family estate ahead of time, just so as to give in to the will of a wayward son who totally rejected him. And yet the father did this; he liquidated part of the family inheritance to give it to a son who wanted to openly quit the family. This is how much the Father is willing to give us the essential desires of our own hearts, how much He is willing to allow us to go our own way, so that we may serve Him of our own freewill.
In the culture of the orient, it was not usual for a person to keep money in a cloth. Their culture was to trade and barter with what they had. That a man should just bury such a talent was therefore unreal for the original hearers. The point of this unreality is surely that spiritual laziness is
The parable of the widow who keeps nagging the free-wheeling judge is again rather humanly unlikely. Would such a tough guy really pay attention to the repeated requests of the woman? But although he considers himself independent of both God and men, he ends up being controlled by the widow. This reflects the immense power which there is in human prayer, and God’s willingness to respond if we are importunate enough.
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3-11 Unanswered Questions In The Parables
We have seen only one theme in the parables- the elements of unreality which there are in them all. But there are others which can be discovered. The parables, especially those which Luke records, appear to end leaving us with unanswered questions. Does the wounded traveller survive and get better? When does the Samaritan return? How much does it cost him? Was the beaten man happy to see the Samaritan when he returned? Who inherits the property of the rich fool? Does the barren fig tree produce a crop in the end? Does the elder brother finally join in the party? Does the unjust steward succeed in getting himself out of his problems after his dismissal? What happens to the rich man’s five brothers, seeing Lazarus isn’t allowed to go and warn them? Do they hear Moses and the prophets? Do the riff raff come in from the lanes to the Great Supper? Does the unjust judge actually resolve the widow’s complaints? How does the rich merchant survive, after having sold all he has for the one pearl, thus discarding his entire past, his life’s work…? And what does he do with the pearl? He, presumably, sits and treasures it, but can do nothing with it in order to prosper materially… And yet we are left to reflect upon this. Or the man who sells all to buy the field containing the treasure (Mt. 13:44)- what does he
For example, does the man with 10,000 men faced with the oncoming army of God with 20,000 men just recklessly go ahead, or does he seek reconciliation? There was surely an intended connection within the Lord's teaching concerning how the loving Father saw the prodigal son "afar off" in his sin and separation; and how the King [God] coming against man with 20,000 men in battle needs to be reconciled with whilst He is still "afar off" (Lk. 14:32; 15:20). God is both coming towards us in judgment; and yet also sees us 'from afar' in untold grace and desire to save. It is this wondrous paradox which makes the ultimate meeting of God and man so intense and wonderful. The 'harder side of God', the King coming in overpowering judgment against sinful man, is what gives power and poignancy to His final meeting with man as the Father meets the prodigal.
One of the most telling examples of an unfinished ending is to be found in the parable of the unjust steward. This is perhaps the hardest parable to interpret; but I suggest the thought is along the following lines (1). The steward has done wrong; but the element of unreality is that he isn't jailed or even scolded, it's just left as obvious that he can't do the job of steward any longer. The usual response of a master would be to jail servants for running up debts (Mt. 8:23-25). But the Master is unusually gracious. The steward now faces poverty, and so he takes a huge gamble. Before news of his fall is common knowledge, he urgently runs around to those in his master's debt and tells them that their debts are forgiven. His haste is reflected in the way he says "Write quickly... and you... ". He has to write off their debts before his master finds out, and before the debtors know that he now has no right to be forgiving them their debts. His gamble is that his master is indeed such a generous and gracious guy that he will actually uphold these forgivenesses or reductions of debt, and that therefore those who have received this forgiveness will be grateful to the steward, and be generous to him later, maybe giving him employment. The story reflects a theme of the other parables- how the servant knows and understands his master extremely well, and can guess his response. The way the servant invites the beggars to the feast even before his master has told him to do so is an example. But the power of the parable is in the unended story. Does the gracious Master indeed forgive those in his debt? And seeing he is impressed by how the steward has acted, does he in fact re-instate him, impressed as he obviously is by this sinful steward's perception of his grace? From the other parables we are led to believe that yes, the Lord and Master is indeed this gracious. And of course we are to see ourselves in the desperate position of the steward, staking our whole existences upon His grace and love beyond all reason. For me, this approach to the parable is the only one which can make any sense of the master dismissing the steward for fraud, and then praising him for his apparently 'dishonest' behaviour in forgiving the debtors (Lk. 16:2,8).
In all this we see the brilliance of the Lord Jesus. The parables of Lk. 7 and 14 were told during a meal- perhaps many of the others were, too. The Lord would have been a brilliant conversationalist, drawing out unexpected challenges and lessons from what appeared to be everyday facts. The implications of the parables are not pleasant- they would have soured some of His table conversations if they were properly perceived. And likewise with us as we read them in this age; these stories are indeed profoundly disturbing if understood properly and allowed to take their effect upon us. Yet for all their challenge, the parables of Jesus reveal how deeply familiar He was with human life in all its daily issues and complexities. He artlessly revealed how He had meditated deeply upon the issues involved in farming, the problem of weeds, how much poor men were paid for a day’s work, the desperation of the beggar Lazarus, problems faced by builders when laying foundations…He was and is truly sensitive and understanding of the everyday issues of our lives, and yet draws out of them something deeply challenging and radical. In this was and is His surpassing, magnetic brilliance. But the unanswered questions in the parables aren't all there is to them.
On top, or underneath, of all we have here spoken about His parables, there's yet something else. Much homework awaits someone to work out all the times when the Lord was speaking
Notes
(1) My thinking here has been heavily influenced by the background material in K.E. Bailey,
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3-12 The Parable Of The Prodigal (1)
Introduction
Forgiveness is something which man receives both in a one off sense at baptism, and also in an ongoing stream throughout daily life. Both these aspects of forgiveness are brought home to us in this parable of the prodigal. Because the wonder of forgiveness is so hard to fully appreciate, seeing that we experience so much of it so frequently, the parable of the prodigal son uses a variety of Biblical allusions to bring home the reality of forgiveness to us. The series of three 'forgiveness' parables which the prodigal concludes is set in the context of Lk.15:1: " Then drew near unto him all the publicans and sinners for to hear him" , the double mention of " him" indicating the spiritual charisma which the Lord holds over those desperately seeking righteousness. These parables were therefore designed to motivate these sinners to repent, highlighting the joy which true repentance can give to our Father. If only we would realize the gravity of our every day sins, the parables of the prodigal should have a like effect on us.
Prodigal Israel
As with most of the parables, the prodigal has a primary reference to the nation of Israel. The many Old Testament allusions bring this home without doubt. In practice, this means that the intensity of repentance which Israel will eventually manifest should be seen in our contrition at sin. In this lies a real challenge. The following allusions demonstrate that our Lord clearly intended us to make a connection between the prodigal and apostate Israel- and therefore with ourselves:
- The father falling on the prodigal's neck and kissing him sends the mind back to Joseph weeping on Benjamin's neck (another younger brother), typical of Christ's receiving home of a repentant Israel in the last days. As Joseph commanded his servants " Bring these men home, and slay, and make ready" (Gen.43:16), so the father did likewise (Lk.15:23). Both repentances were celebrated with a meal of fellowship (cp. the breaking of bread). Both the prodigal and the sons humbled themselves to the position of servants. Like the prodigal, Israel were often brought back to their spiritual senses by famine (Ruth 1:1; 1 Kings 8:37; Lk.4:25 etc.). His realization that " I perish with hunger" (Lk.15:17) matches the description of Jacob in Canaan as " A Syrian ready to perish" (Dt.26:5), dwelling in a land that was 'perishing through the famine' (Gen.41:36). This affliction came upon natural Israel because of their 'murder' of Joseph / Jesus. The prodigal's profligacy is therefore to be seen as the crucifying of Christ afresh by the believer.
- The prodigal Israel went " into a far country" (Lk.15:13) - a phrase normally used in the Old Testament concerning the Gentile lands of Israel's dispersion (Dt.29:22; 1 Kings 8:41,46; 2 Kings 20:14; 2 Chron.6:32,36). In passing, the " far country" of Lk.19:12 and 20:9 should also refer to the lands of the Gentiles;
- Our association of the prodigal with Israel in dispersion is strengthened by the mention that the prodigal " wasted" the Father's riches, the Greek meaning 'to scatter abroad'- suggesting that as Israel had wastefully scattered God's riches in the Gospel, so they too were scattered. Note how the prodigal is pictured as ending up with the pigs- well known symbol of the Gentiles. As the Son's return to the Father was matched by His going out to meet the son, when Israel " return unto the Lord...then the Lord thy God will...return and gather thee from all the nations" (Dt.30:2,3).
- The book of Hosea frequently presents prodigal Israel as the one who went astray from God, her loving Father and husband, committing adultery with the surrounding countries, with the result that God cast her off, leaving her to suffer in those very lands whose idols she had worshipped. Her sense of shame and knowledge of God's constant love then brought her to her senses (Hos. 2; 5:11-15; 6:1; 7:8-10). There can be little doubt that our Lord had his eye on this symbology when framing the prodigal parable. Hos.2:7,8 is the clearest example: " She shall follow after her lovers...she shall seek them, but shall not find them: then shall she say, I will go and return to my first husband; for then was it better with me than now. For she did not know that I gave her corn, and wine, and oil, and multiplied her silver and gold (cp. the father giving the son his substance), which they prepared for Baal" . These blessings of corn, wine and oil are referring to the blessings for obedience promised in Dt.28. The point is being made that these blessings were not immediately and totally removed once Israel started to go astray. This demonstrates how material 'blessings' are not necessarily an indication that we have favour with God. Consuming the Father's substance " with harlots" (Lk.15:30) is therefore parallel to giving it to idols. The spiritual riches of being in covenant with God, as well as our every material blessing from Him, were frittered away by Israel. Saying that doctrine doesn't matter, that other churches have fellowship with God, giving our time and money to the surrounding world, all this is flinging with whores and bowing before idols. There is a direct equivalence between these things, in God's sight. God's " hand" worked upon Israel to make them realize the seriousness of their ways (Hos.2:10). This fact starts to plumb the depth of God's love- that even with those who have broken His covenant, God's hand is still working to lead them to repentance.
- Jer.31:18-20 describe how Ephraim moans: " Thou hast chastised me...turn thou me, and I shall be turned...after that I was turned, I repented; and after that I was instructed...I was ashamed...because I did bear the reproach of my youth. Is Ephraim my dear son?...since I spake against him, I do earnestly remember him still...I will surely have mercy upon him, saith the Lord" . We must not think from this that God just chose to turn Israel (the prodigal) back to him at a certain moment. It was because God " spake against him" , through which the prodigal was " instructed" , that he turned back.
- There is reason to see the family portrayed in the parable as being a priestly family- thus representing prodigal Israel, " a Kingdom of priests" . The son did not ask for his share of the inheritance, but of " the portion of goods" - remember that Levites did not own any land. There is surely an echo of the curse on Eli's priestly family in the prodigal parable: " Every one that is left in thine house shall come and crouch...for a piece of silver and a morsel of bread, and shall say, Put me, I pray thee, into one of the priests offices, that I may eat a piece of bread" (1 Sam.2:36). The Father had " hired servants" , which takes us back to the reference in Lev.22:10 to the priests having " hired servants" in their household, who would have performed the mundane work for them (cp. the Gibeonites). The prodigal was therefore asking to be admitted back into God's service, resigning all the spiritual superiorities he could have enjoyed through being of the priestly line. Similarly latter day Israel will be willing to be accepted by God as Gentiles, having resigned their trust in their natural lineage. Our attitude on repentance ought to be similar- just wanting to quietly, humbly participate in God's family for the joy of being close to Him. Further indication that the hired servants represent the Gentiles is found in the fact that they had " bread enough" (Gk. 'an abundance of loaves'), connecting with the Gentiles of Mt.14:20 being " filled" (same word in Lk.15:16) with the abundance of loaves created by Christ.
- The parable of the lost son complements that of the lost sheep earlier in the same chapter. " My people hath been lost sheep" , " the lost sheep of the house of Israel" (Jer. 50:6; Mt.10:6; 15:24). A comparison of the parable with Hos.7:9,10 indicates that most of Israel remain as the prodigal in the pig country: " Strangers have devoured his strength (cp. " devoured thy substance" ), and he knoweth it not...they do not return to the Lord their God, nor seek him for all this" . The illogicality of Israel remaining in their pathetic spiritual position is so apparent to us from this; yet we of the new Israel can also be crazy enough to go on living out of real fellowship with God.
The reason for presenting such a catalogue of evidence is to show that prodigal Israel's latter day repentance will be of a similar intensity of repentance to ours in this life. They will mourn and weep with a rare intensity of self-hate and self-knowledge- even as a father for his only son. Do we shed tears on repentance? Do we realize, as they will, how our sins brought about the crucifixion? Do we appreciate that our spiritual indifference and lack of perception means that we, like Israel, " did esteem him stricken" , seeing no beauty in him (Is.53:2-5) as we march through our lives, unthinking as to the power and beauty of the cross?
The Spirit Of The Law
There are a number of other Old Testament bases for the prodigal parable. Significantly, several of these in the Proverbs portray the younger son's repentance as a model fulfillment of the spirit of the Mosaic law (upon which Proverbs is so often a commentary). For example, it is the wise son who is told: " Hear thou, my son, and be wise...be not among winebibbers...a whore is a deep ditch...the glutton shall come to poverty: and drowsiness shall clothe a man with rags. Hearken unto thy father...the father of the righteous shall greatly rejoice: and he that begetteth a wise child shall have joy of him" (Prov.23:19-26). There are evident connections here with the prodigal. God's rejoicing over his return was therefore on account of the son's wisdom through hearkening to the Father's word. Thus God's joy is not just in the emotional recognition of the fact that we are in bad con science with Him, and want to do something about it. True repentance is a result of really grasping the true wisdom of God, applying ourselves intellectually to it.
We are left to conclude that it was the son's reflection upon the Father's word which lead him to return to Him, as will be true of prodigal Israel in the last days. " Whoso loveth wisdom rejoiceth his father: but he that keepeth company with harlots spendeth his substance" (Prov.29:3) was clearly in the Lord's mind when constructing his parable. He evidently saw this proverb as applying to the same person in time of sin and repentance. Repenting and loving wisdom are therefore paralleled, showing again that repentance is not just a twinge of conscience, but involves coming to really know God. The prodigal wished to return home so that he could share in the loaves which the servants had " to spare" , or (better), " had in abundance" . This same word occurs in Jn.6:12 concerning the bread which " remained" , i.e. was in abundance, after the feeding of the five thousand. In that acted parable, the bread represented the abundance of spiritual food which is in the spirit-words of Christ. It was this which the truly repentant sinner earnestly seeks, rather than a mere salving of conscience. " Whoso keepeth the law is a wise son: but he that is a companion of riotous men shameth his father" (Prov. 28:7) shows that such genuine repentance and knowing of God's wisdom is effectively reckoned as keeping the letter of the Law. " A wise servant shall have rule over a son that causeth shame, and shall have part of the inheritance" (Prov.17:2) seems to also connect with our parable; implying that the wise son who was willing to be a servant was ultimately greater than the son who appeared to be technically obedient to the letter of the law. Likewise, the son desiring to be fed with the husks of the pig food may connect with Lazarus desiring to be fed with the crumbs from the rich man's table (Lk.16:21). Yet Lazarus is representative of the repentant sinner who is ultimately justified. The degree to which God will so totally impute righteousness to us is indeed hard to come to terms with. But it is faith in this which will be our ultimate salvation.
The Prodigal's Repentance: Baptism?
This parable describes the general principle of repentance; yet we are repentant at many times and varying circumstances. Because of this, there are a number of well sustainable interpretations possible. There are a number of reasons for associating the prodigal's leaving the pigs of the Gentile world with baptism; after the pattern of Israel's exodus, we understand that our repentance and exit from the world and its thinking is symbolized by baptism (1 Cor.10:1). In this case, our whole life after baptism is like the journey home of the prodigal- with nervousness, growing confidence and bitter regret and realization of our sins, we are stumbling home, desperately willing for just the humblest place of acceptance in God's family. And every step of our difficult, hungry journey the Father is having compassion upon us, and running out to meet us, searching for the lost sheep. There are so many references to God seeking out His people, and also to our seeking God. All our lives this process is working out; we seek for God, as He seeks for the development of a true spirituality in us. " Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you" (James 4:8) is surely an allusion to the prodigal parable. Every day of our lives, as we struggle with our natural fear and faithlessness, this fact should gloriously motivate us in our spiritual strivings. The first thing which the prodigal says at his meeting with the Father is " Father, I have sinned" (Lk.15:21). Surely our first stammerings at judgment day may be similar? Think of it. As you behold the glory of the Father in the face of Jesus Christ, what will the first thoughts and words really be? Yet the overflowing love of the Father almost brushed all that aside in assuring that timid boy of his acceptance and vital place in the Father's mind. The Father's speed and zeal is captured by the repeated use of the conjunction " and" : " His father saw him,
The joyful homecoming and celebration feast after the prodigal's repentance then equates with the marriage feast which will begin the Millennium. The fatted calf which was killed therefore connects with the " fatlings" which were killed for the marriage supper of the Kingdom in Mt.22:4. And those Jews who refused the invitation to join in that feast easily equate with the elder brother. " Let us eat and be merry" (Lk.15:23) is alluded to by the Lord in his later description of the marriage supper: " Let us be glad and rejoice...for the marriage of the lamb is come" (Rev.19:7). " Enter thou into the joy of thy lord" (Mt.25:21) is the equivalent in the parable of the virgins. There is good reason to think that our Lord consciously designed his parables to allude to each other, and thus build up a more complete picture of his teaching.
Detailed Proof
Now for some more detailed proof of this powerful analogy of the prodigal's repentance:
- In the pig country, the son lived with " riotous living" (Lk.15:13). The same Greek word occurs in 1 Pet.4:4 concerning Gentiles (and also the latter day apostacy within the ecclesia?) living in " excess of riot" .
- The context of the parable is set by Lk.15:2. It was in response to the Pharisees' criticism of Jesus that he received sinners and ate with them. Jesus is replying by showing that the meal he ate with them was in the spirit of the joyful feasting occasioned by the finding of the lost coin, and the return of the prodigal. The prodigal's repentance is thus likened to those who were responding to Christ's gospel.
- The prodigal " spent all" (Lk.15:14), just as the diseased woman had " spent all" her living (Mk.5:26), and now came to take hold of Christ's mantle of righteousness. This we do at baptism. Other similarities between the prodigal and that widow are to be found in 'Studies In The Gospels' by H.A.W.
- The prodigal's perishing with hunger and desperately needing bread suggests a connection with Jn.6:35: " I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me (cp. the prodigal's return) shall never hunger...him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out" (cp. the receiving back of the prodigal). This coming to Christ is both ongoing and also specifically at baptism.
- The son was attached to a " citizen of that country" , perhaps a personification of the Biblical devil to which we are joined before conversion. He was made free from him the moment he started his journey back. He " was dead, and is alive again" is also baptism language (cp. Rom.6:3-5; Col.2:13). " He arose" from the pigs (Lk.15:20) certainly implies new life and resurrection.
The record of the prodigal's treatment at the homecoming suggests that we are to see in this the sharing of Christ's personal reward with repentant sinners. Removing his rags and clothing him with the best robe recalls Zech.3:4, concerning the very same thing happening to Christ at his glorification. Being given a robe, ring and shoes takes us back to Joseph/Jesus being similarly arrayed in the day of his glory (Gen.41:42). We earlier showed that this parable is rich in reference to the Joseph story, with Joseph's brothers typifying Israel and all sinners. But now there is a powerful twist in the imagery. The sinners (cp. the brothers) now share the reward of the saint (cp. Joseph). This is the very basis of the Gospel of justification in Christ, through having his righteousness imputed to us, so that we can share in his rewards. This will fully be realized at the marriage supper of the lamb, although it also occurs in a sense each time we repent, and live out the parable of the prodigal's repentance again.
Living Out The Parable
It must be evident that apart from at baptism, we each live out the experience of the prodigal in our daily lives, as we come to realize the extent and nature of our sins, and summon the faith in God's love to walk with quickening step back to Him. Association with harlots is a common Biblical symbol of committing sin (see James 1:13-15); all our sins are unfaithfulness against Christ our husband. They are not just passing adulteries; the Spirit uses the even more powerful figure of harlotries. There are quite a number of other references in James to this parable, which indicate that the prodigal's experience can apply in an ongoing sense to the believer after baptism. The son '
The sense that the prodigal had of having come to a complete end, realizing the ultimate wretchedness of sin, should be ours when we repent. The prodigal's repentance is ours. The prodigal among the pigs, rising up to return, should be a cameo of our repentances throughout each day. The allusion to the Septuagint of Prov.29:21 shows how that despite having reached such an " end" , there is still a way back: " He that lives wantonly from a child shall be a servant, and in the
The son 'coming to himself' in the prodigal's repentance (Lk.15:17) implies that his life of sin was madness, lived in a haze of semi-consciousness of his real spiritual self. This spiritual anaesthesia is
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3-13 The Parable Of The Prodigal (2)
Killing The Fatted Calf
" The fatted calf" of Christ is 'killed' by God on our repentance in the sense that He is aware once again of the death of Christ whenever we are granted forgiveness. The spirit of Christ groans for us when we sin, as he did on the cross and in Gethsemane (Rom.8:26). Thus God looks on the travail of Christ's soul when He bears our sins away from us (Is.53:11). To crucify Christ afresh as it were puts Christ through the process of death on behalf of sin once again, but because the believer does not 'resurrect' to newness of life in forsaking the sin, neither does God 'visualize' the Lord's triumph over the sufferings of sin in the resurrection. Such a person has left Christ suffering, travailing in soul, groaning with tears, without any triumph or resurrection.
The son admitted that he had sinned " in thy sight" (Lk.15:21), exactly as David confessed after his sin with Bathsheba (Ps.51:4). In the same way as David openly recognized that he deserved to die, so the prodigal wanted to be made a hireling. Yet in reality, God did not take David's life, the prodigal was not allowed to even get round to saying he wanted to be made a slave (Lk.15:21 cp. 19), shoes being immediately placed on his feet (Lk.15:22) to distinguish him from the barefoot slaves. As God took His repentant wife back to her former status, speaking of her once again as a virgin, so the Father emphasizes: " This
Yet in the daily round of sin and failure, it is sometimes difficult to sense the degree to which God is actively seeking our return, and willing to slay the fatted calf. The earlier parables of the lost sheep and coin show God actively working to find us; whilst that of the prodigal implies that He is not doing anything physical. Yet the clear connections with the preceding parables show that the woman zealously turning the house upside down must therefore be a figure of the mental energy expended by the Almighty in seeking out our repentance. In our semi-aware spiritual days and hours, before we 'come to ourselves', the Father's active mind is urgently seeking us. Surely this should motivate us in our stronger moments to be aware of the need
It is hard to appreciate that this parable really is intended to be read as having some reference to our daily turning back from our sins- such is the emotional intensity of the story. Yet such is the seriousness of sin that we must see in it an ideal standard to aim for in this regard. The parable alludes to a passage in Job which helps us better appreciate this. The prodigal's confession " I have sinned...in thy sight" , and his returning from spiritual death to life (Lk. 15:21,32) connect well with Job 33:24-30: " His flesh (of the forgiven sinner) shall be fresher than a child's: he shall return to the days of his youth (cp. the prodigal): he shall pray unto God, and He will be favourable unto him: and he shall see his face with joy...if any say (like the prodigal), I have sinned...and it profited me not; He will deliver his soul from the pit, and his life shall see the light. Lo, all these things worketh God
The joyous feast around the fatted calf can therefore speak of the full fellowship with God which we enjoy each time we come to repentance. We saw that the return of Israel in Hos.2 was one of the source passages for the parable. The feast at their return is there described as a betrothal feast. This is obviously a one-off act. Yet such is the constant newness of life which we can experience through continued repentance, that the feasts of joy which we experience can all have the intensity of a betrothal feast. In like manner our relation with Christ in the Kingdom is likened to a consummation which lasts eternally.
The Elder Brother
In the same way as the Jews refused to appreciate the spirit in which Christ was feasting with the repentant sinners who responded to his message (Lk.15:2), so the elder brother refused to attend the celebrations. Thus he is set up as representative of hard hearted Israel; and all those in the new Israel who share his characteristics proclaim themselves to be aligned with the legalistic Pharisaism which failed to discern the real spirit of Christ when he was among them. A calf, dancing and music recall the scene on Moses' return from the mount (Ex.32:17-19); the elder brother's response as he returned from the field and beheld this sight may well have been rooted in his attempt to place himself in Moses' place. He zealously protested at what he liked to see as rank apostasy when it was actually the display of the real spirit of Christ, in receiving back a lost soul. For all this, the lesson is never learned. Schism after schism have been experienced over this very issue of having repentant brethren take their place at the memorial feast. The bad grace and bitterness of the elder brother as he stormed away from the happy feast is seen all too often amongst us.
The elder brother coming in from the field must be related to the parable about the servant coming home from the field in Lk.17:7-10. The servant should then have prepared the meal, on the master's command, and then admitted that despite having been perfectly obedient, he was still unprofitable. The prodigal parable points the great contrast.
The corrective to the elder brothers' attitude is provided by the following parable of the unjust steward which comes straight afterwards in Lk.16. The steward was accused of 'wasting' his master's goods (Lk.16:1), using the same Greek word translated " substance" in Lk.15:13, concerning how the son wasted his father's substance. The steward forgave others, and therefore ultimately found a way of escape from his dilemma. The implication is that it was on account of the prodigal being willing to do this, not daring to point the finger at others in the Father's household because of his awareness of his own sins, that he was eventually saved. We can also infer that the elder brother walked out of the Father's fellowship because of his refusal to do this. Again we see how God works through our sins. Because of the prodigal's experience of sin and forgiveness, he was better able to show that vital love and tolerance towards others, without which we cannot receive God's ultimate acceptance. In a sense, it was much
Our Elder Brother...
Which leads us to one final thought. It was so much harder for Christ to be as patient with sinners as he was, seeing that he himself never sinned and experienced God's forgiveness. There is good reason to think that Jesus was speaking about the elder brother partly to warn himself. He was the favoured son, having the right of the firstborn. He alone could say to God " neither transgressed I at any time thy commandment" (Lk.15:29). The Father's comment " All that I have is thine" (Lk.15:31) connects with the references to God giving
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3-14 The Parable Of The Prodigal (3): The Unreality In Luke 15
The three parables of the lost which climax in the parable of the lost son all exemplify the principles we have spoken about throughout these studies. They all depend for their power upon the many elements of unreality found within them; and the lost son parable requires us to fill in many details, try to finish the story, and to take due note of the crescendo of ‘end stress’ which there is. To appreciate the full power and import of these parables, we need to try to read them through the eyes of the Palestinian peasants who first heard them. Correct understanding of Scripture requires us to read it and feel it within the context in which it was first given. Bombarded as we are by billions of pieces of information each day, especially from the internet, we only cope with it all by letting it all fit into the worldviews and assumptions which we’ve adopted. Words and information and ideas tend to only fit in to what we’ve already prepared to house them, rather than us seeing
The Thankless Sons
For those Palestinian peasants, politeness and respect to your father was paramount. Even if you didn’t obey your father, you had to be polite to him. Rudeness to your father or public disobedience to him was the worst thing you could do, and you shamed yourself. The Lord turned that understanding on its head in His parable of the two sons in Mt. 21:28-32. He taught that the
The younger son was more than rude in demanding his actual share of the inheritance immediately. He was effectively wishing that his father was dead. He had the neck to treat his lovely father as if he were already dead. There arose in Europe after the second world war the ‘Death of God’ philosophy and theology. We may distance ourselves from it in disgust, finding even the words grating and inappropriate, but let’s remember that the younger son ends up the son who is found in the end abiding in the Father’s house and joyful fellowship. This is how
Significantly, the son asked for his share of the property- not his inheritance. To receive inheritance carried with it responsibility, of building the house of your father, upholding the family name etc. But this son didn’t want that. And the father could quite rightly have said ‘No, you get the inheritance when you take the responsibilities that come with it’. But no, this son wants to quit with his lovely father and the whole family name. In that culture, to cut your ties with your home family, your inheritance, your land… was almost unheard of. It was almost impossible to do. But that’s what this angry young man wanted. The incredible thing is, the father allowed him to do this! That element of unreality signposts the extent to which God allows us freewill, genuine freedom of determination- and how much it costs Him emotionally and as a person to do so. This is the frightening thing about freewill- how much it hurts and costs God to give it to us. This insight alone should lead to a far more careful and responsible use of our freewill. William Temple said somewhere, something to the effect that God gives us freedom even to reject His love. It’s no good reflecting on the younger son and thinking ‘But I’m not that kinda guy’. The whole point of the parable is that yes, we are. That’s us. We’re either like that son, or the self-righteous son who is left standing outside of the father’s fellowship. Clearly enough, the God whom Jesus was revealing was
Our Desperation
We don’t like to think of ourselves as that thankless young man; but even more do we revolt at the idea that we were and are at times out there feeding pigs. Anyone who’s travelled in the Middle East will know the annoyance of a beggar attaching themselves to you and just refusing to leave you. But watch how the locals deal with those types. They don’t shout at them, or chase them. They will ask them to do something which is beneath even their dignity as a beggar to do. And they walk away shamefaced. I knew a brother who was a schoolteacher. The boss wanted to fire him because of his Christianity. The boss didn’t say ‘You’re fired! Clear off!’. He simply transferred him to a remote village in the middle of nowhere. And so the brother did the only reasonable thing- he resigned. The young man ‘joining’ or ‘gluing’ himself to the rich Gentile citizen was like the beggar who glues himself to you, and you don’t know how to shake him off. The pig owner told him to go and feed his pigs- thinking that this would surely be beneath this once-wealthy Jew who was hassling him. But so desperate was the young man, that he had to swallow every drop of pride, national and personal- and go do it. And he felt like a pig- he was willing to eat what they ate.
But the young man hadn’t quite learnt the lesson when he decided to return home. He decided to return and ask to be made “as one of your skilled craftsmen” (Lk. 15:19 Gk.- he uses
The Older Son
To refuse a father’s invitation to a family celebration was seen as totally unacceptable, rude, and a rejection of one’s father. Hence the rudeness of the guests refusing the King’s invitations. The older brother would usually have played a prominent role in such feasts. But this son refuses to attend. This would’ve struck the Lord’s initial audience as incredibly rude. Remember how Vashti’s refusal to attend her husband’s feast resulted in her being rejected (Esther 1). What the older son did would’ve been seen as an insult to all the guests; and many fathers would simply have rejected and disowned their son for this, or at least, expressed significant disapproval. Indeed, this was expected of him by society and the other guests. But yet again, the father humiliates himself and breaks all Jewish norms and expectations of correctness and decency. He leaves the feast! For the host to walk out was yet again seen as totally rude to the other guests- it of course echoes the shepherd leaving the 99 sheep and going off after the one lost sheep. The father doesn’t go out and giving the arrogant, unloving, disobedient son a good talking to, as the audience would expect. Again, as so often, the Lord’s parables set up an expectation- and then dash it. The father goes out into the darkness of the courtyard, and “entreats” his son (Lk. 15:28). The Greek
But all this grace is ignored by the elder son. He insults his father. It may not be so apparent to us, but it would’ve been picked up by the Lord’s first hearers. A son should always address his father in this context with the term “O Father”. But he doesn’t. He speaks of his brother as “Your son” rather than his brother. He speaks of how the prodigal “devoured
But of course, there’s a real and obvious warning not to be like the older brother. It worries me, it turns me, right in my very gut, when I see so many of our community refusing to fellowship with their brethren because ‘He’s in that ecclesia… they’ve had her back… she’s divorced and remarried… he’s never said sorry, his motives aren’t right, she only said those words…’. And those attitudes are made out to be expressions of righteousness. It is not for me to judge anyone; I seek to love those who act like this with the love and grief of the father for the elder son. But they must be gently warned as to the implications of their position. By refusing to fellowship with the rest of the family, by making such a fuss about the return of the prodigals, they fail to realize that they are in essence doing what the prodigals have done; and they are de facto signing themselves out of the Father’s family. The issues are that serious. The parable isn’t just a story with a possible interpretation which we can shrug our shoulders at and get on with life. The Lord’s teaching, His ‘doctrine’, was and is in these parables.
The lost son story finishes, as do the other stories, with a banquet of rejoicing- rejoicing in the father’s love. But it’s no accident that Luke 15 is preceded by the parable of Lk. 14:15-24, where we have another great banquet- symbolic of our communion in the future Kingdom of God. The connection is clear. We will “eat bread in the Kingdom of God” if we eat bread with the Lord in the banquets of this life. And yet
An Unreal Father
The father whom we meet in the lost son parable is prefigured by the shepherd and woman of the earlier parables. The three parables are described as one singular parable (Lk. 15:3).
Personal Passion
The man who owned 100 sheep was rich. Shepherds were the lowest of the low. If you owned 100 sheep, you employed a shepherd to look after them and take responsibility for chasing the lost. But there’s something unreal- the owner of the sheep is the one who is the shepherd. This actually is the point of the Ezekiel 34 passage upon which the Lord built the parable- having fired the unworthy shepherds of Israel, “Thus saith the Lord God: Behold,
Personal Responsibility
There’s also something odd about the way the Lord speaks of the shepherd: “
If we imagine the woman who lost the coin, we sense something of her remorse and desperation as she searches the cracks in the floor for it. It could’ve been part of her dowry- all that she owned for herself, all that was her very own. Not even her body was hers- it was her husband’s, to do what he wished with. But the dowry coins were hers- her very own. If the allusion were to one of these coins, it would speak of how much we mean to the Lord… that I, one of 6 billion, actually mean everything to Him, for whom I am His very own. But the allusion may also be to coins which the peasant women would keep bound up in a rag, close to their body. With this money, the woman would’ve had to feed the family for the next week or so. But… she’d let the rag come loose, and a coin had slipped out. In either case, we are to imagine the woman searching for it with a sense of remorse, taking responsibility that she was accountable for the loss. And this, we are invited to understand, is how the Lord feels for those who are lost. Notice how the woman searches
The Joy Of The Lord
Hence the joy of the shepherd when the sheep is found- he lays it on his shoulders
The Lord’s Grace
The shepherd-owner calls his “friends” together. This surely refers to the clubs the Pharisees formed in villages, called the
Radical Acceptance
There was a Jewish custom called
The father’s radical acceptance is the very basis of our salvation. It is challenging, supremely so. Perhaps we handle ‘classic’ repentance easier- someone does wrong, goes off for a long time, is out of sight and out of mind, comes back, asks for our forgiveness with tears and humility. It’s actually psychologically hard to say ‘No’.
It needs to be understood that the father had to act as the village expected him to. They expected him to enact the
The honour bestowed upon the son by the father is totally unreal. Without the slightest sign that the son is now responsible, is truly repentant, has the right motives… the father gives him the best robe, which is what was done for the person whom a leader wished to honour above all (Esther 6:1-9). And the father gives the son his signet ring (cp. Gen. 41:41,42). All this, before the prodigal has in any way proved himself. All he’s done is come home, still not wanting to be a son, just a craftsman; and he was only driven home by his desperation. Such is the huge significance attached by the Lord to our turning up home. And in our dealing with returning sinners, which is every one of us day by day, we should reflect the same attitude.
We are left, as so often, to imagine how the story finished. How hard it would’ve been for the younger son to live with the older brother! And one day, dear, darling dad would’ve died. The younger son would’ve had
A Window Onto The Cross
Who does the father represent? The context for the three stories is the Lord Jesus justifying his eating with sinners. The fact that the father had received the sinful younger brother is phrased in the same way as the Pharisees’ complaint about the Lord Jesus receiving sinners (Lk. 15:2 = Lk. 15:27). And each of the stories involve a closing scene featuring a joyful meal of celebration. The father would appear therefore to refer to Jesus; and yet clearly enough we are intended to see the father as also our Heavenly Father. As you likely know, I don’t go for the primitive equation ‘Jesus = God’. I’m not a Trinitarian. So I take this to be an exemplification of how “God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself, not imputing their iniquities unto them” (2 Cor. 5:19). Notice in how many ways the father humiliates himself before everyone, and breaks all traditional Jewish expectations to do so. He gives the younger son what he asks, and more than the Law allowed; he runs to meet the son; he accepts the son; he leaves the banquet where he is the host in order to plead with his older son; he doesn’t discipline either of his sons as expected. He makes a fool of himself time and again, upsetting Jewish rules and norms. And the younger son pestering the father to divide up the inheritance may indicate that the father was about to die. Likewise, when the father says to the older son that he gives him there and then all that is his… this is language only really appropriate if the father is about to die, or has actually died. Does not all this speak of the cross as the basis for the Father’s love, grace and acceptance? That there, God was in Christ to reconcile us to Himself, not imputing sin to us… there the Father was humiliated in Christ, made a fool of, ridiculed. The Almighty God came this low… to the public shame and death of the cross. The suffering of God in the cross was all about rejected and unaccepted love; and so it is to this day.
Notes
(1) Joachim Jeremias,
(2) Kenneth E. Bailey,
(3) Kenneth E. Bailey,
(4) J.H. Moulton & G. Milligan,
Jacob, Esau And The Prodigal
The parable of the prodigal contains multiple allusions to the record of Jacob and Esau, their estrangement, and the anger of the older brother [Esau] against the younger brother (1). There is a younger and an elder son, who both break their relationships with their father, and have an argument over the inheritance issue. Jacob like the prodigal son insults his father in order to get his inheritance. As Jacob joined himself to Laban in the far country, leaving his older brother Esau living at home, so the prodigal glued himself to a Gentile and worked for him by minding his flocks, whilst his older brother remained at home with the father. The fear of the prodigal as he returned home matches that of Jacob as he finally prepares to meet the angry Esau. Jacob's unexpected meeting with the Angel and clinging to him physically is matched by the prodigal being embraced and hugged by his father. Notice how Gen. 33:10 records how Jacob felt he saw the face of Esau as the face of an Angel. By being given the ring, the prodigal "has in effect now supplanted his older brother" (2); just as Jacob did. As Esau was "in the field" (Gen. 27:5), so was the older brother.
What was the Lord Jesus getting at by framing His story in terms of Jacob and Esau? The Jews saw Jacob as an unblemished hero, and Esau / Edom as the epitome of wickedness and all that was anti-Jewish and anti-God. The Book of Jubilees has much to say about all this, as does the Genesis Rabbah (3). The Lord is radically and bravely re-interpeting all this. Jacob is the younger son, who went seriously wrong during his time with Laban. We have shown elsewhere how weak Jacob was at that time. Jacob was saved by grace, the grace shown in the end by the Angel with whom he wrestled, and yet who finally blessed him. As Hos. 12:4 had made clear, Jacob weeping in the Angel's arms and receiving the blessing of gracious forgiveness is all God speaking to us. The older brother who refused to eat with his sinful brother clearly represented, in the context of the parable, the Jewish religious leaders. They were equated with Esau- the very epitome of all that was anti-Jewish. And in any case, according to the parable, the hero of the story is the younger son, Jacob, who is extremely abusive and unspiritual towards his loving father, and is saved by sheer grace alone. This too was a radical challenge to the Jewish perception of their ancestral father Jacob.
The parable demonstrates that both the sons despised their father and their inheritance in the same way. They both wish him dead, treat him as if he isn't their father, abuse his gracious love, shame him to the world. Both finally come to their father from working in the fields. Jacob, the younger son, told Laban that "All these years I have served you... and you have not treated me justly" (Gen. 31:36-42). But these are exactly the words of the older son in the parable! The confusion is surely to demonstrate that both younger and elder son essentially held the same wrong attitudes. And the Father, clearly representing God, and God as He was manifested in Christ, sought so earnestly to reconcile both the younger and elder sons. The Lord Jesus so wished the hypocritical Scribes and Pharisees to fellowship with the repenting sinners that He wept over Jerusalem; He didn't shrug them off as self-righteous bigots, as we tend to do with such people. He wept for them, as the Father so passionately pours out His love to them. And perhaps on another level we see in all this the desperate desire of the Father and Son for Jewish-Arab unity in Christ. For the promises to Ishmael show that although Messiah's line was to come through Isaac, God still has an especial interest in and love for all the children of Abraham- and that includes the Arabs. Only a joint recognition of the Father's grace will bring about Jewish-Arab unity. But in the end, it will happen- for there will be a highway from Assyria to Judah to Egypt in the Millennium. The anger of the elder brother was because the younger son had been reconciled to the Father without compensating for what he had done wrong. It's the same anger at God's grace which is shown by the workers who objected to those who had worked less receiving the same pay. And it's the same anger which is shown every time a believer storms out of an ecclesia because some sinner has been accepted back...
Notes
(1) K.E. Bailey,
(2) A.J. Hultgren,
(3) See e.g. Jacob Neusner,
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3-15 The Good Samaritan
Salvation in prospect
We've read how the lawyer asked Jesus what he should do " to inherit eternal life" (Lk.10:25), and in a sense we ask the same question. But we mustn't be quite like him, in thinking that if we physically
In prospect we have been saved, we are now in Christ, and therefore the great salvation which he was given is therefore counted to all those who are in him. We shy away from the positive promises that we really can start to enter the Kingdom now, that we do now have eternal life in prospect. But this shying away is surely an indication of our lack of faith; our desperate unwillingness to believe so fully and deeply that our salvation really is so wonderfully assured (1). That eternal life dwells in us insofar as the eternal spirit of Christ is in us (2). And so as we face up to the sureness of these promises, we earnestly want to know what we must
The preface to the good Samaritan parable is there in v.27: " Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind: and thy neighbour as thyself...
Samaritan Saviour
And yet when we analyze this good Samaritan parable, it becomes clear that we are also aptly represented by the wounded man; it is the Lord Jesus who is the good Samaritan. The Law of Moses, symbolized by the priest and Levite, came near to man's stricken condition, and had a close look at it. Lk.10:32 (Young's Literal) brings this out: " Having been about the place, having come and seen..." , the Levite passed on by. The Jews regarded Christ as a Samaritan, so they would have immediately understood the Samaritan of the parable to represent Jesus (Jn.8:48). The good Samaritan having compassion on the man and being moved to do something about him has echoes of the Lord's compassion on the multitudes (v.33). His promise to come again after two days (he gave two pence, and a penny a day was a fair rate, Mt.20:2) is a clear connection with the Lord's promise to come again (after 2000 years from his departure?).
Until the good Samaritan's return, the man was kept in the inn, with everything that was needed lavishly provided. Surely the inn is symbolic of the ecclesia (3); in the ecclesia there should be a common sense of spiritual improvement, of growing in health, of remembering our extraordinary deliverance, realizing our weakness, looking forward to seeing the Samaritan again to praise him for the wonder of it all. This ought to characterize our gathering this morning, not just
He " bound up his wounds" , alluding to the manner in which Christ was to bind up the broken hearted (Is.61:1). He cured those mental wounds by pouring in oil and wine, symbols of his word and his blood respectively. So the brutal beating up of that man, leaving him half dead, refers to the broken-heartedness which the sin of this world and our own natures inflicts upon us. Picture the scene on that Jericho road, the body covered in blood and dust, massive bruises swelling up, flies buzzing around on the congealed blood, face in the dust, frightened donkey neighing among the scrub somewhere. That is they very picture of our broken heartedness, the broken heartedness which Christ came to heal. The physical grossness of those wounds is a picture of our mental state. Yet the flesh deceives us that there is nothing really that wrong with our minds, with our natures. Yet there
The description of the stricken man being "stripped" of his clothing uses the very same word, rarely used in the NT, to describe the 'stripping' of the Lord Jesus at the time of His death (Mt. 27:28,21; Mk. 15:20). Likewise the robbers 'left him' (Lk. 10:30), in the same as the Lord was 'left' alone by the disciples to face the end alone (Mk. 14:50 s.w.). The robbers "wounded him" (Lk. 10:30), a phrase which translates two Greek words, 'to lay upon' and 'stripes'. The cross was 'laid upon' Jesus (Lk. 23:26 s.w.); and we are familiar with the idea of the Lord being 'wounded' and receiving 'stripes' in His final sufferings (Is. 53:5). The connection is surely that in the process of His death, the Lord came to know the feelings of the stripped and stricken people whom He came to save. No wonder He can powerfully "have compassion" upon us. And it’s been pointed out elsewhere that the ‘two pennies’ paid by the Samaritan are the equivalent of the half shekel atonement money under the Mosaic Law, whereby a man could be redeemed. Our redeemer is of course the Lord Jesus. The redemption was ‘paid’ in His blood- which implies His putting us on
"He brought him to the inn" can also be translated "He led it [the donkey] to the inn". In this case, the Samaritan is acting as a servant, for it is the master who rides on the donkey and the servant who walks on foot, leading it there. Remember how Haman has to lead the horse on which Mordecai rides (Esther 6:7-11). All this speaks of how the Lord took upon Himself the form of a servant in order to lead us to salvation- when at the time we could do nothing, and had no awareness of the huge grace being shown to us. The Samaritan was of course making himself vulnerable to attack by robbers by doing this. But think through it some more. There was an eye-for-eye vengeance syndrome alive and well at that time. If a Samaritan turned up with a wounded Jew, it would look for all the world like
"Do likewise..."
So there's ample evidence that the despised Samaritan of this parable refers to the Lord Jesus. He was 'neighbour' to stricken humanity, he came near to us, binding up our broken hearts, and carried us to the haven of the ecclesia. " Go thou and do likewise" is therefore a real challenge to us: to have the same dedication for others' salvation as Christ had. His zeal to achieve God's plan of redemption should be ours. Remember how the good Samaritan parable is an exposition of how to love God with all our heart, soul, strength and mind (v.27). Every fibre of the Lord's mind and body was bent
One of the many Old Testament quarries for this good Samaritan parable is found in 2 Chron.28:15 (5). Here we read how Israel attacked Judah whilst Judah were apostate, and took them captives. But then they realized their own shortcomings, and the fact that Judah really were their brethren; then they " clothed all that were naked among (he captives taken from Judah), and arrayed them, and shod them, and gave them to eat and to drink, and anointed them, and carried all the feeble of them upon asses, and brought them to Jericho...to their brethren" . Now there is allusion after allusion to this scene in the Samaritan parable. Surely our Lord had his eye on this incident as he devised that parable. The point he was making as surely this: 'In trying to follow my example of total love for your brethren, your spiritual neighbours, remember your own shortcomings, and what the Lord has done for you by His grace; and then go and reflect this to your brethren'.
The opportunities in our days for expressing this love of our brethren, with all our mind and strength, are just so numerous. Letter writing, preaching, organizing meetings, visits, above all fervent prayer for their salvation. If we are really pouring out all our heart and soul into the salvation of our brethren, after the pattern of Christ on the cross, our worldly careers will mean so little, our every practical decision will be coloured by our commitments to the body of Christ; where and how we live, what hours we work, hobbies (if any!), holidays (if any!)... our very soul, every aspect of our life, must be affected by our loving our neighbour, and thereby our God, with our whole soul and mind and physical strength.
As we behold the agony of our Lord Jesus, we really see our example. We see a man driven to the physical limits of his humanity, not in striving to achieve salvation by works, but in ministering God's wondrous grace to others. 'Gethsemane, can we forget?' we sing, as if it was so unthinkable that we should. But of course we do, hour by hour, day by day even. We really need to seriously get down to remembering his agony, the intensity of his struggle, more frequently and more deeply. This is surely what we need exhortation about. We are bound together by the fact that we all fail to do this as we should. I tend to visualize him with stooping shoulders, graying hair, hair line well receded, lined forehead reflecting that tremendous mental torture he experienced, quietly spoken, and with eyes which spoke a message of commitment which we have never seen in any other. Of course, we don't know exactly, neither is it ultimately significant. But if we
Total empathy
But outside the reverie, we are walking on down that Jericho road, Christ's example really is ours. " Be going on, and do likewise" Christ concluded (v.37 YLT). Verse 38 appropriately continues: " Now it came to pass,
So here we are as it were in the inn, thinking back to our salvation by that suffering Samaritan, the strangeness and yet the glorious
All Of Us
The wounded man is all of us- "a certain man" (Lk. 10:30) is a phrase more usually translated 'any man', 'whomsoever' etc. The idea of journeying downwards from Jerusalem to Jericho has some definite OT connections, not least with wicked King Zedekiah, who ignored repeated prophetic please to repent and fled from Jerusalem to Jericho, only to be overtaken on the way by the Babylonians and sent to Babylon to condemnation (2 Kings 25:4). ‘You’re every one a Zedekiah’, is the implication- but we’ve been saved from out of that condemnation by the Samaritan’s grace. Another allusion is to the incident in 2 Chron. 28:15, where the captured enemies of Israel are marched from Jerusalem to Jericho, and yet by grace they are given clothes, food and water. In all these allusions, Jesus is radically reversing all the roles. The true people of God are the repentant enemies of the people of God, the “thieves” who spoil the people of God are the Jewish elders (Hos. 6:1,29), the Divine Saviour is not a Jew but a Samaritan etc.
The helplessness of the injured man is a fine picture of our weakness. We can only accept salvation; there is nothing we can
It's easy to think that the focus of the parable is upon being like the good Samaritan; but the focus equally is upon seeing ourselves in the wounded man. The Lord's answers to questions nearly always seem to provide a simple answer to them, and yet more subtly turn them upon their head, and redefine the terms. The parable was told in response to the question "What shall I
Who is my neighbour?
The Samaritan parable appears to be an example of the way the Lord left His parables open to multiple interpretations and reflections, all of which express aspects of the many truths He was expressing to us. We need to reflect who the ‘neighbour’ actually is. The parable is told in extension of the Lord’s approval of the statement that to love God is to love our neighbour, and vice versa (Lk. 10:27). The Lord was explaining that what we have to ‘do’ to get eternal life is to perceive that
But of course, we are intended to be the Good Samaritan too- in that we are to manifest and replicate the saving work of Jesus in our lives and in our interactions with people. There are details in the parables that need to be thought about, the story reconstructed. The Samaritan ‘happened’ to have “oil and wine” with him, i.e. medicaments for a wounded man (the wine would have been an antiseptic). And he was travelling alone, when people usually travelled in convoys. And the Jews had no dealings with the Samaritans, they wouldn’t even talk with them on the street (Jn. 4:9). So perhaps the Lord intended us to figure that the Samaritan was actually going to help one of his fellow Samaritans who needed attention, but on the way, he met one of another race in even greater need, and changed his plans in order to save him. In all this we have an exquisite example of the self-revelation of Jesus in His own parables- for He saw Himself as the Samaritan. And for us too, the call to save often comes when we are on our way to do something else, at the most inconvenient moment, to people we would never have considered would need nor accept our help towards salvation.
Notes
(1) See " The Problem Of Certainty" in
(2) See " The Promise Of The Spirit" .
(3) But in this case, who is the inn-keeper? Ecclesial eldership? The 'Comforter' Angel which super-intends the body of Christ? Or just an irrelevant part of the story? All of these solutions have their problems!
(4) This is a point frequently made by Robert Roberts in his debate with J.J.Andrew and in his book
(5) Another will be found in Hos. 6:1,2,9, which seems to equate the Jewish priesthood with the thieves which attacked the man. This was also Christ's estimation of them (Mt.21:13; Jn.10:1). This allusion would have been especially relevant in the first century context. Another connection will be found in 2 Kings 25:4.
(6) W.O.E. Oesterley,
(7) J.D.M. Derrett,
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3-16 The Jesus Who Understands Weakness
" He hath not dealt with us after our sins...He knoweth our frame, he remembereth that we are dust" (Ps. 103:10,14) was surely true on account of the future sacrifice of the Saviour. The Christ was a demanding Lord, His expectations were (and are) high. And yet His parables reveal an immense sympathy and empathy with our weakness. In a normal human situation, it would be difficult to build a relationship with someone who had such apparently contradictory trends in His character. Perhaps we have the same problem in our struggle to know the Lord. He never denied that He came over in some ways as " a hard man" with high expectations; all He said was that seeing this was the case, we ought to act accordingly (Mt. 25:24) (1). And yet He is also a man of grace and understanding far beyond anything reached by anyone else. He is truly the Jesus who understands human weakness. And note that He is described even now as “the man Christ Jesus”, able to feel the pulse of our humanity. This, in passing, opens a window into what Divine nature will be like: we will be able to completely feel the human experience, to the extent of still bearing the title ‘men’ even in immortality. On this account we will be able to relate to the mortals in the Millennium.
The Lord’s parables describe those He will save as the son who refused to go to work, but later went, sheepishly aware of his failure; the sheep that went away, i.e. those Christ came to save (Mt. 18:11) (a symbol of us all, Mt. 18:12 cp. Is. 53:6); the lost coin; the son who went away and sowed his wild oats, and then returned with his tail between his legs (2). Christ expects that we will fail, as grievously as those parables indicate. Yet we have somehow come to think that they refer either to our follies before baptism, or to those within our community who publicly disgrace themselves. Yet they describe
Different Levels
There is the suggestion in the parable of the labourers that the Lord makes some big concessions to human weakness. The Spirit in Paul points the contrast between realizing that salvation is by pure grace, and the wrong perception of salvation as a wage paid for works (e.g. Rom. 6). Indeed, the whole spirit of the Bible is that we should be willing to serve for nothing. The parable of the slave preparing his Master's meal after working hard for him a whole day makes this point. And yet in the parable of the labourers, Christ
The parable of the unjust steward must be read in the context of the preceding parables of forgiveness. The man is in debt to his Master, surely speaking of our sinfulness (Lk. 16:3,4 cp. Mt. 18:24). He has wasted his goods- which are given to us at baptism (Lk. 16:1 cp. Mt. 25:14). He
The Lord's offer of different levels is possibly seen in Mt. 19:12: " Him that is able to receive it, let him receive it" . But in terms of the parables, consider how the parable of the lost sheep shows Christ never giving up; but then there is the teaching of v. 15-18 concerning us trying to gain the brother that has offended us (Mt. 18:15 = Prov. 18:19), resulting in finally throwing him out of the church if we fail to reach an understanding with him. The teaching here seems to be that it is legitimate in such a case of personal offence to give up with the brother and disfellowship him. But the preceding parable shows Christ saying that He never gives up. And then in Mt. 18:22 Christ tells Peter (" I say unto
Recognition Of Weakness
The labourers parable indicates that the Lord's desire for response to the Gospel will increase as the coming of the Kingdom advances. Apparently He increasingly is the Jesus who understands human weakness. There is an element of unreality in the parable; the servant goes at the 11th hour and hires the men who others had refused, presumably because they didn't look strong enough for the work. This element of unreality serves to highlight the (humanly) irrational zeal of the Lord for the spread of the Gospel in the last days before His return.
The parable of the marriage supper explains why this is. We need to enter into the sense of urgency and tragedy which there was; the marriage of the King's son was going to be delayed because the guests didn't want to come. The shame, even anger, of the King (cp. God) and the bridegroom (cp. Christ) need to be imagined; and this really is the feeling of the Father and Son whenever the Gospel is rejected. And time and again it happens, from Sunday School kids to those hundreds who every year complete Bible study courses and turn away from the call.
These two parables show the blessing which will go behind the efforts to spread the Gospel to all the world in the last days. There is a fervent,
Low Expectations
The Lord therefore has self-confessedly low expectations of the latter day ecclesia. He is the Jesus who understands human weakness. He challenged us that if we truly eat His words, we'll never hunger or thirst (Jn. 6:35); but 30 years or so later, He said that in the Kingdom, He will stop us hungering and thirsting (Rev. 7:16,17). He realizes that although we have it within our potential to live this kind of fulfilled spiritual life, in practice we will only get there in the Kingdom. The parable of the sower shows how the Lord foresaw that the majority who responded to His word would not hold on; He knew that men would not immediately appreciate the blood of His cross, but would prefer the old wine of the old covenant (Lk. 5:39). He saw that our spiritual growth would be an agonizingly slow business; as slow as a tiny mustard seed growing into a tree, as slow as a man digging a foundation in rock, or a seed growing and bringing forth fruit. Such growth is
Good and bad guests come together to the wedding (Mt. 22:10), there are wise and foolish virgins, good and bad fish slopping around all over each other, wheat and tares growing together...this is a real emphasis. An appreciation of this will end the image that if someone's a Christian they must be spiritually OK, that we're all loving aunties and uncles, that somehow Christian = safe. I know this isn't what we want to hear the Lord saying. But whatever else are we supposed to take all this emphasis to mean? The rejected in Mt. 22:12 are described as " friend" , the same term the Lord used about Judas (Mt. 26:50). The suggestion is that there are Judases amongst us, although we can't identify them (and shouldn't try), just as the disciples couldn't. The evil servant who (in Christ's eyes) beat his brethren was a hypocrite, he didn't appear to men to be like that (Mt. 24:48-51); he was only cut asunder, revealed for who he was, at the judgment. He appeared to be an ecclesial elder who loved the flock.
Christ's low expectations of us are clearly demonstrated when He told the parables of the weddings. When you put them together, you get this picture: God made the wedding between Christ and us. The invited guests didn't bother coming, for very trivial, mundane reasons that they put in front of the honour of being invited to His wedding. Only tramps and beggars come to it, motivated selfishly by the thought of a free meal (cp. a penny for the day). But we, the bride, aren't ready (although Christ graciously doesn't mention that in the parable), and so He delays to come to the wedding. Back home, His most trusted household servants realize that He's delaying His return, and start to get drunk and beat each other. The excited young bridesmaids lose their enthusiasm and go to sleep. Eventually, the wedding happens, but some of the guests don't bother to turn up in a wedding garment, just in their filthy rags. The impression is clearly this:
Did you know your Lord was like this, full of sympathy, and yet a realist, so fully aware of how pathetic our response would be, on a community and individual level?
Notes
(1) The way the servant was judged out of his own mouth, with the Lord being the kind of man he thought He was, is surely the principle of Ps. 90:11: " Even according to thy fear, so is thy wrath" (in practice).
(2) The prodigal son represents us all, according to the links between this parable and other Scripture.
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. The Real Christ...
3-17 The Sensitivity Of Jesus
How Far...?
The Lord's parables were not just made up by Him off the cuff. They are evidently the outcome of much prior thought and reflection, perhaps during the carpenter years (and hours). They reflect the sensitivity of Jesus. The basis of their message was doubtless part of the private revelation which the Father made to the Son, which He faithfully spoke forth to us. And yet one guesses that the formulation of the parables was the work of the Lord's own mind, rather than speaking them forth directly from the Father as a kind of fax transmission. We therefore see in them much indirect revelation of the Lord's character. On one level, it is possible to see the story-line of the parables as just the necessary machinery in order to deliver the basic message. But let's remember that the Father and Son are of much higher intellect to ourselves. The way the Lord Jesus used the parables as He did, comprehensively answering every point of His detractors, revealing their weakness, and displaying the character of God all in a few brief, simple words, is proof enough of the intellectual and spiritual genius of Jesus of Nazareth. We use so much language and packaging that is redundant. Yet it seems hard to believe that the Father and Son would do the same. Some of the parables are given a very detailed interpretation by the Lord Jesus; clearly He saw every detail as significant. Again, it seems unlikely that other parables were not intended to be read in the same way, but rather on a more superficial level. The fact that some of their details seem so obviously redundant to us, without meaning, is to be expected seeing that we lack the mind , intellectually or spiritually, of the Son of God. We would be better to just accept that we fail to apprehend their meaning (at the moment), rather than come to the conclusion that sometimes the Lord's parables are intended to be interpreted very closely, whilst others are just stories giving a basic message. This is effectively limiting God's word in accordance with the limits of our own spiritual apprehension; we would be implying that the meaning of God's word is bounded by our own interpretational ability.
The Lord Jesus "knew what was in man", not only by direct
revelation from the Father and the Old Testament word, but also from His
own observation of our own nature, both in Himself and the surrounding
world. The sensitivity of Jesus is reflected in this realization which
He reflects. As the Samaritan came near to the wounded man (the ecclesia),
realized the extent of his problem (the ravages of sin) and was thereby
moved with compassion, so Christ was motivated by His consideration of
our position (Lk. 10:33,34); the Lord realized His humanity more and more,
and progressively humbled Himself, achieving a progressively fuller identity
with us by so doing, until He crowned it all by His death (Phil. 2:6-8).
The main lying helpless on the Jerusalem - Jericho road was surely modelled
on Zedekiah being overtaken there by his enemies (Jer. 39:5). When the Lord spoke of how we must come down from our good seats at the feast and take the lowest seat (Lk. 14:9), He's actually again referring to Zedekiah, who likewise had to come down from his throne and take a lowly seat (Jer. 13:18). That weak,
vacillating man basically loved God's word, he wanted to be obedient,
but just couldn't bring himself to do it. And so he was, quite justly,
condemned. It's as if the Lord saw in that wretched, pathetic man a type
of all those He came to save. And even in this wretched position, the
Lord will pick us up and carry us home. This gives a fine, fine insight
into His sensitivity to us. Indeed, several times the Spirit in the NT
uses OT pictures of unworthy believers as the basis of a description of
the faithful. We are of (Christ's) bones and flesh (Eph. 5:32) is a direct
allusion back to the way David called the men of Judah
The Lord Jesus also looked forward to the development of His future body as the ecclesia (e.g. Ps. 22:25; Mt. 18:17). He must have seen the problems we would face, He knew our weakness; as Moses, superb type of Christ that he was, looked ahead to the future weakness of Israel, so did the Lord Jesus (1). Even in practical issues, He may have foreseen our state in the twenty first century far more than we realize; and again, in this we see the sensitivity of Jesus. Thus He speaks of the believer praying in his bedroom (Mt. 6:6)- at a time when private rooms were almost unheard of amongst ordinary folk. The degree to which the Lord foresaw our struggles even in His humanity should provide great stimulus in the difficult business of building up a personal relationship with Him now. For in His heavenly glory, His empathy with us is
The Problem Of Defending The Faith
The parables are full of almost incidental indications of how well the Lord knew our nature and how accurately He foresaw the future struggles of His body. He foresaw that the elder brothers would be self-righteous and unwilling to accept back into fellowship the repentant. Yet instead of making the father address the older boy with words like " You hypocrite! You yourself are disobedient! Get away from me, you callous hypocrite!" , the Lord puts the words of grace themselves in the father's mouth: " Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine" (Lk. 15:30). The Lord foresaw that the elder brethren's relationship with the Father would be damaged by their harshness. But in the way the story ends, I see real hope for the hard line, right wing Christian who condemns his brother, in the light of the Lord's teaching that we will be judged as we have judged. Wrong such brethren certainly are; but their Lord is gracious enough, it seems, to still work with them. In the same breath as the Lord warned that by our words we will be justified and condemned, and that we will have to account for them at the judgment, He also said that whoever speaks words against Him, He will forgive. I'd like to concentrate on other examples of where the Lord Jesus in His sensitivity foresaw this problem of dealing with apparently weak believers.
He foresaw that the hardest working brethren would be bitter at His acceptance of the weaker ones. His comment to them, " Is thine eye evil, because I am good?" (Mt. 20:15) was quarried from Jonah 4:2-4, where Jonah is also asked a similar question after his bitterness that God had allowed Nineveh to repent. We must be aware that such self righteousness and uncomfortableness at the repentance of others is a feature of our very essential nature. The Lord Jesus overcame this aspect of His nature superbly.
The parables of the two carpenters and the tares in the field show Christ's recognition that His followers would have a keen interest in the weaknesses of their brethren. He foresaw what has been the consistent problem of all groups who have held His true teaching, from the early church through the Bible-believing communities of Central Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries, and right through our experience from the 1850s onwards: the problem of how to deal with members of the church who appear to err from the Truth He taught. In the primary context of sunny Galilee in the AD30s, His emphasis on these things would have appeared irrelevant to the 12. But the Lord's mind was far far ahead, way beyond His time, foreseeing the schisms of 40 years' time, imagining the struggles of His body 1900 years later. Consider the story He told of the carpenter with a beam in his own eye who is so keen to extract the splinter from the eye of his fellow worker (note how he almost forces himself upon his brother to do this!). There is something grotesque, absurd, over the top in this story. Christ's parables often have an element of unreality in them to highlight how His attitudes are unusual (e.g. the employer who pays all his men the same wages for different hours of work). And these unusual attitudes of His reflect the sensitivity of Jesus.
But in this story of the two carpenters there is something not only unreal, but almost cartoon-like. We read it and think 'The Lord's obviously exaggerating, nobody would really be so foolish'. But that's exactly how He knew we would think! Our attempts to sort out our brother really are that absurd! Christ is effectively saying: 'Now, I know you'll think I'm exaggerating- but I'm not' (Lk. 6:41,42). Often it seems the Lord intends us to think His parables through to their end, imagining the necessary details. A splinter will come out of the eye naturally, it's presence will provoke tears which ultimately will wash it out. 'The grief of life will work on your brother to solve his problem, there are some spiritual weaknesses which time and the experience of life will heal; but I know you people will want to rush in and speed up the spiritual growth of your brother. But you can't do it!'. Christ even foresaw how we will stress the fact that our fellow believer is our " brother" as we try to do this; as if we'll try to be so righteous in the very moment when in God's eyes we do something grotesquely foolish. Doubtless the Lord's carpenter years were the time when He formulated this story. Perhaps He intends us to take it further, and pick up the implication that these two carpenters couldn't help each other; but there's another one who can...
The same awareness of our desire to inappropriately sort out the problems of Christ's ecclesia is shown in the parable of the tares; " wilt thou then that we go and gather them up?" (Mt. 13:28) shows Christ's knowledge that this would be the desire of His servants throughout the generations. If we take His teaching seriously, we must come to the conclusion that all of us have a desire to " help" our brethren by 'sorting out' the weaknesses which we see in them, but that there is the real possibility that often this desire is spiritually grotesque in God's eyes. According to the parable of the tares, we are very sure that we know who are the tares and who are the wheat. But we can't be as sure as we feel, is the Lord's message. Some we feel are obviously tares are actually wheat. And the sensitivity of Jesus foresaw this so accurately.
There's a fascinating twist in this story that is exactly descriptive of our experience. The servants slept first of all, after the word was first sown, and only once the wheat and tares came to bear fruit did they pester the Master to let them root up the tares. This reference to bearing fruit must be read in the context of the preceding parable of the sower, which describes how the good ground bears fruit (Mt. 13: 26, 8). The implication is that the servants shouldn't have been sleeping first of all, thinking there wasn't really much to do in the field. And so it is a familiar pattern: conversion is followed by a period of feeling there isn't much to do, and then the realization dawns that due to our own negligence in those early days there are some tares in the ecclesia. The desire to sort out the tares therefore comes some time
Spiritual Inappropriacy
The sensitivity of Jesus constructed that parable with the aim of showing the thoughtful how deeply inappropriate is their desire to root up the tares. He clearly had in mind the prophecy of Himself in 2 Sam. 23:6,7: " The sons of Belial shall be all of them as thorns thrust away, because they cannot be taken by (human) hands: but the man that shall touch them (Christ) must be fenced with iron and the staff of a spear; and they shall be utterly burned with fire in the same place (just outside Jerusalem) " where Christ was " fenced with iron" . It isn't possible for us to uproot the tares because this can only possibly be done by the one who totally uprooted sin in Himself, dying to it on the cross. This association between Christ's right to judge and His victorious death is shown by the way the " tares" will be burnt in the same area as He was crucified in. Phil. 2:9-11 reasons along the same lines; because Christ died for us, He
The Lord Jesus Christ's sensitivity to our thinking that we really have borne His cross comes out in Mt. 20:22: " Are ye able to drink of the cup that I drink of, and to be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with? And they said, We are able" . Those men, with all their unspirituality, could quite coolly state that they wanted the highest place in the Kingdom, and could say with confidence that they could shoulder the cross of Christ. The Lord's reply was gracious and generous spirited indeed: " Ye shall indeed drink of my cup" - 'when you're a lot more spiritually mature', He could have added. We
More Examples Of The Sensitivity of Jesus
We have only considered one area in which our Lord foresaw so clearly our likely weaknesses. I'd like to conclude with a few more examples of where how we reason in our weakness was exactly foreseen by the Lord:
- The story of the candle that was put under a bucket brings out an issue related to that of the desire to root up the tares: the candle was put there (presumably) on account of an almost paranoiac fear that the wind would blow it out; but this over-protection of the lamp in itself caused the light to go out (Mt. 5:15). Time and again, preaching the light, holding up the beacon of the word of Christ's cross, has been impeded or stifled in the name of preserving the truth, strengthening what remains (words taken out of context). And because of this lack of witness, this lack of holding out the light to others, the fire of Christ has waxed dim amongst us. This ties in to the theme that preaching is not just commanded as a publicity exercise for Almighty God; He doesn't need us to do that for Him. It is commanded for the benefit of the preacher more than those preached to. To put a candle under a bucket or bed seems senseless; yet this is how senseless and inappropriate it is to hold back preaching for the sake of defending the Faith. Indeed to put it under a bed (Mk. 4:21) and then go to sleep (candles are normally only lit at night) is likely to destroy the person who does it, to burn them while they are asleep. All who have the light but don't preach it (in whatever form) are likely to suffer the same; notice how the Lord (by implication) links night time and sleepiness with an apathy in preaching. Evidently the Lord foresaw the attitude that has surfaced amongst His people in the late twentieth century: 'We must concentrate on keeping the Truth, new converts are often problematic, too much energy goes to preaching rather than building up ourselves in (" our most holy" !) faith'. Probably the resistance to preaching to the Gentiles in the first century used similar reasoning.
- The lost sheep who leaves the fold and goes off (Mt. 18:12) is based on Ps. 119:176: " I have gone astray like a lost sheep; seek thy servant; for I do not forget thy commandments" . The lost sheep that is found therefore has the attitude of recognizing it is lost, that it is still the servant of the shepherd although isolated from him, and still has not forgotten the things of God's word. The picture in Ps. 119:176 is strange indeed: a lost sheep asking the shepherd to come and find him. It's as if the sheep talks to himself, feeling the shepherd can't and won't hear, feeling that he's just too far away. And this is
- There is an element of unreality in the story of the lost sheep. And that unreality reflects the sensitivity of Jesus. The shepherd doesn’t return the sheep to the fold, but takes it home and calls his friends round to see the dumb animal and rejoice (Lk. 15:4-6). The Lord knew we would frown a bit at this. He foresaw how hard it would be for us to rejoice in the return of a difficult sheep to fellowship.
- The labourers who were chosen to work first were the spiritually strong ones. Those still standing at the end of the day were probably weak or old; nobody wanted to hire
- The parable of the prodigal ends on a negative note. The older brother's bitterness doesn't heal, he won't join the family, and his bitterness at his brother's repentance not only damages his own relationship with the Father, but also casts a shadow over the rejoicing. This is so realistic; the sad truth of this has been worked out hundreds of times in the history of His body. The gain of one brother so often means the loss of another.
- The parable of the wine exactly predicted the attitude of people to Christ's work in taking the Old Covenant out of the way. The Lord is surely saying: 'I know you won't immediately want the blood of my new covenant. I understand your nature, by nature you'll prefer what you are familiar with, the Old Covenant,; you won't " straightway" desire the new wine, but (by implication) you will, after a while' (Lk. 5:39). He foresaw how the implication of the blood of His sacrifice wouldn't be accepted by His people first of all. It would be a process, of coming to accept how radical the gift of His blood is. As we weekly take the cup of His covenant, we come to see more and more the excellency of that blood, and its supremacy over all else. Christ recognized that conservatism in human nature which will naturally shy away from the marvellous implications of what He achieved for us. And true enough, whenever we talk about the present aspect of the Kingdom of God, our present blessings of redemption in Christ, the sense in which we have already been saved...there is a desire to shy away from it all. And true enough, the early Christian believers desperately clung on to the Mosaic food laws, circumcision and synagogue attendance as far as they could; the command to witness to the Gentiles was likewise not taken seriously for some time. It must have been painful for the Lord to know this and to see it, recognizing in it a lack of appreciation of His life and final sacrifice, a desire to reconcile with God without totally committing oneself to His work. He saw the possibility of His blood being wasted if men didn't change from old to new wineskins. The slowness of the changeover in attitudes amongst the early believers must have been a great pain to Him; as if His blood was being poured out again. The implication is that we shed His blood afresh if we won't change, if we allow the conservatism of our natures to have an iron grip upon us we not only destroy ourselves, but waste the blood of the Son of God. The picture of the new wine being " spilled" uses the same word as in Mt. 26:28 concerning the 'shedding' of Christ's blood. Again, how utterly, painfully accurate. This is the danger of the conservatism that is in our natures; it was this which led men to shed the Lord's blood, and it is this same element within us which He foresaw would lead us to crucify Him afresh. How many times has this conservatism been mistaken as true spirituality! How careful we must be, therefore, not to adopt any attitude which glorifies that conservatism and masks it as the hallmark of a stable believer. The sensitivity of Jesus to the value of the human person was the very opposite of this.
Notes
(1) See
(2) Against the teaching of this parable must be balanced our duty to separate from that and those which are false. This must be done, but without the implication that our act of separation is the uprooting of the tares.
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. The Real Christ...
3-18 The Grace Of Jesus
The grace of Jesus and His Father, so great,
A Penny A Day
The pureness of the grace of the Lord Jesus is hard to plumb. He knew that the extent of His grace would cause others to stumble. The element of unreality in the parable of the labourers shows this. He hired the labourers no-one else wanted, the old and weak workers, some of them only for an hour, and still gave them a day's pay. They must have walked away from the pay table with their heads spinning, scarcely daring to believe what they held in their hands- a matchless picture of the response of the faithful after learning of their acceptance at the day of judgment. But the outlook of those who felt their salvation (the penny) was less by grace than the others became bitter: " Is thine eye evil, because I am good?" (Mt. 20:15). In saying this, the Lord was referring back to Dt. 15:9, which warned Israel not to have an evil eye towards their poverty stricken brother (cp. the unwanted labourer) who asked for a loan near the time of the year of release, when all debts were cancelled. In the year of release, Israel were " to remit every private debt...and not
The grace of Jesus framed the parable of the man going down from Jerusalem to Jericho in terms of Zedekiah's flight from Jerusalem (2 Kings 25:4); a man who had repeatedly spurned the offers God made to him through Jeremiah, and who was attacked on that road by the Babylonians (cp. the robbers). Yet the parable shows that Christ will graciously save even a man like that; for according to the parable, Zedekiah represents every one of us.
The Fanatic Shepherd
The element of unreality in the parables often brings out the grace of Jesus the Lord. The farmer who hires weak, useless servants (those rejected by other employers) and gives them a day's wages for an hour's work is one clear example. And so too, if we think about it, is the Lord's story of the shepherd who so madly loves his sheep, whose life is so taken up by his job, that he would die to save one of them, and comes back triumphantly rejoicing when he has found the lost sheep (Lk. 15:5). The average shepherd would have surely accepted that some sheep are lost, it's the luck of the game. But this shepherd who dropped all and ran off after one lost sheep was no usual shepherd. And the element of unreality in the story brings out the Lord's grace towards us. Note in passing how the man : sheep relationship portrays that between us and Christ. As the sheep understood pathetically little about the shepherd's sacrifice to save it, so we too fail to appreciate the height of the fact that Christ died for us, as the shepherd for the sheep. In this was the grace of Jesus.
The Unprofitable Servant
The story of the slave who worked all day in the field and was then expected to come home and cook for his master without a word of thanks to him seems to be more realistic, lacking this element of unreality. But the Greek word " charis" , usually translated " grace" , is the one used for " thank" here (Lk. 17:9). The point is that we don't receive grace because of our going the extra mile, as we are inclined to think. We receive grace, but not as a result of all our special efforts; these are what are expected of us, on account of the fact that we have become salves to our Master, the Lord Jesus. At the end of all our special efforts (in whatever sphere), we must consciously make an effort to recognize that we are " unprofitable servants" (Lk. 17:10). This must surely connect with Mt. 25:30, which describes the rejected at the day of judgment as unprofitable servants. If we judge / condemn ourselves, we will not be condemned (1 Cor. 11:31). This is just one of many examples of where the Lord's parables seem intended to be linked with each other- which further proves that they are not stories with a deeper meaning, whose storyline is not intended to be carefully considered. We must recognize not only that we are unprofitable servants, but that we have only done what was our " duty" or debt to do- the implication being that we were sold into slavery on account of an unpayable debt. This is exactly the figure used by the Lord to describe us in Mt. 18:25.
But there is a telling detail in Lk. 17:10 which further reflects the grace of Jesus: " When ye
Our Inability To Recompense
Our inability to do
Again, it seems we are intended to follow the story through, and visualize the inappropriate, uncultured conduct of these beggars at the table, causing so much unspoken embarrassment and pain to the generous rich man. The link with Is. 55:1-3 would suggest that we can interpret the call to the supper as the call of the Gospel, and the hungry people sitting down to a fine meal as our ecclesial experience now (although this isn't to say that we can't read it as concerning the future Kingdom too). The preceding Lk. 14:8-11 describe us as sitting down at the feast in this life, until the host walks in and starts re-arranging the seating order (cp. the coming of Christ in judgment on His household). We are left to imagine the grabbing for food, the greedy, selfish eyeing up of the plates, the grasping, the lack of social skills, the lack of good conversation between each other, the occasional cursing under the breath, perhaps even throwing of food, the eager desire for wine, the lack of restraint. All in the company of the Master (God) and His servants (Christ and the Angels). And this, it seems to me, was the Lord's imagination of His immature ecclesia, feasting on the good things He has prepared for us. Can we not begin to enter just a little into the pain and acute embarrassment and sadness we cause to our gracious Host by the self-centredness of our natures, manifest as it is in spiritual terms so often? It's quite possible to become so spiritually selfish, so bent on our own salvation, that the whole spirit of the supper is lost. After all, the idea of a large supper is to inculcate a social spirit rather than just to provide individual feeding to each of the guests. How many times has it been reasoned in these last days: 'Sorry, I have to work out my own salvation, I just can't spare time and can't risk association with my weaker brethren...'. And the Lord Jesus, in His perfect way, saw this coming as in sunny Galilee He formulated His parables of grace.
Predestination
One example of the Lord Jesus' emphasis on our salvation being through grace rather than our works is found in the way the parables teach that our acceptance is to some degree dependent on our predestination. Thus the parable of the types of ground suggests that we are good or bad ground at the time the seed is first sown; the fish are good or bad at the time they first enter the net; the wise virgins take the oil with them from the start of their vigil. I would suggest that this is not just part of the story. It was evidently within the Lord's ability to construct stories which featured the idea of bad seed or fish etc. changing to good, and vice versa. But He didn't; indeed, His emphasis seems to have been on the idea of predestination. This isn't to decry the effort for spirituality which we must make; but His stress of the predestination factor is surely to remind us of the degree to which our calling and salvation is by pure grace.
Imputed Righteousness
Through the grace of Jesus, He is in love with us; He has called us to be His bride. He sees us in an extremely positive light. He counts us as righteous to a degree that is a real struggle to believe- even during His ministry, " when we were yet sinners" , and when the only example He had of His bride were those faltering 12. He tells the Jews that His people will fast and mourn for His absence after His departure, with the intensity that the friends of the bridegroom would have if the groom suddenly collapsed and died at the wedding (this seems to be the picture of Mt. 9:15, seeing " taken away" as an idiom for sudden death). This is surely a positive view of the sorrow of the body of Christ for their Lord's absence. Even if we see in this mini-parable only a description of the disciples' sorrow after the Lord's death, He is giving a very positive description of the disciples' joy, saying that they didn't fast for joy of being with Him; He describes their joy as the joy of the friends of the groom at the wedding. Yet the Gospels paint the twelve as a struggling, uncertain group of men, eaten up with the petty arguments of this life, unused to the self-control of fasting. Peter, for example, had until very recently been a possibly immoral young fisherman (1 Pet. 4:3).
The happiness of the disciples is explained in terms of them being at a wedding. The happiness of the wedding is normally associated with alcohol, and the context of Mt. 9:15 goes on to explain that Christ's new covenant is symbolised by new wine. The difference between John's disciples and Christ's was that Christ's were full of the joy of the new covenant. But there is ample reason to think that they were heavily influenced by Judaist thinking; they didn't go and preach to the Gentile world as Christ commanded, and even Peter was marvellously slow to realize the Jewish food laws had been ended by Christ, despite the Lord's strong implication of this in Mk. 7:19 (not AV). Yet the grace of Jesus saw His men
Just before His death, in full knowledge of the disciples' impending collapse of faith, the grace of Jesus confidently spoke of how His men would not follow " a stranger...but will flee from him" (Jn. 10:5). But the disciples fled from their Lord in Gethsemane, as He knew they would (from Zech. 13:7, cp. Mt. 26:31) at the time He said those words. He knew that He must die for the sheep who would scatter each one to His own way (Is. 53:6). " The time cometh...when ye shall be scattered, every man to his own" (Jn. 16:32); and true enough, they all fled from Him (Mt. 26:56). But in Jn. 10 He spoke of His followers as calm, obedient sheep who would not scatter if they had a good shepherd (Jn. 10:12); even though He knew they would. The Lord's way of imputing such righteousness to His followers seems to be brought out in Jn. 10:4 cp. 6: " The sheep follow Him (Christ): for they know (understand, appreciate) His voice...this parable spake Jesus unto them: but they understood not what things they were which he spake" , i.e. they didn't know His voice.
We are described as Christ's " own servants" , i.e. His special, trusted, right-hand men (Mt. 25:14)- even the one talent man who did nothing at all. He searches for the lost sheep until He finds it (Lk. 15:4)- as if He positively assumed that surely all lost sheep will return. This is surely a high view to have of us, higher, sadly, than we merit.
Christ And Israel
The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ is perhaps most clearly seen in His attitude to Israel. So many of the parables refer in some way to the love of God and Christ for Israel; and their love for rebellious, indifferent Israel is the supreme example of pure grace (2). He felt towards them as a hen for her chicks (Lk. 13:34). Here again is an element of unreality; a hen whose very own chicks won't be gathered under her wings. This seems to go right against nature; the pain of the rejected parent was there in the experience of the Lord. He wasn't just passively enduring the polemics of the Pharisees; they were His chicks, He really wanted them under His wings (cp. Israel dwelling under the wings of the cherubim). We must ever remember this when we read the records of Him arguing with them and exposing their hypocrisy. He wasn't just throwing back their questions, playing the game and winning, just surviving from day to day with them. He was trying to gather them, and their rejection of His words really hurt Him. Their reproach broke His heart; He didn't just brazenly endure it as we might the ravings of a drunken man (Ps. 69:20).
Lk. 13:7,8 teaches that after the three years of His ministry, during Christ's final six months, God suggested to Christ that the nation of Israel be cut down (this is but one example of the private intercourses between Father and Son). The Lord knew when He must die soon; He had already steadfastly set His face to go to die at Jerusalem (Lk. 9:51). It seems to me that He knew He would be killed by the Jews in a few months time. But He asks the Father to spare Israel for at least another year- as if to show that He knew they wouldn't accept Him even after His death, but He's saying to God: 'Give them a chance even after they kill me'. Those who think further along the lines suggested by the parable will see that in reality, Israel were not cut down by God for another 37 years. The implication is that this was due to Christ's pleading with God during those years for patience to be shown to the nation who rejected and crucified Him. The element of unreality in the story reflects the grace of Jesus- for it was unthinkable for a servant to argue back with his master, asking not to do what he had been ordered to do.
The Lord so respected Israel that He felt giving the Gospel to the Gentiles instead of them was like casting good food to dogs (Mk. 7:27). Israel (the children) didn't want to eat, but the Lord painted them as if they did. The " crumb" that was cast to the dogs was a great miracle; but Christ saw that as only a crumb of the huge meal that was prepared for Israel. It seems the idea here is meant to be connected with His invitation to us to sit at table with Him and share the meal, both now (Lk. 14:8) and in the Kingdom (Lk. 12:37). Just one crumb of the Lord's meal is a mighty miracle, and yet we are asked to sit down and eat the whole meal with Him: as symbolised in our eating of " the Lord's supper" . This is an eloquent picture of the greatness of our position as members of His table now, as well as in the future.
The Enthusiastic Lord
This enthusiasm for Israel's response to the Gospel comes out again when the grace of Jesus likens Himself to a street kid in the market who really wanted to get a game going with the other kids. He offered to play funerals with them (through His appeal through John the Baptist), but they refused. He then offered to play weddings (through His Gospel of grace, joy and peace), but still they refused (Lk. 7:32). By all means connect this with another market place parable, where Christ (the servant) comes there to try to recruit labourers, on almost unbelievably good rates. The Lord's enthusiasm for the salvation of first century Israel (and us too) comes out in Lk. 14:5 RSV, where He likens the
This enthusiasm, this closeness to us, comes out in Christ's description of Himself as 'taking a far journey' away from us to Heaven. The Greek strictly means 'to leave one's own native people to go abroad'; with the implication that the Lord feels closer towards us that the Angels. This is exactly the line of argument of Hebrews 1 and 2: Christ didn't come to save Angels, He came to save us, therefore He had exactly our nature and feelings, not theirs. He is closely watching our spiritual growth, as the farmer watches the wheat and then
Finally. The Lord's zeal for our redemption and His enthusiasm to see us as righteous is brought out in the parable of the prodigal. The Father (manifest in the Lord) runs out to meet the son. That story was masterfully tied back in to Is. 64:5-8: " Thou meetest him that rejoiceth and worketh righteousness, those that remember thee in thy ways...we have sinned...we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags...but now, O Lord, thou art our father" . The patient, hopeful father saw in the son a boy rejoicing and working righteousness; but this was hardly how
Notes
(1) This is the line of interpretation followed by H.A. Whittaker in his treatment of this parable in
(2) This point is repeatedly made, with overflowing evidence, throughout H.A. Whittaker
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3-19 The Demanding Lord
Once the Lord asked a man on the way to his father’s funeral to immediately follow Him, and quit going to the funeral as he intended (Lk. 9:59). And He criticized the man for not doing this. Another who wanted to first “bid farewell” to his family was likewise criticized (Lk. 9:61). Even Elisha bid farewell to his family before following Elijah, and Elijah allowed him to do this (1 Kings 19:20)- but the Lord Jesus was more demanding. He described the disciples as a “perverse generation” because they didn’t have enough faith to work a miracle (Lk. 9:41). Or again, He calmly bid them feed a huge corwd with just a few loaves: “How many loaves have ye? Go and see” (Mk. 6:38). We are left to imagine those men, almost paralysed and certainly gobsmacked by the extent of the demand, awkwardly going away to count their few loaves. He could be seen as a demanding Lord. The Lord Jesus said many " hard sayings" which dissuaded people from seriously following Him. He kept speaking about a condemned criminal's last walk to his cross, and telling people they had to do this. He told them, amidst wondrous stories of flowers and birds, to rip out their eyes, cut off their limbs- and if they didn't, He didn't think they were serious and would put a stone round their neck and hurl them into the sea (Mk. 9:42-48). He healed a leper, and then spoke sternly to Him (Mk. 1:43 AV mg.). All three synoptics record how He summarily ordered His weary disciples to feed a crowd numbering thousands in a desert, when they had no food (Mt. 14:16; Mk. 6:37; Lk. 9:13). He criticizes the man who earnestly wished to follow Him, but first had to attend his father's funeral. " Let the dead bury their dead" (Mt. 8:22) was a shocking, even coarse figure to use- 'let the dead bodies drag one more dead body into their grave'. And then He went on to speak and show His matchless, endless love. Mark 5 records three prayers to Jesus: " the devils besought him" , and " Jesus gave them leave" (vv. 12,13); the Gadarenes " began to pray him to depart out of their coasts" (v. 17); and He obliged. And yet when the cured, earnestly zealous man " prayed him that he might be with him...Jesus suffered him not" (vv. 18,19). After the fascination, physically and intellectually, had worn off, very few of the crowds continued their interest. The Lord scarcely converted more than 100 people in the course of His ministry. We are familiar, from our own experience of sin and failure, with the pure grace of the Lord Jesus. We see that largeness and generosity of spirit within Him, that manifestation of the God of love, that willingness to concede to our weakness; and therefore we can tend to overlook the fact that the Lord Jesus set uncompromisingly high standards. I would even use the word " demanding" about His attitude. He expressed Himself to the Jews in ways which were almost provocative (consider His Sabbath day miracles). He intended to shake them. He seems to have used hyperbole in order to make the point concerning the high standard of commitment He expects. Thus He spoke of cutting off the limbs that offend. He told those who were interested in following Him that He had nowhere to lay His head (Lk. 9:58). That may have been true that night, but the ministering women surely saw to it that this was not the case with Him most nights. The man who wanted to first attend his father's funeral was told that this wasn't good enough; although Abraham and Joseph did this. The man who wanted to go and say farewell to his family was told the same; although Elisha did this (Lk. 9:60,61). The Lord is surely saying that the commitment of such Old Testament giants was to be less than what He expected of those for whom He was to give His all. It isn't that He won't
The Old Testament also reveals a gracious God who in some ways is a more demanding Lord than we might think. Reflect how Ahab was rebuked for not killing Benhadad, in obedience to God’s command (1 Kings 20:35,42). But Ahab is not recorded as ever having been told to do this. What he had been told was that Yahweh would deliver the Syrians into his hand (:28). Presumably, God expected Ahab to infer from this that he should kill Benhadad; and rebuked him for his lack of perception, just as Jesus rebuked the disciples after the resurrection. The New Testament also has examples of our being expected to deduce things which at first glance we might find somewhat demanding. 1 Cor. 14:21 rebukes the Corinthians for speaking to each other in languages which their brethren didn’t understand. Paul considered that they were immature in their understanding because they hadn’t perceived that Is. 28:11,12 states that it will be the Gentile non-believers who will speak to God’s people in a language they don’t understand.
The Harder Side Of Christ
There was a harder side to Christ. He was a demanding Lord. He told His disciples to forsake what they had and follow Him. They did. And apparently with no prefatory praise or introduction, He called them " ye of little faith...fools...slow of heart to believe" . Of course, He may have prefaced these criticisms with something softer (cp. His letters to the churches); but the Spirit has preferred not to record it. Often His parables warn that those who think He will understand their weakness, those who are too familiar with His softer side. The parable of the great supper records men explaining to Christ why they can't
But the point of the parables is that as far as Christ is concerned, these were all just empty excuses, even the excuse that appeared to be based on a past concession to weakness. He's saying that the invitation to His Kingdom, to His very own wedding, must take priority over all the everyday things of human experience which we assume are so justified, and which we assume He will quite understand if we put in front of Him and His call.
Serving For Nothing
The Lord's parables set a high standard of commitment, without which, it is implied, the attainment of the Kingdom is impossible. Thus Mt. 12:12 likens the Kingdom to a city which can only be entered by " the violent (taking) it by force" . This is the language of crack storm troopers forcing their way in to a barricaded city. And according to the Lord, every one of us who hopes to enter the Kingdom must have this spirit. We must force our way in. What we may think of as righteousness which touches His heart is nothing more than the monotonous ploughing of a field, according to Lk. 17:8-10. This extraordinary story is so simple: A master doesn't thank his slave for ploughing all day. When he comes home in the evening, the slave's job is to get the Master's food ready, and then when the Master has been looked after, he can get himself something. The Master has no need to thank (Gk.
The parable teaches that absolute obedience should be the norm of our lives, not the exception, and that this is only what our Master demands and expects. From the way He told the story, Christ framed our sympathy to be with the slave. But His point is that when we have done all, worked all day and then gone the extra mile in the evening, we should still feel unprofitable slaves, slaves who aren't mush profit to their Master. The passive, unspoken
Christ says that the slave will not expect the Master to say to him " Sit down to meat" , but will expect to be told, tired as he is, to gird himself and serve his Master (Lk. 17:7,8). The Lord's words here are surely intended to recall when He said that in the Kingdom He would make us each sit down to meat and come forth and serve us (Lk. 12:37). The point of the connection is to show that Christ's treatment of us in the Kingdom
We are
Finally. The harder side of the Father and the Lord Jesus should actually serve as an attraction to the serious believer. Peter knew that if it really was the Lord Jesus out there on the water, then He would bid him walk on the water to Him. Peter knew his Lord, and the sort of things He would ask men to do- the very hardest things for them in their situation. He knew how Jesus could be a demanding Lord. Jeremiah “knew that this was the word of the Lord” when he was asked to do something so humanly senseless- to buy property when he was in prison, when the land was clearly about to be overrun by the Babylonians (Jer. 31:8). When Jeremiah had earlier found the curses for disobedience recorded in the book of the Law which had been lost, He 'ate them', those words of cursings were " the joy and rejoicing of mine heart" - they so motivated him (Jer. 15:16 = 2 Chron. 34:18-21). When Ananias and Sapphira were slain by the Lord, fear came upon " as many as heard these things" . Many would have thought His attitude hard; this man and woman had sold their property and given some of it (a fair percentage, probably, to make it look realistic) to the Lord's cause. And then He slew them. But just afterwards, " believers were the more added to the Lord" (Acts 5:12,14). The Lord's harder side didn't turn men away from Him; rather did it bring them to Him. The balance between His utter grace, the way (e.g.) He marvelled at men's puny faith, and His harder side, is what makes His character so utterly magnetic and charismatic in the ultimate sense. Think of how He beheld the rich man and loved Him, and yet at the same time was purposefully demanding: He told Him to sell all He had and give it to beggars. Not to the work of the ministry, but to beggars, many of whom one would rightly be cynical of helping. It was a large demand, the Lord didn't make it to everyone, and He knew He was touching the man's weakest point. If the Lord had asked that the man's wealth be given to Him, he may have agreed. But to beggars.... And yet the Lord made this heavy demand with a deep love for the man.
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3-20 Parables About The Cross
It is clear enough that the parables are indeed the self-revelation of the Lord Jesus. It is noticeable that there is a relative absence of direct comment upon His future sacrifice. It's as if it would have been altogether too simplistic for the Lord of Heaven and earth to repeatedly tell us details of His supreme work. He was more interested in revealing His attitude to us than in giving us insight into the agonies of His final sacrifice- agonies which He surely knew we would never fully grasp, this side of the Kingdom.
Belief In Victory
One reason for this was that the Lord was absolutely sure that He would be victorious on the cross; His parables speak of our responsibilities and blessings on account of what He knew He would achieve for us. Thus the Master in the parable is able to remonstrate with the unforgiving servant: "I forgave thee all that debt" (Mt. 18:32). The Lord's assumption was that He would attain our forgiveness on account of successfully enduring the cross. Yet He triumphed through His faith; although He was all too aware of the human possibility of failure, He believed He wouldn't fail, He made use of the constant encouragement of the word to this end. He described Himself as the Lord of the servants, and also as the King (e.g. Mt. 18:23 cp. 31- there are other similar parables)- even before His cross. He had such confidence that He would be crowned as a result of His future cross. The tenses in Greek can be used very exactly (unlike Hebrew); it was quite within the ability of the Lord to build into His parables the concept of future Kingship. He could have implied 'When I'm King, I'll judge like this'. But instead He saw Himself as already having overcome. "Be of good cheer, I have (already)overcome the world...now I go my way to him that sent me (bypassing the cross in His words)...I have glorified thee...I have finished the work thou gavest me to do" (Jn. 16:33,5; 17:4); these are only a few samples of the Lord's remarkable confidence that He would overcome. This confidence is reflected in the parables. He was practising His own preaching concerning believing that we have already received what we ask for. No doubt His words recorded in Jn. 15-17 and the parables which reflected this confidence came back to Him as He struggled to quell His crisis of doubt in Gethsemane.
The Samaritan Saviour
Yet there are a few insights into how the Lord saw His cross. The parable of the good Samaritan explains how Christ took compassion on the stricken spiritual state of us His people, picked us up, made Himself vulnerable to attack by placing the man on His donkey, and caused us to be fully healed. The Samaritan was less vulnerable than the robbed man, on account of having a donkey. But he made himself even more vulnerable than the robbed man had been, in order to take him to the inn. The picture of the wounded man straddled over the donkey and the Samaritan walking patiently alongside shows what easy prey they would have been. The whole process of the man's redemption by this Samaritan is an account of the cross of Christ (not least the pouring in of wine and oil). The implication is that through seeking to save us, Christ made Himself more vulnerable than He would have been if He sought only His own salvation. And the Samaritan's speed of progress was more than halved; he had to walk rather than ride, keeping the wounded man balanced on the donkey. This parable seems to reveal that Christ realized at least in some abstract sense that His concern for us in some ways made it more difficult for Him; although the reality was that the motivation for His victory was largely due to His sense of responsibility for us.
The idea of him taking care for the man is expressed in the language of Ex. 21:19, which says that if a man wounds another, "he shall pay...and shall cause him to be thoroughly healed". This somewhat odd allusion (at first sight) surely indicates that the Lord took upon Himself the full blame for our stricken condition, presumably in the sense that as the second Adam He took upon Himself the guilt of Adam. This is why there are so many connections between His death and the effects of Adam's sin (e.g. the crown of thorns, the Garden etc.). The way Christ compared Himself to a Samaritan, half Jew and half Gentile, shows that especially on the cross, this is how He felt. He was mindful of both Jewish and Gentile aspects of His future body as He died. The Jews (and His own brothers, Ps. 69:8) treated Him as half Gentile (from a Roman soldier, the Talmud claims).
The Saviour Shepherd
Jn. 10:12 implies that Christ, the good shepherd, saw the wolf coming. He didn't flee, but fought with this ferocious beast until the death. He says that if He had not done this, the sheep would be scattered. The struggle between Christ and the devil / flesh was therefore at its most intense on the cross, in His time of dying. The cross was not only a continuation of His struggle with the (Biblical) devil. It was an especially intensified struggle; and the Lord foresaw this fight coming. There is an element of unreality in this story that serves to make two powerful points. Firstly, no normal shepherd would give his life in protecting his sheep. The near fanaticism of this shepherd is also found in Am. 8:4, which describes the Lord as taking out of the mouth of the lion the legs or piece of ear which remains of the slain sheep; such is the shepherd's desperate love for the animal that now is not. The love of Christ for us on the cross, the intensity and passion of it, is quite outside any human experience. Hence the command to copy His love is a new commandment. And secondly, wolves don't normally act in the way the story says. They will only fight like this when they are cornered, and they aren't so vicious. But the point the Lord is making is crucial to us: the devil, the power of sin in our natures, is far more powerful than we think, and the struggle against it on the cross was far far harder than we would think.
And there's a more tragic point. In the short term, the sheep were scattered by the wolf, even though Christ died so this wouldn't happen. And Christ knew in advance that this would happen (Is. 53:6; Mk. 14:27; Jn. 16:32). The Lord faced His final agony with the knowledge that in the short term, what He was dying in order to stop (i.e. the scattering of the sheep) wouldn't work. The sheep would still be scattered, and He knew that throughout the history of His church they would still keep wandering off and getting lost (according to Lk. 15:3-6). Yet He died for us from the motive of ultimately saving us from the effect of doing this. He had clearly thought through the sheep / shepherd symbolism. Unity and holding on to the faith were therefore what He died to achieve (cp. Jn. 17:21-23); our disunity and apostasy, each turning to his own, is a denial of the Lord's sufferings. And this is why it causes Him such pain.
The Binding Of Satan
Of especial interest is the parable of the strong man being bound, because through this parable the Lord outlines what He felt His victory on the cross would mean for us. And surely we ought to be all ears in response to that.
The idea of Christ binding satan (the "strong man"), stealing his goods and sharing them with His followers is a picture of His victory on the cross (1). It is full of allusion to Is. 53:12, which says that on account of the fact that Christ would pour out His soul unto death and bear our sins, "he shall divide the spoil with the strong (Heb: 'those that are bound')". With the same thought in mind, Paul spoke of how through the cross, Christ "spoiled principalities and powers" (Col. 2:15). It may be that this is one of many examples of the New Testament writers thinking in a Hebrew way, despite writing in Greek. "Principalities and powers" is perhaps an intensive plural, referring to the great principality and power, i.e. Satan. The way He 'triumphed over them in himself' (Gk. + AVmg.) would certainly make more sense if they referred to the Biblical devil / satan which was overcome within Christ (cp. the language of Heb. 2:14-18; 1 Pet. 2:24). Eph. 2:15,16 appears to be parallel to Col. 2:15. It speaks of how Christ "abolished in his flesh the enmity, even the law of commandments...for to make in himself of twain one new man, so making peace; and that He might reconcile both unto God in one body by the cross, having slain the enmity thereby". Col. 2:15 speaks of the Lord on the cross as the victorious champion, killing "principalities and powers" and then triumphing over them by sharing their spoils with his soldiers. Eph. 2:15 speaks of Christ on the cross "slaying the enmity" (the Biblical Devil) and achieving peace and reconciliation for all those within His body.
Yet in the immediate context, the Lord is offering an explanation of why His miracles proved He was the Messiah. He hadn't yet died on the cross; but He was doing the works which were possible as a result of the binding of Satan which He would then achieve. This is yet another example of the Lord's confidence that He would overcome, and God going along with Him in this. The Lord's miracles were a physical foretaste of the great spiritual blessings which would be made available as a result of the binding of Satan by Christ's death and resurrection.
The Spoils Of Satan
The "spoils" of Satan are those things which he has taken away; surely the spoils taken from Satan by Christ refer to the righteousness which our nature takes away from us. Lk. 11:22 adds another detail to the story. The "armour" of Satan which he depends upon is taken away by Christ on the cross, and then Satan is bound, and his spoils shared out. The armour of Satan is the antithesis of the armour of righteousness (Eph. 6:11,13). As the Kingdom of God has a God who dwells in darkness, a Prince, an armour, a Christ, a dominion, a will and spirit, fruits, rewards etc., so does the kingdom of (the personified) Satan. The armour of righteousness is the fruit of the Spirit, the righteous characteristics of the Spirit. The armour of Satan is the fruits of the flesh nature. These have been taken away by Christ, He has bound Satan, and therefore what Satan has robbed us of, the fruits of righteousness, his spoils, can be taken at will by the Lord Jesus. We have shown that Christ was alluding to Is. 53:12, which says that through the cross, Christ divides the spoil with the bound ones, i.e. us. In this lies a paradox. Binding is associated with sin (Ps. 68:6; Is. 61:1; Lam. 1:14; Lk. 13:16). We are bound, in many ways, intrinsically limited by our own natures. Only at the second coming will Satan be bound, i.e. the Lord's personal achievement will be physically shared with the world (Rev. 20:2). Yet we, the bound ones, are given the goods which the Lord personally took away from the bound Satan. Those goods are the righteous attributes which our natures stop us possessing as we should.
The dividing of the spoils to us by the victorious Lord (Lk. 11:22; Is. 53:12) recalls how the Lord divided all His goods between His servants (Mt. 25:14), the dividing of all the Father's goods between the sons (representing the good and bad believers, Lk. 15:12). We have elsewhere shown that these goods refer to the various aspects of the supreme righteousness of Christ which are divided between the body of Christ (2). The spoils divided to us by the Lord are the various aspects of righteousness which He took for Himself from Satan. The picture of a bound strong man having his house ransacked before his eyes carries with it the idea of suspense, of daring, of doing something absolutely impossible. And so the idea of Christ really taking the righteousness which the Satan of our very natures denies us, and giving these things to us, is almost too much to believe.
Lone Hero
It is normally the fellow-soldiers who share the spoils (cp. Heb. 7:4). But we didn't even fight; the spoils are divided amongst the bound ones (Is. 53:12 Heb.). Satan in general is still unbound (cp. Rev. 20:2). Christ bound the Satan within Himself personally, and took the spoils of victory for Himself. Col. 2:15 says that Christ "spoiled" as a result of His victory on the cross; and the Greek specifically means 'to completely divest for oneself'. He is being painted as the lone hero who took it all for Himself; of the people there was none with Him in His great battle on the cross (Is. 63:3). And indeed, He was the lone hero. But the point is that He has shared with us the spoils of righteousness which He took for Himself as a result, even though we are not worthy to receive them. Seeing the teaching of the Lord is just outline principle, it is evident that through His death He gained possession of absolute righteousness, and then shared this with us.
In the first century, the outward demonstration of this was in the miraculous gifts of the Spirit. "He led captivity captive (more language of the heroic victor), and gave gifts unto men", the miraculous gifts, in the first century context (Eph. 4:8,11). But what was taken away from Satan was not only power over illness. If this was the main meaning of Satan being bound and his spoils shared with us, then it would follow that the effect of Christ's binding of Satan was only in the first century; for those miraculous gifts of the Spirit are no longer available; illness still triumphs over God's people. The spoils of Satan refer to the righteousness which Satan limits and denies. It is this which has been taken from him, and divided to us all as a result of the cross. The miracles of the first century were a physical reflection of this, just as the rending of the temple veil and resurrection of some dead saints was a physical foretaste of the spiritual possibilities opened up by the Lord's death.
The Lord's Gifts
There are many references to the spiritual blessings which are even now mediated to us (as the whole body of Christ) on account of the Lord's death; we (as a community) are given peace and "eternal life" (Jn. 14:27; 17:2; 1 Jn. 5:11), knowledge (2 Cor. 4:6), wisdom (Eph. 1:17; James 1:15), peace (2 Thess. 3:16), understanding (1 Cor. 2:12; 2 Tim. 2:7), love in our hearts (Rom. 5:5), grace (Eph. 4:7), comfort (2 Thess. 2:16), righteousness (Rom. 5:16,17), confidence (2 Tim. 1:7), sexual self restraint (1 Cor. 7:7). All the different aspects of the 100% righteousness of our Lord, all His goods, the spoils He personally took from Satan, are divided up amongst ourselves, some having spiritual possibilities in one area, others in another. As a community we are counted as if we have overcome the world, overcome Satan, as Christ did, although on a human level we are still bound (Jn. 16:33 cp. 1 Jn. 2:13,14; 5:4). Only at the day of judgment will we have overcome all (Rev. 21:7 cp. Lk. 11:22 s.w.), but we are treated as if we have already done so.
Grasping this extensive theme helps explain the deep sense of paradox which is central to all serious self-examination. We are counted righteous, we are given spiritual gifts of righteousness now, and our self-examination reveals this to us; but we are expected to develop them (according to the parable of the pounds). Yet we also see that we are pathetically bound by our Satan, somehow held back from that life of righteousness which we would fain achieve. All these things were deeply foreseen and appreciated by the Lord when He constructed this parable of binding Satan. Christ in His own life has overcome Satan, and has graciously shared the various aspects of righteousness with the whole of His body. This is the very idea of the body of Christ; between us, over time, we will approximate to the perfect reflection of our Lord. We have each been given different aspects to develop, different parts of His personality. This explains the difference in emphasis which can be observed within the different parts of the present body, and also in the history of the body over time.
When we as a community finally grow up into Him, "unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ" (Eph. 4:13), the whole process of Christ-manifestation (and thereby God manifestation) will be complete. This means that the speed of spiritual development in the latter day body of Christ will determine the exact date of the Lord's return. We are (hopefully and prayerfully) just adding the final touches to the full reflection of the Lord's body. The aspects of Christ which we as a community need to develop in these last days are presumably aspects which earlier generations were unable or not called to achieve. For example, it was simply impossible for earlier generations to do much to achieve the unity of the body. Now, with the possibility of the whole world-wide family being in close contact with each other, with the breakdown of distance and language barriers, it is a real possibility that the body should be one in a manner which was simply impossible to previous generations.
It seems to me, from what knowledge I have of myself and of our community, that many of these things which Christ died to achieve are tragically rejected, at best viewed suspiciously, by 21st century believers. The idea of gifts of righteousness, of being given something spiritual for nothing, of each only reflecting aspects of Christ rather than complete personal perfection, of striving for unity in the body...all this is almost anathema to some. Yet it's anathema to our very natures, it's against the grain of each of us. Yet I submit, I trust with at least some genuine humility, that the things discussed in the above paragraphs are all utterly fundamental to the cross of Christ; He died in order to achieve these very things.
Notes
(1) The idea of binding the strong man must surely look back to Samson. The language can't just be accidentally similar (cp. Jud. 16:21). This means that the Lord saw Samson as the very epitome of Satan, even though ultimately he was a man of faith (Heb. 11:32). Thus the Spirit doesn't forget a man's weakness, even though ultimately he may be counted righteous.
(2) See my 'The Personal Lord' in
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3-21 Parables Of The Kingdom
The Mustard Seed
There are a number of insights throughout the parables into how the Lord perceived His future Kingdom. Significantly, His emphasis in the parables of the Kingdom is upon our spiritual status then, rather than on the physical wonders which His reign will bring on the earth. He foresaw how although our faith is so puny now, as a mustard seed, we will be those who will be as a solid tree, a real place of refuge, to the nations of the Millennium (Mt. 13:31,32 = Ez. 17:23,24). Just a very small amount of real faith during this life will enable us to move " this mountain" , surely referring to Mount Zion in the immediate context (Mt. 17:20). The idea of Mount Zion being moved sends the mind to Zech. 14:4,5, describing how Mount Zion will be moved at the Lord's return; and also to Ps. 125:1, which speaks of how they who trust in the Lord are like Mount Zion, which cannot be removed; and yet Christ said we
But there is another way to read Mt. 17:20: " If ye have (now) faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall (in the Kingdom) say to this mountain (of Zion), Remove hence..." ; as if in the Kingdom we will be control of the physical world as the Lord was even in His mortality. In this case, His commanding of the sea and waves will be shared by us in the Kingdom; not just sea and waves, but mountains too (Mt. 8:27).
Handing Back The Money
The parables of the Kingdom speak of the eternal consequences of the judgment. The Lord will require His own at the judgment (Lk. 19:23). This doesn't mean, as the one talent man thought, that Christ will require us to give back to Him the basic doctrines of the Gospel which we were given at conversion. The Greek means to exact regularly, in an ongoing sense (s.w. Lk. 3:13); Strong defines it as meaning " to perform repeatedly...not a single act" . When the Lord examines our achievements at the judgment, He will expect to keep on receiving the result of what we have achieved for Him in this life. This is the ultimate encouragement for us in our preaching and encouraging of others, as well as ourselves; what we achieve now will yield eternal, continual fruit to the Lord.
But Mt. 25:27 says that at the judgment, the Lord will
The Limitation Of Immortality
There is a theme presented in the parables of the Kingdom which one is cautious to develop. But with child-like enthusiasm to enter deeper into the Hope of the Kingdom, I offer the following point for consideration: The Angels are in some ways limited, in power and understanding, despite possessing God's nature. It's more than likely that we in the Kingdom will eternally grow in knowledge (and perhaps power?) as the Angels do (1). This lack of full knowledge and comprehension is hinted at in the parables:
- " They said unto him, Lord, he hath ten pounds" (Lk. 19:25) suggests that " them that stood by" somehow questioned the Lord's judgment; their sense of equality was not that of their Lord. They felt that the gloriously strong brother with his wonderful reward didn't need it to be made even more wonderful. " Them that stood by" could refer to the Angels, or to the way in which the judgment will in some sense take place in the presence of all the believers (2). The fact is, even with God's nature, it will be difficult to appreciate the principles of judgment which the Lord uses; and so how much more difficult is it today!
- Those hired into the vineyard first " supposed (on judgment day) that they should have received more; and they likewise received every man a penny. And when they had received it, they murmured against the goodman of the house...but he answered one of them (what's the significance of this?) and said, Friend (a description of the faithful, Jn. 15:15; James 2:23), I do thee no wrong: didst not thou agree with me for a penny? Take that thine is...I will give unto this last, even as unto thee" (Mt. 20:10-15). If the penny represents salvation, the harder workers only started questioning once they saw, to their amazement, the weaker and shorter workers receiving a penny. They received the promised reward of salvation, but couldn't understand the principles on which the Lord rewarded the weaker servants. If the hard working faithful will have a problem with this even at the judgment, how much more now?
Taken individually, none of these points from the parables of the Kingdom is very convincing. But put together, I suggest we see the emergence of a theme. It may be that these are the thoughts which pass through the minds of the responsible as they watch the judgment process; for it seems that in some sense it will be public.
Notes
(1) I have outlined the Biblical basis for this in
(2) See
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4 Why The Trinity Was Accepted
In my opinion, the Biblical evidence against the trinity is compelling. And yet the majority of professing Christians are trinitarian; and moreover, they stigmatize non-trinitarians as non-Christian, many claiming that non-trinitarians are automatically a ‘sect’. Clearly enough, neither the word ‘trinity’ nor the wording of the trinitarian formula were known to New Testament Christianity. In a sense, Jesus ‘became’ God to many Christians all because a group of bishops decided it was so. But
1. Accommodation To Paganism
It was a mixture of paganism and Christianity which made the changeover from paganism to nominal Christianity less controversial and more painless. I’ve given some specific examples of this in a European context below. Many scholars have pointed out that the idea of a Divine figure coming to earth to redeem the faithful was a very common pagan myth in the Middle East of the first century (1). It's easy to see how early Christians would've been tempted to claim that Christ was some form of pre-existent God in order to make their beliefs accommodate the surrounding paganism- and it's understandable that some would've been eager to misinterpret Bible passages to this end.
The idea of a 'trinity' of gods was widespread in paganism. The Egyptians had three main gods, Osiris, Isis and Horus. Horus was in turn divided into 3 parts or persons:
Horus - the King
Horus - Ra
Horus - the Scarabaeus.
Likewise the Hindu Vedas of around 1000 BC claimed that one God existed in three forms:
Agni - Fire, presiding over the earth
Indra - the Firmament, presiding over the mid-air
Surya - The Sun. presiding over the Heavens.
In later Hinduism, the 'trimurti' or trinity of gods became:
Brahma - the creative power
Vishnu - the preserving power
Siva - the transforming power.
So when Theophilus, bishop of Antioch introdcued the word 'trias' to Christian literature for the first time in AD170, and the word 'trinitas' was first used by Tertullian in AD200, they were importing pagan concepts which were familiar and had been for millenia.
Barry Cunliffe (2) notes “the prevalence of tripilism in Celtic religion… The ‘power of three’ was frequently expressed in iconography, as, for example, in the three-faced stone head from Corleck, Cavan, in Ireland or the tricephalic deity depicted on the pot from Bavay in northern France, but it is also found as a recurring motif- the triskele- in Celtic art. The concept is made even more specific in the Romano-British and Gallo-Roman religion in the form of the
So it’s not surprising that the idea of God as a trinity was easily accepted in Europe- the one true God had been adapted to the pagan background culture, rather than Bible truth being allowed to define our beliefs. The more one searches, the more one finds evidence of what Cunliffe calls “tripilisms”, pagan godheads that occurred in three forms or persons. Examples include: the “three legs of Mann” on the Isle of Mann, which symbol is also found on coins found in Italy and Asia Minor from before the time of Christ; the triple knot inscriptions [called the Triquetra] and the “Triskel” symbol, again a reference to some primitive form of ‘trinity’, found in inscriptions and art forms throughout Brittany, Ireland and Western Britain. There's a small plaque of schist from Bath, England with three female figures representing the ‘three mothers’, a triad of deities. These triads of mother goddesses were common in the West of Britain in the early Roman period, probably reflecting an earlier Iron Age tradition. The original is in the Roman Baths Museum in Bath UK.
Greek Influence
Greek mythology was well known, and formed the background for the early Christian converts. It was full of legends relating how young men sacrificed themselves in the prime of life, winning victories against superhuman odds, and then resurrected, ascended to 'heaven' and turned into gods who were to be worshipped on earth. Heracles is the classic example, but Martin Hengel lists many others (3). It's easy to see how people who had heard something of the Christian Gospel, but were not aware or didn't pay attention to the content of the word itself, came to confuse the story of Jesus with these kinds of myths and legends. And so they ended up seeing Jesus as a God, one of many... and the fatal step towards Trinitarian doctrine was thus natural and easy for them. Again, if they had paid attention to the actual words of the Christian message, they'd have seen the crucial difference between those myths, and the startling reality of the real Christ. But because they paid insufficient attention to God's word in the Gospel, they ended up understanding the Christian story in terms of the surrounding mythology, rather than giving God's word its' full weight and seeing Christ freestanding, as the unique
Roman Influence
Around AD8, Ovid published his collection of poems called
The Roman policy was not to deride the gods of the peoples they conquered but rather to introduce them into their religious systems. "Local gods would be merged into the Roman pantheon- a provincial god of thunder could simply be seen as Zeus or Jupiter in a different guise- with the result that a complex of interlocking rituals and scared sites could sustain local cultures without undermining Roman supremacy" (5). When Rome adopted Christianity, this mindset continued- hence the willingness to import 'tripilisms' of local pagan cultures into Constantine's version of Christianity. In order to enforce unity of belief in the Roman empire, there began a program of church building after the time of Constantine. "In this way a pagan custom, the worship of gods through impressive buildings, was transferred successfully into Christianity. Such display was completely alien to the Christian tradition..." (6). Theodosius followed Constantine in trying to ensure that Trinitarian Christianity was the one and only state religion. This meant campaigns against paganism as well as Trinitarian Christians. But these campaigns inevitably met resistance; and the Roman empire sought compromise to their advantage wherever possible. Thus a law was passed forbidding the lighting of lamps in front of pagan sacred places; but instead it was permitted to light lamps in front of Christian altars and tombs. Jerome justified this by teaching that pagan practices were acceptable when done in a Christian context.
Remember that the trinity was adopted at the Council of Nicea in AD325. This Council was called by Constantine after he decided he wished to turn the official religion of the Roman empire from paganism to Christianity. Not long before that Council, Christians had been cruelly persecuted. Some of the delegates at that Council even bore on their faces and in their bodies the marks of that persecution. The pagans had [falsely] accused the Christians of making Jesus into a God whom they worshipped. Pliny had reported how they “chant antiphonally a hymn to Christ as to a god” (7). In the pagan Roman world, only the Jews refused to worship other gods on the basis that there was only one true God. The fact the Christians did the same led to the perception that they too thought that there was only one God, just that they called Him ‘Christ’. The Jews likewise wrongly assumed that anyone claiming to be the Son of God was claiming to be God (Jn. 10:33-36; 19:7)- even though Jesus specifically corrected them over this! As often happens, the perceptions of a group by their enemies often come to define how the group perceive themselves. Constantine was a politician and a warrior. He wasn’t a Bible student, nor a theologian, in fact he wasn’t even a very serious Christian (8). Although he accepted Christianity, he said he didn’t want to be baptized because he wanted to continue in sin. He seems to have figured that Christianity was the right thing for the empire. So, Christianity, here we come. Constantine, and many others who jumped on the ‘Christian’ bandwagon, shared the perception of Christ which had existed in the pagan world which they had grown up in. And the pagan perception, as Pliny and many others make clear, was that Jesus was a kind of God. And so when Constantine presided over the dispute amongst the bishops at Nicea about who Jesus was, he naturally assumed that the ‘Jesus is God Himself’ party were in fact traditional Christians.
Notes
(1) Barry Cunliffe,
(2) Rudolph Bultmann,
(3) Martin Hengel,
(4) Frances Young, in John Hick, ed.,
(5) Charles Freeman,
(6) Freeman,
(7) Pliny (the Younger),
(8) There's strong historical evidence that Constantine was scarcely a Christian himself by the time of the Council of Nicea. The idea is commonly held that he saw a vision of Christ at the battle of Milvan Bridge in AD312 and then converted to Christianity in gratitude, especially as Christ supposedly told him to lead his soldiers with the sign of the cross. However, there is serious evidence against this. After the battle, he claimed that "The supreme deity" had helped him, and he placed "the heavenly sign of God" on his soldier's shields. But historical sources dating from soon after the battle state that this sign was not the cross, but the chi-ro sign, or labarum- the emblem of the sun god. It was only many years later that Eusebius wrote a biography of Constantine, in which he claimed that this had actually been the sign of the cross. After the battle in AD312, Constantine erected a triumphal arch opposite the Colosseum in Rome to celebrate the victory- and covered it with reliefs of Mars, Jupiter, Hercules [the gods of war], and ascribed victory to the power of the Sun god. Depictions of the battle show no soldier with any cross on his shield! As late as AD320, Constantine's coins represented him with the crown of the 'Sol Invictus', the Sun god cult. And was it co-incidence that he declared December 25th, the main festival of the 'Sol Invictus', as the birthday of Jesus? Further, his new capital, Constantinople, was committed to the care of the local protecting deities, Rhea and Tyche- Constantine built temples for them all over his new capital.
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4-2 Genuine Intellectual Failure?
There was an element of genuine misinterpretation. As you read through the New Testament chronologically, it becomes apparent that the Lord Jesus is spoken of in ever more exalted language. For example, the term “son of man” is a favourite of the Gospel writers to describe the Lord Jesus. But it occurs only once in the later New Testament. Mark, the first Gospel, never calls Jesus “Lord”- but “Lord” is Paul’s most common title of Jesus some years later. John’s Gospel, clearly written after the other three, uses much more exalted language about the Lord Jesus than the earlier Gospels. The growth in perception of the greatness of Jesus is also perhaps reflected in the way that Revelation, the last inspired book of the New Testament, employs the most exalted language about Jesus. Both Paul and Peter show a progressive fondness in their choice of words for terms which exalt Jesus higher and higher. And presumably this trend continued after their death, as believers realized more and more that the carpenter from Nazareth had in fact been God’s Son, and is now the exalted King of Heaven and earth. The penny dropped that in fact “we can never exalt Christ too highly”, as Robert Roberts put it in the 19th century. But… and it’s a big but. The language of exaltation can reach a point where Jesus is no longer Jesus, but somehow God Himself. Further, it’s my observation that intellectual failure very often has an underlying psychological basis. To make Jesus God was one thing, but to accept the doctrine of three Gods in one, the trinity, was another. And I submit that this intellectual failure was rooted, even unconsciously, in a desire for an easier ride. It is after all extremely demanding to accept that a man, born into all our dysfunction, could be perfect; that from the larynx of a Palestinian Jew there could come forth the words of God Almighty. It’s a challenge, because we too are human; and if this was how far one of us could rise, above all the things that hold us down, that retard our growth towards the image of God Himself… then He is setting us an example so challenging that it reaches into the very core of our being, uncomfortably, inconveniently and even worryingly. To have a Jesus who was in fact not truly human, but just acting out, a Jesus who was really God and not man… this removes so much of the challenge of the real, human Christ.
- It has to be admitted that any attempt to use human language in order to somehow express the greatness of what the Lord Jesus has achieved, who He was and who He is, is somehow doomed to failure. I may break the rules of grammatical convention in my writings by writing the personal pronouns related to Jesus with a capital 'H' ("He... His... Him"), but this of course quite fails to express in language and under "the tyranny of words" all that I think of Him. I like to imagine that all genuine believers know something of my dilemma. As Robert Roberts said so well, "We cannot lift Christ too high". Perhaps it was in this spirit that men began to speak of Jesus as "God"- the problem is that by ending up with the "Jesus=God" equation, we are doing violence to God's word and also actually minimizing the colossal, unspeakable achievement of the human Jesus. The New Testament is full of very high adoration for the Lord Jesus. Since those words and phrases were chosen under the inspiration of God, His Father, we would be better advised to stick with them rather than try to invent our own terms and analogies in order to express His greatness. The structure of the original text of the prologue to John's Gospel regarding the word, and also Phil. 2:9-11 regarding the exaltation of Jesus, are arranged in such a way that they appear to be hymns which were sung by the believers. Pliny the Younger (
- It could be that some read [or heard of] the Biblical descriptions of Christ in glory
- Suetonius records that there were frequent "disturbances caused by Chrestus among the Jews of Rome" (
- Christianity was and is radically counter-cultural. The very terms used by the Roman empire regarding its Kingdom and Caesars are all applied to the Kingdom of God and to His Son. I have exemplified this at length elsewhere (1). Thus 'Caesar is Lord' became 'Jesus is Lord' in early Christianity (2). I suggest that there may have been an element of genuine intellectual failure amongst some illiterate early Christians, who noticed this feature of Christianity, and wrongly inferred from it that therefore all that is true or claimed to be true of Caesar must therefore be true of Jesus- when the fact they shared the same verbal titles doesn't imply that at all. Thus when it was claimed that Caesar was a pre-existent God who on death returned to Heaven, those illiterate [and other] folks may have been tempted to assume that this was therefore also true of Jesus. But maybe I'm being too generous here. The early Christians virulently rejected the Emperor-cult; but as Christianity came to merge with the Roman world, it became modelled on the Emperor-cult in a way which the earliest Christians would've fiercely rejected. By the Middle Ages, icons were depicting Christ appearing like the Emperor, and God rendered as the Pope- Van Eyck and Botticelli presented God the Father as wearing the same triple crown which the Pope wore (3). In this we see the full mixture of apostate church and worldly state, and the Trinity was just a convenient means to that end.
- Initially, as we see from e.g. John's Gospel, the core issue in Christianity revolved around simply believing in Jesus. But soon, as we see from John's letters, it became important to counter wrong beliefs
The Hebraic Mindset
So many have pointed out that our difficulties in understanding the Bible often arise from reading Hebrew literature with a Greek, Western mindset. The Eastern, Semitic thinker will say things like "Israel killed 1000 Palestinians today!" when 10 were killed; "It's 1000 degrees today!" when it's only 40. The literalistic Western mind would see these statements as 'untrue', 'exaggerations' and lacking integrity. But they are perfectly valid forms of expression within Semitic mindsets. Many interpretations of the Lord's parables have come to grief because of the desire by Western readers to interpret each feature in a logical [to them] manner. 'Greek', Western thinking seeks to isolate and interpret each detail in a literal manner, rather than perceiving that Hebrew thinking uses exaggerations, paradoxes and elements of unreality in order to make a point. "There is much in most of the parables of Jesus which to the literal or logical mind is at best fanciful, at worst nonsensical. But the literal or logical mind is not the only kind of mind... the Hebrew religion ought to be taken by is, and was taken by its own prophets, Jesus among them, in a poetic sense, not in a prosaic or literal one. When theology fails to understand the Hebrew scriptures in this way, it becomes an immense misunderstanding of the Bible" (4). It's no wonder that there are such serious misunderstandings when we come to the language used about the relationship between the Father and His Son.
In Hebrew thought, it was quite common to speak of God as having an intention which was then fulfilled. Indeed, this kind of thing is found in the literature and epics of other Semitic languages. Thus the Exodus record records God's commands regarding the tabernacle, and then Moses' fulfillment of them. The prologue to John speaks of God's
I pointed out in Section 2-22 that frequently in the New Testament we meet a juxtapositioning of language emphasizing Christ's humanity alongside terms which emphasize His Divine side. This is typical Hebraic logic, whereby blocks of material are placed next to each other, in order to create a dialectic between them which leads to the intended conclusion. Back in Exodus, we find Pharaoh's heart hardened by God, and yet him hardening his own heart. Greek thinking panics here- for it works by step logic, logically reasoning from one statement to another. There appears to our European minds to be a crisis of contradiction, which many find worrying. But the Hebrew mind is far less phased. Rather the two seeming contradictions are weighed up and the conclusion reached- e.g. that Pharaoh hardened his own heart, but God confirmed him in this. The language used about the Lord Jesus in the New Testament is similar. John Knox got somewhere close to understanding this when he wrote that "we do not experience the humanity and divinity of Christ in ways as separate as this language suggests; we are aware of them together" (5). John's Gospel is maybe the most evident example. In the context of all the high, lofty language relating the Lord Jesus to the
The Greek thinking minds who read the New Testament were sadly divorced from the Hebrew background which is the backdrop for God's revelation in the Bible. In the lead up to the AD381 Decree of Constantinople, which declared Trinitarianism as the only acceptable form of Christian faith, Gregory of Nazianzus preached a series of sermons in defence of the Trinity. He dealt with the two blocks of Biblical evidence as saying that e.g. in John 11:34, Jesus resurrected Lazarus by His Divine nature, and then wept in His human nature (7). Gregory utterly failed to appreciate Hebrew thought; he ended up splitting up the Lord Jesus effectively into two persons, rather than seeking to harmonize the two strands which there were within the one person of Jesus.
And so some seized upon the 'Divine' language about Jesus and concluded He must have been God; and then struggled to explain away all the 'humanity' language with complex philosophical theories about merely
It seems to me that there has been a chronic and even wilful failure to realize that Divine language can be applied to a person without making them God Himself in person. There are ample Biblical examples of this. It is in keeping with the Eastern way of seeing a person and their representative as very closely linked, to the point of functional identity. The great Rabbi Hillel was fond of taking language about God and applying it to himself- but this doesn't mean that he claimed to be, nor was, God Himself in person (8). This blurred identity between the sender and the representative is hard for the Western mind to understand. It's a line of thought that needs careful reflection upon. In Hebrew thought, it was common to call a substitute by the name of the thing whose place it takes- with no comment to this effect. Thus the tent Moses set up in which to meet God is called "the tent of meeting" (Ex. 33:7)- which is what the tabernacle was called. But that tent wasn't the tabernacle.
In a brilliant Biblical study of the cherubim, the Jewish scholar Umberto Cassuto noted that sometimes the cherubim upon which God's throne is are at times
This intellectual failure, at both extremes, can be avoided by trying to read the Scriptures against their Hebraic background. We have elsewhere noted how the New Testament uses various terms current at the time but then redefines and reuses them with relation to the Lord Jesus. Appreciating the background is vital to correct understanding. Indeed, it has been observed that many of the uninspired 'Gospels' that began to circulate in the 2nd century (e.g. Gospel of Thomas, Gospel of the Hebrews, of the Ebionites, of the Nazoraeans, of Peter, Protoevangelium of James) are all characterized by a distinct lack of attention to the Hebrew background of the Gospel. They "do not characteristically present Jesus with reference to the Old Testament and the narrative world of Israel... Jesus is not, for example, usually presented [by these 'gospels'] as fulfillment of Biblical prophecy, or of typological events or characters of the Old Testament. In some cases [they] specifically deny any relevance or validity to the Scriptures of Israel for understanding Jesus (e.g.
The Greek / European mindset loves to define and pin down. But when we come to the Hebraic language of the God who is so far above and beyond us, we're set on a disaster course if we will not jettison that mindset. The Hebraic mode of language use "does not so much analyze, reduce, and narrow down toward definition as it uses metaphor to expand and open out meaning" (11). The Trinity is in my opinion yet another such Western / Greek attempt to reduce and narrow God down, rather than letting the real Christ, as His Son, reveal Him.
Conclusions
On balance, whilst I accept that the trinity may have arisen from an element of genuine intellectual failure, being honestly mistaken in Bible study, it seems to me that this doesn't really excuse the huge and basic ignorance of God's word as the source of truth about Himself and His Son. It seems that the early church 'fathers' began desperately grabbing any Bible verse which would justify their position, as we have commented so many times. Thus commenting on the Hebrew and Septuagint of Mic. 5:2, James Dunn concludes: "In neither instance does the Hebrew suggest the idea of pre-existence... it was not until Justin took it up in the middle of the second century AD that it began to be used as a prophecy of Christ's pre-existence" (12). In this observation, which Dunn documents at length, we see how once the ideas of Christ being God and pre-existing were accepted and assumed, the church 'fathers' started casting around for Biblical evidence to support those positions. This, sadly, is typical of the inductive reasoning that has plagued Christian thinking. An idea is seized upon, often because it is acceptable to the surrounding world, and then Bible verses are appended to it, regardless of their context.
Notes
(1) See 'The Objections To Christianity' in my
(2) Adolf Deissmann gives very many examples of how the titles of Caesar used in the Imperial Cult were applied to Jesus- see his
(3) See F.E. Hulme,
(4) R.H. Ward,
(5) John Knox,
(6) J. E. Davey,
(7) Quoted in John McGuckin,
(8) David Flusser, 'Hillel's Self-Awareness And Jesus', in
(9) Umberto Cassuto,
(10) Larry Hurtado,
(11) J.B. Russell,
(12) James Dunn,
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4-3 The Psychological Attraction Of A Non-Human Jesus
I would suggest that every false understanding of the
Bible, every wrong doctrine, has some sort of psychological basis to it;
and that often, this involves an excuse for flunking the challenge to
The early Christians must likewise have struggled with
the questions- how could a
Despite the fact that Jesus evidently preferred to speak
of Himself as "son of man", the disciples are never recorded
as referring to Him in this way. This psychological discomfort with the
human Jesus is reflected by the way in which the 2nd century Christian [heretic] Valentinus started teaching that Jesus ate and drunk "in a special manner, so that no excretal waste was produced" (1). Yet the Biblical emphasis is upon His eating and drinking as being a sign that He really was human, like us! This same strange discomfort with a real Christ continues to this day- there's always vociferous
reaction against any Bible translation which has Jesus speaking in ordinary
human language (e.g. that of Andy Gauss,
The essence of Christianity is to be as it were in a personality cult behind the person of the Lord Jesus. It's all about reflecting daily upon Him, asking "What would Jesus do?" as we face the myriad decisions which make up daily life. Yet this is hard to do; we find it almost impossible to maintain daily focus upon the Jesus who is revealed in the Gospels. The tendency always is to let our mind stray onto more abstract and less personally demanding things; and it has been observed that as the Church as a whole moved away from focus upon the real, human Jesus of the Gospels, so they became increasingly absorbed in speculation about His supposed previous life in Heaven.
We can see this discomfort with the literal and the real by the way in which Christians began to allegorize everything. To believe in the real Jesus, in the miracles of God in human lives over history, was too great a challenge to faith- and so everything was made comfortably abstract. The New Testament writers present things like the crossing of the Red Sea and the events in the wilderness as real historical events which were types of the work of Christ (1 Cor. 10:1-4; Hebrews 3 etc.). But by the second century, there was a shift away from reading these events as types, but rather they were seen as allegories- no longer were the events so importantly
Notes
(1) As quoted in Larry Hurtado,
(2) This shift in exegetical style is documented at length in Martin Mulder & Harry Sysling, eds.,
(3) As quoted in Henry Chadwick,
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4-4 Jewish Influence On The Trinity
The true Christian believer has ever been under pressure from the world. Paul wrote words of eternal relevance when he asked that we not allow the world to press us into its mould, but rather allow Christ to transform us. The acceptance of the trinity was a result of the world pressurizing the church. The Roman and Jewish worlds which surrounded the Christians had a way of divinizing human figures. If you concluded a man had been a hero, then you applied Divine language to him- a form of what the Greeks had called apotheosis. This is why some of the Rabbinic commentary on men like Moses and Elijah use God-like language about them, although clearly the intention was not to make them equal to the one and only God of Israel whom they believed in. Yet the Greek and Western world have unfortnately read the Hebraic Biblical documents through their own worldviews, and have missed the fact that Hebrew terms and approaches are quite different to their own.
There’s no lack of evidence that Christians did this with regard to the language used about Jesus, indeed there are examples of it in the New Testament. And it has also been observed that some of the exalted Jewish language used about Moses- e.g. “the one for and on account of whom the world was created”- was purposefully appropriated by Paul and applied to Jesus (1). Such glorified figures were also spoken of with the language of pre-existence, as if they had existed from the beginning of creation, even though that wasn’t literally the case. They were “ascribed a prior, heavenly status or existence, however that was understood” (2). But as Christianity generally turned against the Jews, as Jewish Christians were thrown out of the church or returned to the synagogues, the actual human roots of Jesus were overlooked. The Jewish background to the language of exaltation used about Him was no longer appreciated. Instead, Christ remained in the minds of many Christians with just the Divine titles attached to Him; and so they ended up concluding that He was God Himself. They preferred to stick with forms of wording which were comfortable and familiar to them, rather than searching out the meaning behind those words. And today, nothing much has changed. Christians still remain almost wilfully ignorant of the basic principle of ‘God manifestation’ which is found throughout Scripture, whereby Divine language can be used of a person without making them God Himself.
Vincent Taylor analyzes Paul’s hymn of praise to the Lord Jesus in Phil. 2:6-11 and concludes that it is an adaptation of a Jewish hymn which spoke of “the appearance of the Heavenly Man on earth” (3). Paul was writing under inspiration, but it seems he purposefully adapted a Jewish hymn and applied it to Jesus- to indicate the status which should truly be ascribed to the Lord Jesus. Col. 1:15-20, another poetic fragment which is likewise misunderstood by those seeking to justify the false idea of a personal pre-existence of the Lord, has also been identified as a Jewish hymn which Paul modified (4). We must remember that Paul was inspired by God to answer the claims of false teachers; and he was doing so by using and re-interpreting the terms which they used. Nearly all the titles of Christ used in the letter to the Hebrews are taken from Philo or the Jewish book of Wisdom (5). The writer to the Hebrews is seeking to apply them in their correct and true sense to the Lord Jesus. This explains why some titles are used which can easily be misunderstood by those not appreciating this background. For example, Philo speaks of “the impress of God’s seal”, and Hebrews applies this to the Lord Jesus. The phrase has been misinterpreted by trinitarians as meaning that Jesus is therefore God; but this wasn’t at all the idea behind the title in Philo’s writings, and neither was it when the letter to the Hebrews took up the phrase and applied it to Jesus. This sort of thing goes on far more often than we might think in the Bible- existing theological ideas are re-cast and re-presented in their correct light, especially with reference to the Lord Jesus. Arthur Gibson notes that “there is an important second level within religious language: it is a reflection upon, a criticism of, a correction of, or a more general formulation of, expressions which previously occur” (6). He even shows that the very Names ‘Yahweh’ and ‘El’ were an allusion to earlier contemporary gods of a similar name and meaning- but the only true God, Yahweh, the El of Israel, alludes to these false notions and presents them as applying solely to Himself.
Jewish Myths Deconstructed
In my study of the historical development of the common Christian understanding of Satan, I found that Jewish myths played a particularly strong role in influencing the early Christian positions- once Christianity started to depart from a purely Biblical approach (7). The same appears true for some elements of the false doctrines which led to the development of the Trinity. The apocryphal Jewish
The natural human desire to downplay our own sin, and that of our race, led Judaism to misinterpret the fall of Adam. They ended up calling Adam "the Heavenly man" and believing that he was somehow alive and would be re-incarnated in the Messiah. Philo, the great Jewish philosopher of Alexandria, popularized this view. In
Martin Hengel suggests that Christians attempted to answer the Jewish ideas of pre-existent Torah, Wisdom and
C.H. Dodd throughout chapter 3 of his classic
The Samaritans
I wish to share a theory which to me is significant in explaining the way that Jewish conceptions came to influence Christian misunderstanding of Jesus. My suggestion is that the Samaritan Christians came to import into their theology a view of Jesus which was based upon the mixture of Jewish-pagan ideas which they had held before their conversion to Christianity. The letter to the Hebrews is clearly intended as a rebuttal of wrong understandings of the Lord Jesus, and as noted above, the language used about Jesus in Heb. 1 clearly alludes to incipient Gnostic ideas of a pre-existent redeemer who was in some ways 'God'- and the writer is clearly debunking those ideas. I write more about this in
The significance of all this in our present context is that Paul and the apostolic writers of the New Testament were already up against the idea that Jesus = God. Michael Goulder sums it up: "There is evidence that these 'Hebrew' missionaries introduced new doctrines to the ... churches in... the teaching that Jesus was God become man [and] a glorifying and dehumanizing of his earthly life" (16). The apostles dealt with these ideas by alluding to and deconstructing the Gnostic and Samaritan ideas which were at the root of them- and that, in my view, is the basis of many of the passages which are seized upon by trinitarians in support of their idea, whilst of course ignoring the mass of Bible teaching to the contrary. As I have shown elsewhere, passages such as John 1 and Hebrews 1 are in fact full of emphasis upon the fact that Jesus is
The Jewish View Of Angels
The Jewish obsession with Angels influenced the early Christians in the area of Christology [i.e. theories about Christ], just as it did on the topic of the Devil. Chapters like Hebrews 1 and Colossians 2 deal with this in detail, stressing that Jesus was
James Dunn quotes Tertullian, Justin, Epiphanius and Clement as all believing that the Lord Jesus was an Angel: "so too Jewish Christians of the second and third centuries specifically affirmed that Christ was an angel or archangel... Justin's identification of the angel of Yahweh with the [supposedly] pre-existent Christ" (18). It was this Jewish obsession with Angels, and the desire to make Jesus understandable as an Angel, which led to the idea that He personally pre-existed and was not quite human. And hence the specific and repeated emphasis of the New Testament that the Lord was
The Jews believed that the
We may wonder why John is at such pains to point out that Christ "came in the flesh", and why he pronounced anathema upon those who denied that (2 Jn. 7-9). It seems to me that his converts had come up against Jewish attempts to re-interpret Jesus in terms of apostate Jewish thinking about Angels and the whole nature of existence, the kind of heresy battled against in Hebrews and Colossians. Take Jewish views of the Angels who appeared to Abraham. Josephus says they "gave him to believe that they did eat" (
The Jewish Background To
Much has been made of the similarities between Jn. 1:1-3 and the 'Wisdom' literature of the Jews. Judaism believed in a number of intermediaries who interceded between God and Israel- Wisdom, the Shekinah [glory], the Logos / word. The Torah [law] had become so elevated and personified that it was spoken of almost as a separate 'God' (19). John and Paul are picking up these terms and explaining their true meaning- Jesus is the glory [
Jewish Influence On The 'Pre-existence' Idea
The false notion that the Lord Jesus literally pre-existed and was then somehow incarnated, or re-incarnated, was a pagan idea that had become popular in Judaism around the time of Christ. In fact the road to the Trinity began with Justin and other 'church fathers' coming to teach that Jesus personally pre-existed- even though they initially denied that He was God Himself. The Qumran sect, some of whose followers became the first Christians, believed that the "Teacher of Righteousness" pre-existed as the former prophets and would be an incarnation of them. This explains why they thought Messiah had previously been incarnated as Moses, Elijah and the prophets. In this lies the significance of the account in Mt. 16:14-18. Jesus enquires who the people think He is- and the disciples answer that the popular view is that Jesus of Nazareth is Elijah, Jeremiah or one of the prophets reincarnated. But this was exactly who first century Judaism thought Messiah would be (20). So the crowd view was indeed that Jesus was Messiah- but "Messiah" as they understood Messiah would be. The significance of the incident lies in Peter's affirmation that Jesus, whom he accepted as Messiah, was not a re-incarnation of a pre-existent prophet but was the begotten Son of God. Note in passing that the false doctrine of pre-existence is connected to the pagan myth of incarnation and re-incarnation. If, for example, Jesus really was existing in Old Testament times, then somehow He would have had to have been re-incarnated in Mary's womb.
Peter's rejection of these ideas and declaration instead that Jesus is the Son of God gave the Lord Jesus great joy; and so too will our faith in Him as the actual Son of God, not a pre-existent being somehow incarnated inside Mary. The Jesus who to this day remembers early childhood with Mary knows full well that He didn't pre-exist before that. We too, you and I, know how frustrating it is to have our origins and essential being misunderstood, and to hear others insisting that their false images of us are in fact true. It may not mean that we break all relationship with them just because of this- but it is surely so that our correct understanding of the nature and essence of Jesus rejoices His heart and draws us closer in our relationship. This is my perspective on the issue of "So how important is it to reject the idea of a pre-existent Jesus?". I cannot speak for His ultimate judgment of men and women, although I do know that many will call Him "Lord, Lord" at the last day and realize they never knew Him and He never knew them (Mt. 7:22,23). All I can say is that correct understanding of our Lord's nature will deeply enrich our relationship with Him- and this is what the daily essence of following Him is all about.
We know from Acts 8 that people from Samaria formed a significant part of the earliest Christian community. Yet all converts are prone to return to their former beliefs in some ways at some times. The Samaritan view of Messiah was likewise that he would be the re-incarnation of a prophet, specifically Moses (Jn. 4:19,25). It therefore seems likely that the idea of a pre-existent Christ / Messiah developed as a result of the early Jewish and Samaritan converts returning to their previous conceptions of Messiah. For these were less taxing to their faith than the radical idea that an illiterate Jewish teenager called Marryam in some dumb Galileean village actually conceived a baby direct from God Almighty. Uninspired documents such as the
Time and again we have to remind ourselves that in reading the Bible, we are reading literature which was relevant to the time in which it was written, and which is inevitably going to freely use the current terminology without as it were giving footnoted explanations for 21st century readers. The whole language of pre-existence in Heaven must be understood against the Jewish background in which it was first used in the Biblical writings. "When the Jew wished to designate something as predestined, he spoke of it as already 'existing' in heaven" (22). Moses (especially in
The whole idea of a human
The Jewish View Of Adam
There was a first century Jewish speculation that Adam would be re-incarnated as Messiah. Paul's references to Adam and Christ in Rom. 5:12-21 and 1 Cor. 15:45-47 are very careful to debunk that idea. Paul emphasized that no, Adam and Jesus are different, Jesus is superior to Adam, achieved what Adam didn't, whilst all the same being "son of man". And this emphasis was effectively a denial by Paul that Jesus pre-existed as Adam, or as anyone. For Paul counters these Jewish speculations by underlining that the Lord Jesus was
A false understanding of the nature of the Lord Jesus is related to a wrong understanding of sin and the whole nature and need for atonement. There was a first century Jewish speculation that Adam would be re-incarnated as Messiah, and this was connected with the idea that Adam was somehow sinless. The
Further, the Lord Jesus is set up in so many ways as the example for us to follow- in a way that some cosmic being descending from outer space never could have been. In the same way as Jesus was the image of the invisible God in His character (Col. 1:15; 2 Cor. 4:4), so we are bidden put on the image of God (Col. 3:10), being transformed into His image progressively over time (2 Cor. 3:18), through "the renewing of your mind" (Rom. 12:2), being conformed to the image of Jesus our Saviour (Rom. 8:29; 1 Cor. 15:49). Thus the
The Language Of Exaltation
As scholarship uncovers and analyzes more and more Jewish literature contemporary with and predating the New Testament, it becomes apparent that many of the terms of devotion used about Jesus are in fact borrowed from Judaism. This we would expect, seeing that the New Testament writers and the early Christians were largely Jewish. Judaism gave Divine titles to Messiah, speaking of Him in Divine terms (27)- and yet clearly enough, this didn't mean that the Jews understood Messiah as equal to God, for they were the world's fiercest monotheists. If the Jews of the first century were being asked to quit monotheism and accept trinitarianism, why is there no New Testament hint of the struggle this would have resulted in? Why doesn't Paul speak of how he struggled with it? For even today, Trinitarian preachers find their view of the Trinity to be the greatest stumblingblock for their Jewish audiences. Larry Hurtado sums it up like this: "Virtually all the Christological rhetoric of early Christians was appropriated from their environment" (28). We of course do the same- we describe a promising young footballer as "the next [Beckham]", or whoever is the football star of the moment. Likewise the word "awesome" came into strong vogue in the late 1990s as a superlative. We use the terms of exaltation which are current at our time. Thus reading the New Testament against its context, the highly exalted language used about the Lord Jesus was not in fact making any claim at all that 'Jesus = God' in a trinitarian sense. It was only because Judaism and Christianity parted company with each other that later generations of Gentile Christians came to forget the immediate Jewish context against which those terms were initially used- and conveniently mixed them with their own pagan ideas about gods coming to earth etc.
The Extent Of Jewish Influence
It may be wondered whether I'm not over emphasizing the influence of apostate Jewish thinking upon apostate Christian thinking in the first century. However there's ample evidence that such influence occured in other doctrinal and behavioural areas even amongst the early Gentile churches.
Notes
(1) See Larry Hurtado,
(2) N.A. Dahl, "Christ, Creation And The Church" in
(3) Vincent Taylor,
(4) Evidence provided in Rudolf Bultmann,
(5) See J. Moffatt,
(6) Arthur Gibson,
(7) See my
(8) John Macdonald,
(9) References in James Dunn,
(10) Martin Hengel,
(11) See John Hick, ed.,
(12) John Macdonald,
(13) W. Bauer,
(14) Mentioned in Bauer,
(15) Harry Whittaker, 'The Jewish Plot', in
(16) Michael Goulder, in John Hick, ed.,
(17) J. Danielou,
(18) James Dunn,
(19) H. Ringgren,
(20) See documentation in Oscar Cullmann,
(21) Kenneth Wuest,
(22) E.G. Selwyn,
(23) H. Mowinckel,
(24) E.C. Dewick,
(25) For documentation, see Oscar Cullmann,
(26) Martin Werner,
(27) See William Horbury,
(28) Larry Hurtado,
(29) References for all this can be found in Andrew Perry,'The Songs Of The Sabbath Sacrifice And Tongues',
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4-5 Dirty Politics And The Doctrine Of The Trinity
A review of the "Letters concerning the Decrees of the Council of Nicaea", published in English translation in the
The argument between Arius (non-trinitarian) and Athanasius (trinitarian) was more political than it was theological or Biblical. There was a power struggle between the two men. Once Christianity became the state religion of the Roman empire, power within the church became political power. These two Christian leaders both had significant followings; and they both wanted power. The followers of the two groups fought pitched battles with each other in the urban centres of the empire. There are numerous accounts of Athanasius’ followers beating and murdering non-trinitarian Christians in the lead-up to the Council of Nicea, torturing their victims and parading their dead bodies around (1). The trinitarian Athanasius was by far the more brutal. “Bishop Athanasius, a future saint… had his opponents excommunicated and anathematized, beaten and intimidated, kidnapped, imprisoned, and exiled to distant provinces” (2). As in any power struggle, the opponents of both sides became vilified and demonized; the issue of how to formulate a creed about the nature of Jesus became a matter of polemics and politics, with the non-trinitarians being described in the most vitriolic of language. Non-trinitarians were accused of “rending the robe of Christ”, crucifying Him afresh, and far worse. Sadly this spirit of vilification of those who hold another view has continued to this day, with many trinitarians refusing to accept any non-trinitarian as a Christian. Arius complained in a letter that “We are persecuted because we say that the Son had a beginning, but that God was without beginning” (3). At the Council of Nicea, Bishop Nicholas- who later became the legendary saint of Christmas in much of Europe- slapped Arius around the face (4). It would be wrong to think of the dispute as a matter of learned men of God disagreeing with each other over a matter of Biblical interpretation. Athanasius, who had the ear of Constantine more than Arius, was out for victory. He therefore emotionalized the issue and used every manner of politics and destruction of his opponents in order to get Constantine to come down on his side, exile Arius for heresy, and therefore leave him as the senior churchman of the Roman empire- which meant major political power, in an empire which had newly adopted Christianity and sought to enforce it as the empire’s religion. It's highly significant that the draft 'creed' relating to the Godhead was initially acceptable to Arius; but because Alexander and his side simply wanted Arius 'out', they made the language more extreme; so that reconciliation wouldn't be achieved. And so they added the clause that Jesus was
Often I hear the comment ‘Well this matter was all looked into long ago, and wise Christians weighed it up and came to a prayerful conclusion, which tradition Christians rightly follow and uphold’. The history of the matter is quite different, and those who make such statements are sadly ignorant. Athanasius compounded his physical attacks on Arius’ supporters, his burning of their churches etc, with a series of personal slanders against the leading non-trinitarians, calling them seducers, rapists, frequenters of prostitutes, etc (6). If the argument was really just about the interpretation of Scripture, there needn’t have been all this personal attacking and politicking and rioting. Clearly, the issue of accepting the trinity was all about power politics. In any case, we simply cannot allow our personal faith and understanding of God and His Son to be dictated and defined by a church council of many centuries ago. Reviewing the history of the Christian church hardly gives much reason to trust its "councils" to come up with Godly, Biblical decisions. Just think back through the burning of heretics and suspected witches, torture to the death of non-trinitarians such as Michael Servetus by Luther, anti-semitism, the crusades, the Inquisition, church support for Fascism, for war and violence, for making black people stay out of white churches in the USA and South Africa... high level "Christian" decision making has a pathetic record. We really have no reason at all to allow "church councils" to define our view of the Lord, Saviour and Master with whom we are to have an intensely personal relationship mediated by His word. I cannot rest my faith on the shoulders of men; true faith cannot be a secondhand faith. It must trace its origins directly back to the Lord Jesus and His word, rather than back to some cranky guys playing church politics in the fourth century.
Constantine was a politician, not a Bible student. "Constantine's goal was to create a neutral public space in which Christians and pagans could both function... creating a stable coalition of both Christians and non-Christians" in the Roman empire (7). He also realized that Christianity itself had to be united if it were to be the state religion, and so he wanted there to be only one view on this contentious issue of who Jesus was. It was intolerable for him that Christians were rioting against each other over it. The matter had to be resolved. One side had to be chosen as right, and the other side must be silenced. He came down on the side of Athanasius for political reasons- adopted the trinitarian creed for the church, and exiled Arius. And so, Jesus ‘became’ God because of that. In the same spirit of wanting a united church at all costs, Constantine agreed at Nicea to a whole range of other measures which were likewise not Biblical- e.g. that anyone excommunicated by a Bishop in one province could never be accepted in another province, and the appointment of “superbishops” in Alexandria, Rome and Antioch who would decide all contentious issues in future. Personal conscience and understanding didn’t matter; all Constantine wanted was a united church, as he believed it would result in a united empire. One empire, one religion- and therefore, that religion had to be united, and dissent had to quashed. Someone had to be made out as totally right, and someone as totally wrong. Sadly one sees today the very same mentality in so many churches and local congregations. It’s all about power. The mess made in early Christianity remains our sober warning in these last days.
Constantine's Legacy
Constantine's integrity is for me self-questioned by his claim to be "the thirteenth apostle". Such a person can hardly be taken as a founding father of the true church. And add to this his murder of his rivals, boiling his wife to death in her bath and murdering one of his sons. Paul Johnson documents all this, and in the context of the trinity [and other] political agreements, comments: "His abilities had always lain in management... he was a master of the smoothly-worded compromise" (8). Indeed, Constantine wrote to both Arius and Alexander that he considered the theological issues themselves to be of no importance: "Having inquired carefully into the origin and foundation of these differences, I find their cause to be of a truly insignificant nature, quite unworthy of such bitter contention" (9). It really was all just dirty politics- for soon after writing this, non-trinitarians were cast out of the church as infidels and heretics, over an issue which Constantine considered "insignificant". It wasn't many centuries later that the Crusaders raped and pillaged both Moslem and Jewish cities, in the name of the Trinity and justified by the idea that those who didn't accept it, and were monotheists, should be put to the sword. John Calvin, in this spirit, ordered the destruction of Michael Servetus, because he too came to deny the Trinity. For this, he "deserved to have his bowels ripped out and to be torn in pieces" (10). So much for Calvin as a father of the so-called reformation. Nothing very fundamental was reformed. And Michael Servetus was taken to his execution in a dung cart, and burned alive with his anti-trinitarian writings, and the flames were fed with every known copy of his book
Theodosius And AD381
The Nicaea decree of AD325 was set even further in stone by the decree of Constantinople, issued by the emperor Theodosius in AD381. This edict condemned all other Christian beliefs as heresy, punishable by both the Roman state and also, so he claimed, by God's condemnation. The historian Charles Freeman argues at length that this edict brought about what he calls "the closing of the western mind" (11). All Bible study, theology etc. was now done within the tramlines of the Trinitarian dogma; fear of being accused heretical permeated Christianity. The state controlled the church, and thus the Roman empire became as much a 'one church' state as it did a one party state. Secular law upheld church law. Loyalty to the empire thus became the same thing as loyalty to the church. Once the empire pronounced God as being a Trinity- anything else was seen as subversive and dangerous. And so "'Having faith' could be defined as the virtue of believing what the church believed, and 'the sin of pride' as thinking for oneself" (12). The 'orthodox', Trinitarian bishops were empowered to confiscate the churches and property of heretics, and punish and slay them as required. The libraries and writings of 'heretics' were destroyed. The tradition of intellectual free thought and debate that Rome had inherited from Greece dried up; even Christian art became influenced and limited by the Trinity, triple tiaras started appearing everywhere... and the slide into the dark ages was perhaps hastened by this clampdown on Christian thought. The divisive and condemnatory language used by Theodosius and his supporters in condemnation of non-Trinitarian Christians bears quoting at length: "We shall believe in... the Holy Trinity. We command that persons who follow this rule shall embrace the name of catholic Christians. The rest, however, whom we judge demented and insane, shall carry the infamy of heretical dogmas. Their meeting places shall not receive the name of churches, and they shall be smitten first by Divine vengeance, and secondly by the retribution of hostility which we shall assume in accordance with the Divine judgment... [Arians] are wolves harrying the flocks, daring to hold rival assemblies, stirring sedition among the people and shrinking from nothing which can do damage to the churches" (13). This kind of vitriolic recalls the way the Trinitarian Athanasius spoke of non-Trinitarian Christians like Arius: "In every respect his heart is depraved and irreligious... utterly bereft of understanding, heretics show no shame... they are hostile and hateful to God" (14). And so the art of heresy hunting by Christians against other Christians began in earnest. There was no category in Roman law to condemn wrong belief; there were only articles against sorcery. Understanding the Lord Jesus in a non-Trinitarian way was therefore elevated to a seriously criminal offence. Burning alive was the traditional Roman punishment for counterfeiting coins- and this was applied to those who 'counterfeited Christ' by rejecting the Trinity. There arose, therefore, a fear of asking too many questions- as the Bishop of Melitene observed: "We uphold the Nicene creed but avoid difficult questions... Clever theologians soon become heretics" (15). Yet asking questions is a basic tool in the search for Truth, for God, in exploring His word for ourselves. Yet to simply
Why did Theodosius act like this? Why did he begin this process of persecuting anyone who didn't accept the Trinity? It wasn't the outcome of Biblical study, but rather political fears and ambitions. The Roman empire was breaking up, and he urgently wanted to unite the empire through enforcing unity of belief. Further, it had been pointed out that the Gospels present Jesus as a rebel against the Roman empire, a man who claimed to be King in contradistinction to Caesar. The response of Theodosius was therefore to insist that Jesus was God, and His human side was to be downplayed. One recalls the way that the Nazis, in a desperate attempt to get the German church onside with them, likewise ordered the Divine side of Jesus to be emphasized and His humanity as a Jew to be diminished. For one could hardly expect a Christian church to support the extermination of Jewry if the Christ of Christianity were to be title-roled as a Jew. Further, the empire of Theodosius was under attack from the Goths, who had been converted to an earlier, non-Trinitarian form of Christianity. Rather than justify a war of Christians against fellow Christians, it was expedient for Theodosius to slate the Goths as apostate Christians, deserving of Rome's brutality to suppress them.
Notes
(1) See Richard Hanson,
(2) Richard Rubenstein,
(3) Quoted in Rubenstein,
(4) Mentioned in Rubenstein,
(5) As documented in Charles Freeman,
(6) These things are chronicled extensively in T.D. Barnes,
(7) H.A. Drake,
(8) Paul Johnson,
(9) Quoted in Ian Wilson,
(10) As quoted in A. Buzzard and C. Hunting,
(11) Charles Freeman,
(12) Charles Freeman,
(13) As quoted in Charles Freeman,
(14) Quoted in Freeman,
(15) As quoted in Henry Chadwick,
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4-6 The Trinity: A Desire For Acceptance
Thomas Gaston and others have pointed out that despite the initial working-class beginnings of first century Biblical Christianity, by the second century there was a determined effort by the Christian community to attract higher class followers. The majority of the non-canonical Acts, epistles and Gospels reflect something of this. There was a desire to present the Christian message in terms which the educated and upper classes could understand and accept. The attacks of Celsus and others on Christianity in the 2nd century indicate a concern on their part that the edcuated classes were being attracted to it and even accepting it. Kyrtatos observes: "Christianity is presented in the New Testament in a form that was unacceptable... to people of education... one of the dearest concerns of the second century [Christian] apologists... [was] the translation of Christianity into a language that could be understood and accepted by the upper classes" (1). This would explain why the Christian apologists began to present Biblical Christianity in Platonic terms, just as Philo the Jew presented Jewish history in such terms- and it was but a short step to accepting and incorporating the Platonic ideas of the immortal soul, a personally pre-existent "Logos" figure etc. And this is what happened. The desire to win educated converts led to the early church writers of the second century adopting Platonic terminology with which to describe the Lord Jesus, and it stuck. Some second century Christian leaders even wrote to the Roman Emperor, addressing him as the "chief philosopher", begging him not to persecute Christians because Christianity and Greek philosophy were essentially the same thing. Justin's
Notes
(1) D.J. Kyrtatos,
(2) See F. Young in M.Edwards
(3) As cited in Gaston
(4) Gaston
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4-7 How The Real Christ Was Lost
I feel I am obligated to make the point that the real, genuinely human Son of God whom we have reconstructed from the pages of Scripture is at variance with the Trinitarian perspective. The Trinity grew out of Gnosticism, which taught that life comes by leaving the world and the flesh. But John’s Gospel especially emphasizes how the true life was and is revealed through the very flesh, the very worldly and human life, of the Lord Jesus. True Christianity has correctly rejected the trinity and defined a Biblically correct view of the atonement. But we need to make something of this in practice; we must use it as a basis upon which to meet the real, personal Christ. In the 2nd century, the urgent, compelling, radical, repentance-demanding Jesus was replaced by mere theology, by abstracting Him into effectively nothing, burying the real Jesus beneath theology and fiercely debated human definitions. And we can in essence make the same mistake. And I might add, it was this turning of Jesus into a mystical theological 'God' which made Him so unacceptable to the Jews. The preaching of the real, human Jesus to them ought to be more widely attempted by our churches. It must be realized that the growing pressure to make Jesus 'God' was matched by a growing anti-Judaism in the church. Some of the major proponents of the Trinitarian idea were raving anti-Judaists such as Chrysostom, Jerome and Luther. And in more recent times, Gerhard Kittel, editor of the trinity-pushing
The humanity of Jesus was more radical for the early Christians than we perhaps realize. Against the first century background it must be remembered that it was felt impossible for God or His representative to be frightened, shocked, naked, degraded. And yet the Lord Jesus was all this, and is portrayed in the Gospels in this way. To believe that this Man was Son of God, and to be worshipped as God, was really hard for the first century mind; just as hard as it is for us today. It’s not surprising that desperate theories arose to ‘get around’ the problem of the Lord’s humanity.
We need to keep earnestly asking ourselves: ‘Do I know Jesus Christ?’. The answers that come back to us within our minds may have orthodoxy [‘I know He wasn’t God, He had human nature….’]. But do they have integrity, and the gripping practical significance which they should have for us? Too much emphasis, in my view, has been placed upon this word ‘nature’. We’re interested in knowing the essence of Jesus as a person, who He was in the very core of His manhood and personality. Not in theological debate about semantics. Athanasius, father of the Athanasian Creed that declared the 'trinity', claimed that "Christ... did not weigh two choices, preferring the one and rejecting another". This is in total contrast to the real Christ whom we meet in the pages of the New Testament- assailed by temptation, sweating large concentrated blobs of moisture in that struggle, and coming through triumphant. Trinitarians have ended up making ridiculous statements because they’ve separated the ‘nature’ of Jesus from the person of Jesus. “He permitted his own flesh to weep, although it was in its nature tearless and incapable of grief” (
Wading through all the empty, passionless theology about Jesus, it becomes apparent that the first error was to draw a distinction between the historical Jesus, i.e. the actual person who walked around Galilee, and what was known as “the post-Easter Jesus”, “the Jesus of faith”, the “kerygmatic [i.e. ‘proclaimed’] Christ”, i.e. the image of Jesus which was proclaimed by the church, and in which one was supposed to place their faith. Here we must give full weight to the Biblical statement that Jesus is the same yesterday, today and forever. Who He was then is essentially who He is now, and who He ever will be. This approach cuts right through all the waffle about the trinity, the countless councils of churches and churchmen. Who Jesus was then, in the essence of His teaching and personality, is who He is now. We place our faith in the same basic person as did the brave men and women who first followed Him around the paths over the Galilean hills and the uneven streets of Jerusalem, Capernaum and Bethany. Yes, His nature has now been changed; He is immortal. But the same basic person. The image we have of Him is that faithfully portrayed by the first apostles; and not that created by centuries and layers of later theological reflection. We place our faith in the Man who really was and is, not in a Jesus created by men who exists nowhere but in their own minds and theologies. This, perhaps above all, is the reason why I am not a Trinitarian; and why I think it’s so important not to be. There is simply no legitimate way that we can read the words of Jesus of Nazareth as proclaiming Himself part of a 'Trinity'. As one of the world's leading Protestants is driven to admit at the conclusion of a 700 page theological study of the Lord Jesus: "Forget the pseudo-orthodox attempts to make Jesus of Nazareth conscious of being the second person of the Trinity; forget the arid reductionism that is the mirror-image of that unthinking would-be orthodoxy" (3). I love the way Tom Wright there describes the Trinity as a pseudo-orthodoxy. In layman's terms: Too many Christians think they're being 'orthodox', faithfully towing the party line, by claiming to believe in the Trinity. If they return to Scripture, to the New Testament Jesus, to Christ rather than 'Christianity' in its popular guises... they will find the true orthodoxy, the true original picture which is to be held on to. And the Jesus we meet there is simply not God Himself, let alone a "second person" of some theological 'trinity'. To repeat an oft-stated observation, often made in an over-simplistic way but that is all the same in-your-face true: The word 'Trinity' simply isn't in the Bible.
Leo Tolstoy powerfully came to Christ, but he later quit the established church over (amongst others issues) the Trinity; for he didn't see it taught in the Bible. Probably with allusion to this, there's a section in his
Notes
(1)
(2) All quoted from T.H. Bindley,
(3) N.T. Wright,
(4) The whole section is a masterpiece. Outside of straight Biblical argument, the case against the Trinity couldn't have been more powerfully put. Anna's wonder at the humanity of the Lord Jesus, her admiration of His pity for Pilate, her million warm feelings as she thinks about Christ as a human person, the weakness of Golenishchev's insistence that Jesus is God, and the artist's explanation that he had to express in any painting of Jesus His humanity, seeing that he as the artist was likewise human... is all really a powerful piece of writing. In English translation, this section is in Leo Tolstoy,
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Appendix: Some Wrested Scriptures Introduction
I cannot help but comment upon the intellectual desperation of Trinitarianism. The so called 'early church fathers' fumble all over the place to explain basic Bible passages which contradicted their complex philosophy. Consider how they faced with the Lord's statement that He did not know the day nor hour of His return, although the Father did (Mk. 13:32). Basil claims that actually, Jesus
Retranslation and twisting of the actual Biblical text is always a tell-tale sign that an author is desperate to prove his or her point, rather than being led to truth by God's word. Augustine (
Deconstruction
Many of the 'difficult passages' in the New Testament are only difficult because they are alluding to, and even quoting phrases from, popular contemporary ideas and writings and seeking to deconstruct them. This technique is found throughout the Bible, especially with respect to false yet popular ideas about evil. To take an example: Valentinus taught in the second century that there was a
Notes
(1) Quotations in J.N.D.Kelly,
(2) See W. Bousset,
(3) See H.A.W. Meyer,
(4) G.J. Wenham,
(5) J.N.D.Kelly,
(6) Kelly,
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2 “In the beginning was the word”
Every Bible student will inevitably be involved at some time in seeking to explain the opening verses of John’s Gospel. And all who have done so will probably have felt a slight dis-ease at beginning the discussion by saying that “the word” in Greek is
2-1 “In the beginning was the word”
2-2 Wisdom In Proverbs
2-3 “The word was made flesh”
2-4 “The word was God”
2-5 “All things were made by him”
2-6 Appendix: How was the word made flesh? 2-1 “In the beginning was the word”
“The word”
Just look at the many times this phrase occurs in the Gospel records. It doesn’t mean ‘the whole Bible’. It means clearly enough and without any dispute ‘the Gospel message’ (e.g. Mk. 2:2; 4:33; 16:20; Lk. 3:2; Jn. 12:48; 14:24; Acts 4:4; 11:19). The Gospel was preached to Abraham in that it comprises the promises to Him and their fulfilment in Jesus (Gal. 3:8). That word of promise was “made flesh” in Jesus; “the word of the oath” of the new covenant, of the promises made to Abraham, “maketh the son” (Heb. 7:28). This is just another way of saying that the word– of the promises, of the Gospel- was made flesh in Jesus. Note how in Rom. 9:6,9 “the word” is called “the word of promise”- those made to Abraham. The same Greek words translated 'Word' and 'made' occur together in 1 Cor. 15:54- where we read of the word [AV " saying" ] of the Old Testament prophets being 'made' true by being fulfilled [AV " be brought to pass" ]. The word of the promises was made flesh, it was fulfilled, in Jesus. The 'word was made flesh', in one sense, in that the Lord Jesus was "
" In the beginning was the word"
John’s Gospel tends to repeat the ideas of the other gospel records but in more spiritual terms. Matthew and Luke begin their accounts of the message by giving the genealogies of Jesus, explaining that His birth was the fulfilment, the ‘making flesh’, of the promises to Abraham and David. And Mark begins by defining his “beginning of the gospel” as the fact that Jesus was the fulfilment of the Old Testament prophets. John is really doing the same, in essence. But he is using more spiritual language. In the beginning was the word- the word of promise, the word of prophecy, all through the Old Testament. And that word was “made flesh” in Jesus, and on account of that word, all things in the new creation had and would come into being. Whilst John is written in Greek, clearly enough Hebrew thought is behind the words. "The Hebrew term
Luke’s prologue states that he was an “
Jesus was the word of God shown in a real, live person. All the principles which Old Testament history had taught, the symbology of the law, the outworking of the types of history, all this was now living and speaking in a person. Luke’s Gospel makes the same point as John’s but in a different way. Over 90% of Luke’s Greek is taken from the Septuagint. All the time he is consciously and unconsciously alluding to the Old Testament as having its fulfilment in the things of Jesus. As an example of unconscious allusion, consider Lk. 1:27: “A virgin betrothed to a man”. This is right out of Dt. 22:23 LXX “If there be a virgin betrothed to a man…”. The context is quite different, but the wording is the same. And in many other cases, Luke picks up phraseology from the LXX apparently without attention to the context. He saw the whole of the OT as having its fulfilment in the story of Jesus. He introduces his Gospel record as an account “of those matters which have been fulfilled” (Lk. 1:1 RV). And “those matters” he defines in Lk. 1:2 as the things of “the word”. The RV especially shows his stress on the theme of fulfilment (Lk. 1:20, 23, 37, 45, 54, 55, 57, 70). In essence he is introducing his Gospel just as John does.
In passing, it is interesting to reflect upon the Lord’s comment that where two or three are gathered together in His Name, He is in their midst. For this evidently alludes to a Rabbinic saying preserved in the Mishnah (
In confirmation of all this, it has been observed that " The numerical use of
One way of understanding the prologue in Jn. 1 is to consider how it is interpreted in the prologue we find in John's first epistle. It appears that John's Gospel was the standard text for a group of converts that grew up around him; John then wrote his epistles in order to correct wrong interpretations of his Gospel record that were being introduced by itinerant false teachers into the house churches which he had founded. For example, " God so loved the world..." (Jn. 3:16) seems to have been misunderstood by the false prophets against whom John was contending, to mean that a believer can be of the world. Hence 1 Jn. 2:16 warns the brethren that they cannot 'love the world' in the sense of having worldly behaviour and desires. On the other hand, John saw the faithful churches to whom he was writing as those who had been faithful to the Gospel he had preached to them, as outlined in the Gospel of John. He had recorded there the promise that " You will know the truth" (Jn. 8:32), and he writes in his letters to a community " who have come to know the truth" (2 Jn. 1), i.e. who had fulfilled and obeyed the Gospel of Jesus which he had preached to them initially. This thesis is explained at length in Raymond Brown(5) .
With this in mind, it appears that the prologue of 1 Jn. is a conscious allusion to and clarification of that of Jn. 1. Consider the following links:
In the beginning was the word
What was from the beginning
The word was with God
The eternal life which was with [Gk. in the presence of] God
In [the word] was life
The word of life
The life was the light of men
God is light
The light shines in darkness
In Him there is no darkness at all
The word became flesh
This life was revealed
And dwelt amongst us
and was manifested to us
We beheld his glory
What we looked at
Of his fullness we have all received
The fellowship which we have is with
Through Jesus Christ
the Father and with his son
The only Son of God
Jesus Christ
You will note that the parallel for " the word" of Jn. 1 is 'the life' in 1 Jn. 1, the life which Jesus lived, the type of life which is lived by the Father in Heaven. That word was made flesh (Jn. 1:14) in the sense that this life was revealed to us in the life and death of Jesus. So the word becoming flesh has nothing to do with a pre-existent Jesus physically coming down from Heaven and being born of Mary. It could well be that the evident links between the prologue to John's Gospel and the prologue to his epistle are because he is correcting a misunderstanding that had arisen about the prologue to his Gospel. 1 Jn. 1:2 spells it out clearly- it was the impersonal "eternal life" which was "with the Father", and it was this which "became flesh" in a form that had been personally touched and handled by John in the personal body of the Lord Jesus. And perhaps it is in the context of incipient trinitarianism that John warns that those who deny that Jesus was "in the flesh" are actually antiChrist.
Notes
(1) G.B. Caird,
(2) Oscar Cullmann,
(3) Raymond Brown,
(4) C.H. Dodd,
(5)
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2-2 "The word was with God"
The Hebrew idea of being "with" someone can carry the idea of being 'in their presence'. 2 Kings 5:1,2 speak of how Naaman was "with" his master, and the RVmg. gives "before" or 'in the presence of' as a translation of this idiom. He is paralleled in the record with the maid who was "before" (RVmg.) her mistress, Naaman's wife. When we read that the word was "with" God, the idea is that the word was always before God, in His presence, in His perspective. Applied to an abstract idea like the
Wisdom In Proverbs
The basic idea in John 1 is repeated in Proverbs 8. In the beginning, there was a
Prov. 8:22-31 (ASV) reads: “Jehovah possessed me in the beginning of his way, Before his works of old. I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, Before the earth was. When there were no depths, I was brought forth, When there were no fountains abounding with water. Before the mountains were settled, Before the hills was I brought forth; While as yet he had not made the earth, nor the fields, Nor the beginning of the dust of the world. When he established the heavens, I was there: When he set a circle upon the face of the deep, When he made firm the skies above, When the fountains of the deep became strong, When he gave to the sea its bound, That the waters should not transgress his commandment, When he marked out the foundations of the earth; Then I was by him, as a master workman; And I was daily his delight, Rejoicing always before him, Rejoicing in his habitable earth; And my delight was with the sons of men”.
The key issue is whether “wisdom” in Proverbs is in fact the Lord Jesus personally. A brief glance at Proverbs surely indicates that wisdom is being personified as a woman. Wisdom in Proverbs stands at the gates and invites men to come listen to her. She dwells with prudence (Prov. 8:12), and in Solomon’s time cried out to men as they entered the city (Prov. 8:1-3). None of these things are intended to be taken literally. “Wisdom” is wisdom- albeit personified. Wisdom was “possessed” by God- and yet the Hebrew word translated “possessed” is defined by Strong as meaning ‘to create’. When God started His “way” or path with men, He had principles and purpose. He didn’t make up His principles as He went along. And this was what was being said by John’s first century critics. Therefore John alluded to Proverbs 8 in explaining that the essential purpose of the Father was all summarized and epitomized in the person of His Son; and that
We’ve demonstrated that John’s Gospel begins with the idea that the “word” of God in the Old Testament was made flesh in the person of the Lord Jesus. But John actually continues that theme throughout his Gospel. He continually refers to things which the Jews saw symbols of the Torah- and applies them to Jesus. Examples include the bread / manna and water, and also light. The Assumption of Moses speaks of the Torah as “the light that enlightens every man who comes into the world”- and this is exactly the language of Jn. 1:9 about Christ. Bearing this in mind, it is interesting to discover that nearly all the phrases used in the prologue to John’s Gospel are alluding to what Jewish writers had said about the “Wisdom of God”, especially in Proverbs and the apocryphal writings known as the Wisdom of Solomon and Ecclesiasticus(1). And they understood “Wisdom” to primarily refer to the Torah. For example, Jn. 1:14 RVmg. states that the Lord Jesus as the word made flesh “tabernacled amongst us”. Yet Ecclus. 24:8 speaks of Wisdom ‘tabernacling’ amongst Israel.
The language of pre-existence was applied by the Jews to the Torah and Wisdom, and so when John demonstrates that the ultimate Wisdom / Torah /
Notes
(1) This is shown at great length throughout Rendel Harris,
(2) Cited in C.H. Dodd,
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2-3 " The word was made flesh"
“Was with God”
The idea of a “word” being “with” God or even another person has an Old Testament background. Job comments: “Yet these things you have concealed in your heart, I know that this is
“The word was made flesh”
So there shouldn’t be any problem with accepting that an abstract thing like the
The word being made flesh was an act of the will on the Lord’s part. “The word was made flesh” isn’t just a piece of theological description of something that was effortlessly achieved. The principles of “the word”, the radical implications of the word of the Gospel spoken throughout the Old Testament Scriptures, had to be “made flesh” in the Lord, culminating in the crucifixion. There He was “The word was made flesh”. This was and is the ultimate outworking of the implications of the Gospel taught in Eden, promised to Abraham, developed throughout the prophets. And it didn’t happen automatically. That word was in the beginning with God, but not all ‘words’ / intentions that He ‘has’ become flesh, i.e. concrete reality here on earth. God has had various intentions which He ‘thought’ to do, but because of human weakness they don’t actually become reality. He told Israel about His plan / intention /
The extent to which Jesus made the word flesh needs some reflection. When He declared Himself as Messiah, the people who had grown up with Him were scandalized (Mk. 6:3 Gk.). He was
“The word was made flesh” in daily reality for Jesus. The extraordinary connection between the man Jesus and the word of God which He preached and spoke is perhaps reflected in Lk. 4:20: “He closed the book [of the words of God], and he gave it again to the minister, and sat down. And the eyes of all them that were in the synagogue were fastened on him”. Here we have as it were an exquisite close up of Jesus, His very body movements, His handling of the scroll, and the movement of the congregation's eyes. Notice that at this stage He had only read from the scroll, and not yet begun His exposition of what He had read. The impression I take from this is that there was an uncanny connection between Him and the word of His Father. The Son reading His Father’s word, with a personality totally in conformity to it, must have been quite something to behold. He was the word of God made flesh in a person, in a way no other person had or could ever be. Thus He was indeed “The word was made flesh”. The idea of words becoming flesh is a reflection of the Hebrew idea that a person's words become their actions. Thus we read of Solomon's "acts" or, RVmg., "sayings" (2 Chron. 9:5). There is no requirement for a person to exist in one form and then turn into another form. There was perfect congruence between the personality of Jesus, and the words of God which He preached. Thus the people marvelled at Him, commenting "What is this word?" (Lk. 4:36 RV). God's word was made flesh, was made personal, in Him. In this sense there was almost no need for Jesus to say specific words about Himself- His character and personality showed forth that word, that
It bears repeating that “the word was made flesh” in Jesus in the sense that there was absolute congruence between His teaching and His actions. Thus He not only
As the resurrected Lord stood before the disciples, he says: “These are my words which I spake unto you” (Lk. 24:44 RV), and goes on to say that His resurrection had been predicted throughout the Old Testament words of God. He had made both His words and the words of God into flesh as He stood there. He didn’t say ‘Look everyone, I’ve risen!’. He just stood there, reminded them of the words of the prophets, and His own words, and said “These are my words”. He was so powerfully and completely the word made flesh.
John opens his first letter by speaking about "the word" as if he refers to something neuter and abstract- and yet he speaks of how he personally touched and handled it. The grammar of 1 Jn. 1:1-3 refers to an abstract idea, the
The Name / Word Becoming Flesh
There's a Hebrew grammatical feature known as the intensive plural, whereby one great, important, significant thing is spoken of in the plural. The AV margin in Is. 53:9 speaks of the
The ideas of the Name, the word and the glory of God are heavily interconnected. I’ve explored this at length at http://www.carelinks.net/books/dh/james/james_d05.html . Jn. 1:14 says that when the word of God was made flesh in the Son of God, we saw the glory of God. If “The word” which was made flesh is in fact a reference to the Name of God, then this becomes understandable. And so the logos of God, the Name of God, being with Him in the beginning and being Him in a sense, was revealed fully in the human person (“flesh”) of the Lord Jesus. The Lord said this in so many words: “I have manifested thy name unto the men which thou gavest me” (Jn. 17:6). John surely has this in mind when he comments that the word / Name became flesh, and we saw that glory, but others in “the world” didn’t perceive it (Jn. 1:14). John parallels the word becoming flesh, with the Son declaring the Father who cannot be seen (Jn. 1:18). This is in fact a reference to the declaration of Yahweh’s Name to Moses, at which time Moses was reminded that God cannot be physically seen. Thus the declaration of the Yahweh Name to Moses is paralleled with the word / Name being made flesh. The Father glorified His Name in the Son (Jn. 12:28), who was the word of God. Remember the links between the Name, the glory and the word of God. Summing up, the reference to the logos / word becoming flesh in the Lord Jesus therefore speaks of the fulfillment of God’s Name in Christ, just as any father’s name is in a sense fulfilled in his son. And countless times in the Old Testament, this had been foretold- Yahweh would be elohim, one great one- the Lord Jesus, His Son.
"Dwelt among us"
"Dwelt among us" (Jn. 1:14) can too easily be misread as meaning that the Word was once in Heaven but came to earth to live amongst us humans. But this (yet again) is to miss the Old Testament background. Time and again, the LXX uses the Greek word
Notes
(1) Gerhard Von Rad,
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2-4 “The word was God”
Not believing in God and not believing in His word of the Gospel are
paralleled in 1 Jn. 5:10. God is His word. The word “is” God in that God
is so identified with His word. David parallels trusting in God and trusting
in His word (Ps. 56:3,4). He learnt this, perhaps, through the experience
of his sin with Bathsheba. For in that matter, David "despised the
commandment (word) of the Lord... you despised me" (2 Sam. 12:9,10).
David learnt that his attitude to God's word was his attitude to God-
for the word of God, in that sense, was and is God. By
In the person of Jesus, there was an uncanny and never before, never again experienced congruence between a human being and his words. And our witness should be modelled on His pattern- we should be the living embodiment of the doctrines we preach. The message or word of Jesus was far more than the words that He spoke from His lips. In one sense, He revealed to the disciples everything that He had heard from the Father (Jn. 15:15); and yet in another, more literal sense, He lamented that there was much more He could tell them in words, but they weren't able to bear it (Jn. 16:12). His person and character, which they would spend the rest of their lives reflecting upon, was the 'word' of God in flesh to its supremacy; but this doesn't necessarily mean that they heard all the literal words of God drop from the lips of Jesus. I have shown elsewhere that both the Father and Son use language, or words, very differently to how we normally do. The manifestation of God in Christ was not only a matter of the Christ speaking the right words about God. For as He said, His men couldn't have handled that in its entirety. The fullness of manifestation of the word was in His life, His character, and above all in His death, which Jn. 1:14 may be specifically referring to in speaking of how John himself beheld the glory of the word being made flesh. It seems to me that many of us need to learn these things in our hearts; for our preaching has so often been a matter of literal words, Bible lectures, seminars, flaunting our correct exposition of Bible passages and themes. When the essential witness must be of a life lived, a making flesh of the word which is God. To ignore this will lead us into literalistic definitions of literal words, arguments about statements of faith, endless additions of words and clauses to clarify other words...whereas " the word" which the Lord Jesus manifested was not merely human words. There was far more to it than that. It was and is and must ever be a word made flesh. This is why nothing can replace personal witness and personal, one on one teaching as the way that conversions are really made. And yet increasingly we tend to try to use
“The word was God”. The words of the Lord Jesus were the words which He had 'heard' from the Father. But this doesn't mean that He was a mere fax machine, relaying literal words which the Father whispered in His ear to a listening world. When the disciples finally grasped something of the real measure of Jesus, they gasped: " You do not even need that a person ask you questions!" (Jn. 16:30). They had previously treated Jesus as a Rabbi, of whom questions were asked by his disciples and then cleverly answered by him. They finally perceived that here was more than a Jewish Rabbi. They came to that conclusion, they imply, not by asking Him questions comprised of words and hearing the cleverly ordered words that comprised His answers. The words He spoke and manifested were of an altogether higher quality and nature than mere lexical items strung together. Here was none other than the Son of God, the Word made flesh in person. And this, of course, was why the unbelieving Jews just didn't understand the literal words which He spoke. They asked Him to speak plainly to them (Jn. 10:24); and the Lord's response was that their underlying problem was not with His language, but with the simple fact that they did not believe that He, the carpenter from Nazareth, was the Son of God. Is it going too far to suggest that all intellectual failure to understand the teaching of Jesus is rooted in a simple lack of faith and perception of Him as a person?
As the word of God, the message of God in flesh, Jesus was God’s agent, and as such could be counted
“He came unto his own”
The context here speaks of both the word which was “in the beginning”, and of Jesus personally, whom John had witnessed to. Acts 10:36-38 RV puts this in simpler terms: “He sent the word unto the children of Israel, preaching the gospel of peace by [in] Jesus Christ…that word, I say, ye know, which was published throughout all Judaea, beginning from Galilee, after the baptism which John preached; even Jesus of Nazareth”. The sequence and similarity of thought between this and John 1:1-8 is so great that one can only assume that John is deliberately alluding to Luke’s record in Acts, and stating the same truths in spiritual terms: ‘In the beginning was the word of the Gospel which was with God. And then John came witnessing to Jesus, and then the word as it was in Jesus came to the Jews…’. Paul pleaded with his fellow Jews: “Brethren, children of the stock of Abraham…to us is the word of this salvation sent forth” (Acts 13:26 RV). Yet he also wrote that in the fullness of time, God “sent forth His Son, made of a woman” (Gal. 4:4). The Son of God was “the word of this salvation” / Jesus. “The word was God”.
Notes
(1) G.B. Caird,
(2) In
(3) John Robinson,
(4)
(5) Oscar Cullmann,
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2-5 “All things were made by him”
Speaking of the
However, whilst in a sense the
Consider other occurrences of “made by” in John’s Gospel:
4:14 The water of the life of Jesus
5:9,14 the lame man “was made” whole
10:16 the believers
12:36
15:8 So
16:20 Your sorrow shall
"
As the Lord Jesus was sent into this world, so are we. We evidently didn’t personally ‘pre-exist’; and so we cannot reason that He did because He was sent by the Father. ‘Sending’ in Scripture can refer to being commissioned to speak forth God’s word (Is. 48:16; Jer. 7:25; Ez. 3:4,5; Zech. 2:8-11). Thus God is often described as sending forth His prophets. We too must allow ourselves to be sent forth as our Lord was, making the word of the Gospel flesh in us as it was in Him. For like Him, we personally are the message which we preach. The word of God / the Gospel is as seed (1 Pet. 1:23); and yet we believers end our probations as seed falling into the ground, which then rises again in resurrection to be given a body and to eternally grow into the unique type of person which we are now developing (1 Cor. 15:38). The good seed which is sown is interpreted by the Lord both as the word of God (Lk. 8:11), and as “the children of the Kingdom” (Mt. 13:38). This means that the word of the Gospel becomes flesh in us as it did in our Lord. The word of the Gospel is not, therefore, merely dry theoretical propositions; it elicits a life and a person. We will be changed; not just physically, but we will each be given our own, unique ‘body’, as Paul puts it. There will be eternal continuity between who we now become, and who we grow into throughout eternity. This is the amazing power of the word of the Gospel; for this is the seed, which transforms the essential you and me into a seed which will rise up to great things in God’s future Kingdom. In all this, the Lord was and is our pattern. “All things were made by him”.
Notes
(1) G.F. Moore,
(2) References in James Dunn,
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2-6 How Was The Logos / Word Made Flesh?
How exactly was the word made flesh in the person of Jesus? It was not simply a question of the nature of His birth. ‘The word’ was a title given to the Lord in recognition of His achievement in being and becoming the ‘word made flesh’. It wasn’t something which automatically happened to the Lord, as an irresistible process in which He played no part. The Lord’s Old Testament allusions, His familiarity with and use of His Father’s words doubtless had a lot to do with His becoming ‘the word made flesh’. If Paul alluded to the words of the Lord Jesus once every four verses on average, it is to be expected that the Son of God quoted and alluded to His Father’s word even moreso. And this is what we find, when we search the Lord’s words for their allusions to the Old Testament.
An example of the Lord’s perhaps unconscious usage of His Father’s words is to be found in His exasperated comment: “O faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I suffer you?” (Mt. 17:17). Of course the Lord would have spoken those words and expressed those ideas in Aramaic- but the similarity is striking with His Father’s Hebrew words of Num. 14:27: “How long shall I bear with this evil congregation…?”. As a son comes out with phrases and word usages which ‘Could be his father speaking!’, so the Lord Jesus did the same thing. What I am saying is that the Lord was not merely quoting or alluding to the Father’s Old Testament words, in the way that, say, Paul or Peter did. As the Father’s Son, He was speaking in the same way as His Father, no doubt saturated with the written record of the Father’s words, but all the same, there were those similarities of wording and underlying thinking which are only seen between fathers and sons. And His words of Mt. 17:17 = Num. 14:27 seem to me to be an example of this.
The level, depth and multiplicity of Old Testament allusions becomes the more amazing when we accept that these were spoken words, some of them clearly spoken unprepared and off-the-cuff. Literature can be crafted to pack multiple allusions. But when a speaker produces such a depth of allusion, one can only marvel at his intellectual depth. But with the Lord, it reflects His utter familiarity with the Father’s word, grasping the real spirit of it all. He breathed it, thought it, spoke it, lived it. And in all He said, this was reflected. He truly was “the word made flesh”. The following are just a few examples from the first words of Jesus; but the list can be continued. The simple fact is that on average, the Lord is alluding to the Old Testament at least 3 times in every verse! This means that every phrase of every sentence He is recorded as speaking- is alluding to His Father’s word. It would’ve been like an orphaned son ‘finding’ his late father’s words. He would read the words with such delight, and somehow eagerly pick up their sense in the way nobody else could. The Words Of Jesus Old Testament Allusions
Mt. 3:15 Suffer it to be so now: for thus it becometh us to fulfill all righteousness.
Ez. 18:19,21 fulfill righteousness
Mt. 4:4 It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, butby everyword that proceedeth out of the mouth of God
Dt. 8:3 direct quote
Mt. 4:7 It is written again, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.
Dt. 6:16 direct quote
Mt. 4:10 Get thee hence, Satan: forit is written, Thou shalt worshipthe Lord thy God,and him only shalt thou serve.
Dt. 6:13 direct quote
Mt. 5:3 Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Ps. 40:17; Is. 41:17; 61:1
Mt. 5:4 Blessed are they that mourn:
Is. 61:1-3; 66:2
for they shall be comforted.
Is. 40:1
Mt. 5:5 Blessed are the meek:
Ps. 37:11,20; Is. 60:21; Prov. 22:24,25; 25:8,15
for they shall inherit the earth.
Gen. 15:7,8; Ex. 32:13
Mt. 5:6 Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.
Gen. 49:18; Ps. 17:15; 119:20; Jer. 23:6; Is. 45:24; 51:1; 55:1; 65:13
Mt. 5:7 Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.
2 Sam. 22:26,27; Ps. 18:25,26
Mat 5:8 Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.
Ex. 33:20; Job 19:25-27; Ps. 17:15; Is. 6:5; 38:3,11
If you follow through some of those allusions- and there are surely many more that I’ve not picked up- it becomes apparent that the Lord had a mind capable of operating on several different levels of allusion at once. So it was not simply that He was hyper-familiar with His Father’s word. He had the intellectual ability, with all the intelligence of God’s very own Son, to think and speak on several levels at once. Hence His words were absolutely
It wasn't only in words but in actions too that the Lord was the word made flesh. The Lord Jesus lived life; He didn't just let events happen to Him. Much as I respected Harry Whittaker both as an individual and an expositor, I can never understand why throughout his monumental
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Jesus' Raising Up Of Himself (Jn. 2:19-21)
"Jesus answered and said unto them, Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up. The Jews therefore said, Forty and six years was this temple in building, and wilt thou raise it up in three days? But he spake of the temple of his body" (Jn. 2:19-21).
I think the answer lies in Jn. 5:19-21: "The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father doing: for what things soever he doeth, these the Son also doeth in like manner. For the Father loveth the Son, and showeth him all things that himself doeth: and greater works than these will he show him, that ye may marvel. For as the Father raiseth the dead and giveth them life, even so the Son also giveth life to whom he will. For neither doth the Father judge any man, but he hath given all judgment unto the Son; that all may honor the Son, even as they honor the Father".This makes it clear that all power and possibilities that Jesus had, were in fact given to Him by God. In fact, whatever God is spoken of as doing, it would be appropriate to speak of the Son doing it. This was and is the nature of their relationship. The one thing that it would seem God did for Jesus, in a way that Jesus could not do for Himself, was the resurrection of Jesus from the dead by God. It is emphasized so many times that God raised Jesus from the dead. And yet it's as if Jesus almost enjoys making the point that even in that, so connected is He with the Father, that in a sense, He raised Himself up- because whatever, literally whatever, God does, in a sense Jesus therefore does it too. This is why Jesus could say about His life in Jn. 10:18: "I have power [authority] to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This commandment received I from my Father". He was given this authority by the Father (1). But even in the very thing where it seems God would be separate from His Son- i.e. in resurrecting the Son- Jesus wanted to emphasize that in a sense, He was still united with the Father. Because the Father so loved the Son, that whatever the Father did, He wished His Son to somehow be associated with. And so Jesus can speak of how in that sense, He [Jesus] was involved in His own resurrection- even though the repeated and obvious Biblical emphasis is upon the Father resurrecting His Son back to life. We see this theme touched on again in Jn. 10:18, where the Lord teaches that He has received a commandment to lay down His life and take it again, and yet He says that He has been given the authority / empowerment to do this, and therefore He will not die merely because of being unable to avoid the machinations of His murderers. So we could conclude that He obeyed a command to die and rise again- but was empowered by God to do this.
Another consideration in Jn. 2:19-21 is that Jesus speaks specifically about the 'raising up' of His body as a tabernacle. The 'body' of Christ frequently refers not so much to His literal body as to His spiritual body, i.e. the body of believers. In a sense, it is Jesus who has raised them up.
Notes
(1) It has been suggested to me by Chris Clementson that the Greek word
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4 “God is a Spirit” (Jn. 4:24)
God’s spirit is His power or breath by which His essential self, His being and character, is revealed to man through the actions which that spirit achieves. Thus “God is spirit”, as Jn. 4:24 should be properly translated (see R.S.V., N.I.V.), because His spirit reflects His personality.
God is described as being many things, e.g.
- “Our God is a consuming fire” (Heb. 12:29)
- “God is light” (1 Jn. 1:5)
- “God is love” (1 Jn. 4:8)
- “The word (Greek
Thus “God is” His characteristics. It is clearly wrong to argue that the abstract quality of love is ‘God’, just because we read that “God is love”. We may call someone ‘kindness itself’, but this does not mean that they are without physical existence - it is their manner of literal existence which reveals kindness to us.
The spirit being God’s power, we frequently read of God sending or directing His spirit to achieve things in harmony with His will and character. Examples of this are numerous, showing the distinction between God and His spirit.
- “He (God) that put His Holy Spirit within him” (Is. 63:11)
- “I (God) will put My spirit upon him (Jesus)” (Mt. 12:18)
- “The Father give(s) the Holy Spirit” (Lk. 11:13)
- “The Spirit descending from heaven” (Jn. 1:32)
- “I (God) will pour out My Spirit upon all flesh” (Acts 2:17).
Indeed, the frequent references to “the spirit of God” should be proof enough that the spirit is not God personally. These differences between God and His spirit are another difficulty for those who believe that God is a ‘trinity’ in which God the Father is equated with Jesus and the Holy Spirit.
Very importantly, a non-personal God makes a nonsense of prayer - to the point where prayer is a dialogue between our consciousness and a concept of God which just exists in our own mind. We are continually reminded that we pray to God who is in heaven (Ecc. 5:2; Mt. 6:9; 5:16; 1 Kings 8:30), and that Jesus is now at God’s right hand there, to offer up our prayers (1 Pet. 3:22; Heb. 9:24). If God is not personal, such passages are made meaningless. But once God is understood as a real, loving Father, prayer to Him becomes a very real, tangible thing - actually talking to another being who we believe is very willing and able to respond.
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5 “I came down from Heaven” (Jn. 6:33,38) / "No man has ascended into heaven, but he that descended from heaven, the Son of man who is in heaven" (Jn. 3:13)
These words, and others like them, are misused to support the wrong idea that Jesus existed in Heaven before his birth. The following points, however, must be noted.
1. Trinitarians take these words as literal in order to prove their point. However, if we are to take them literally, then this means that somehow Jesus literally came down as a person. Not only is the Bible totally silent about this, but the language of Jesus being conceived as a baby in Mary’s womb is made meaningless. Jn.6:60 describes the teaching about the manna as a saying “hard to take in” (Moffatt’s Translation); i.e. we need to understand that it is figurative language being used.
2. In Jn. 6, Jesus is explaining how the manna was a type of himself. The manna was sent from God in the sense that it was God who was responsible for creating it on the earth; it did not physically float down from the throne of God in Heaven. Thus Christ’s coming from Heaven is to be understood likewise; he was created on earth, by the Holy Spirit acting upon the womb of Mary (Lk.1:35).
3. Jesus says that “the bread that I will give is my flesh” (Jn.6:51). Trinitarians claim that it was the ‘God’ part of Jesus which came down from Heaven. But Jesus says that it was his “flesh” which was the bread which came down from Heaven. Likewise Jesus associates the bread from Heaven with himself as the “Son of man” (Jn. 6:62), not ‘God the Son’.
4. In this same passage in Jn. 6 there is abundant evidence that Jesus was not equal to God. “The living Father has sent me” (Jn. 6:57) shows that Jesus and God do not share co-equality; and the fact that “I live by the Father” (Jn. 6:57) is hardly the ‘co-eternity’ of which Trinitarians speak.
5. It must be asked, When and how did Jesus ‘come down’ from Heaven? Trinitarians use these verses in Jn. 6 to ‘prove’ that Jesus came down from Heaven at his birth. But Jesus speaks of himself as “he which cometh down from heaven” (v.33,50), as if it is an ongoing process. Speaking of God’s gift of Jesus, Christ said “My Father is giving you the bread” from Heaven (v.32 Weymouth). At the time Jesus was speaking these words, he had already ‘come down’ in a certain sense, in that he had been sent by God. Because of this, he could also speak in the past tense: “I am the living bread which came down from Heaven” (v.51). But he also speaks about ‘coming down’ as the bread from Heaven in the form of his death on the cross: “The bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world” (v.51). So we have Jesus speaking here of having already come down from Heaven, being in the process of ‘coming down’, and still having to ‘come down’ in his death on the cross. This fact alone should prove that ‘coming down’ refers to God manifesting Himself, rather than only referring to Christ’s birth. This is conclusively proved by all the Old Testament references to God ‘coming down’ having just this same meaning. Thus God saw the affliction of His people in Egypt, and ‘came down’ to save them through Moses. He has seen our bondage to sin, and has ‘come down’ or manifested Himself, by sending Jesus as the equivalent to Moses to lead us out of bondage.
The Lord Jesus was "the beginning of God's creation" (Rev. 3:15)- He was a created being and as such in whatever form He 'came down from Heaven', He was still not God Himself. Hugh Schonfield comments: "Clearly John himself believed that the heavenly Christ was a created being, as did the early Christians" (1).
A Devotional Appeal
The Lord's language of coming down from Heaven can be understood from a very powerful devotional aspect. He reasons that because He had
And yet this Lord of all grace also sought to confirm men and women in the path they chose. He admitted that His comment about Himself being the manna which descended from Heaven was a "hard saying". And yet He goes straight on to say [perhaps with a slight smile playing at the corner of His lips] something even more enigmatic: "What and if you shall see the Son of man ascend up where he was before?" (Jn. 6:62). Surely He is here chosing to give them yet another, even harder "saying"; and goes on to stress that His sayings, His words, are the way to life eternal (Jn. 6:63). For those who didn't want His words, He was confirming them in their darkness. And He did this by the mechanism of using an evidently "hard saying". Therefore to simplistically interpret the saying as meaning that the Lord had literally descended from Heaven through the sky just as literally as He would ascend there through the clouds... is in fact to quite miss the point- that this is a "hard saying". It's not intended to have a simplistic, literalistic interpretation.
Notes
(1) Hugh Schonfield,
The context of John 3 is the Lord's discourse with Nicodemus. This passages highlights the difference between flesh and spirit, human understanding and spiritual perception, literal birth and the birth "from above" (Jn. 3:3,5). All this suggests that we are to understand 'Heaven' and (by implication) 'earth' in a figurative manner. The Lord Jesus speaks as if He has already ascended into Heaven- yet He spoke these words during His ministry. In any case, He speaks of how "the Son of man" will do these things, and not 'God the Son', as would be required by Trinitarian theology. To suggest that Jesus as Son of Man literally ascended to Heaven and descended to earth during His ministry is surely literalism's last gasp. There are many allusions to Moses throughout John's record, as if both the Lord Jesus and John were seeking to impress upon the audience that the Lord Jesus was indeed the Messianic "prophet like unto" Moses predicted in Dt. 18:15,18. Jewish writings of the time [e.g.
The Lord Jesus has just spoken of how believers in Him are to be "born from above" and "born of the Spirit" (Jn. 3:3,5). However, the same Greek words for "born" and "Spirit" are found in Mt. 1:20 and Lk. 1:35- in description of the virgin birth of Jesus. He was the ultimate example of one "born of the Spirit". And yet John's Gospel applies the language of the virgin birth to believers. We have another example in Jn. 1:13- the believers "were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God"- i.e., they were born "of the Spirit". My suggestion is that the Lord Jesus is saying in Jn. 3:13 that of course, He is the only one fully born of the Spirit, the only one in Heavenly places; but the preceding context makes clear that He is willing to count believers in Him as fully sharing His status. Further, we need no longer complain that His virgin birth makes Him have some unfair advantages in the battle against sin which we don't have. The spiritual rebirth experienced by all those truly born again by God's word, His "seed" (1 Pet. 1:23), is such that we in some way are given all the inclinations towards righteousness which the Lord Jesus had by virtue of His birth.
Notes
(1) More references to this effect in Ben Witherington,
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6 “Before Abraham was, I am”(Jn. 8:58)
These words are often misapplied to teach that Jesus existed before Abraham did. However, closer investigation reveals the opposite to be true:
1. Jesus does not say ‘Before Abraham was, I was”. He was the promised descendant of Abraham; we make a nonsense of God’s promises to Abraham if we say that Jesus physically existed before the time of Abraham.
2. The context of Jn. 8:58 is Christ’s discourse with the Jews concerning Abraham. As far as they were concerned, Abraham was the greatest man who would ever live. Jesus is saying “I am now, as I stand here, more important than Abraham”. As they stood there, Jesus was the one to be honoured rather than Abraham. He is saying ‘I am now, more important than Abraham ever was’. It is possible to understand “before” in Jn. 8:58 with some reference to time, in the sense that before Abraham existed, Christ had been in God’s plan right from the beginning of the world. It was because Jesus was “before” Abraham in this sense that he was “before” him in terms of importance. But the more comfortable reading is to understand "before"as referring to importance rather than time. In 2 Sam. 6:21 there’s a good example of “before” meaning ‘before’ in importance rather than time. David tells his wife: “The Lord chose me
3. Proof of this is found in Jn. 8:56: “Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day; and he saw it, and was glad”. The only time Abraham is recorded to have laughed and been glad was when he was given the promise that he would have a seed; he understood that ultimately that promise had reference to Jesus (Gen. 17:17). Abraham “saw” ahead to Christ through the promises made to him concerning Jesus. He cryptically commented about the future sacrifice of Jesus: “In the mount of the Lord it shall be seen” (Gen. 22:14). It was in this sense that Jesus speaks of Abraham as having seen him. It is in this context of speaking about the promises that Jesus could say “Before Abraham was, I am”. He appreciated that God’s promises to Abraham were revealing the plan about Jesus which God had known from the beginning of the world. That purpose, which had been “before Abraham was”, had been revealed to Abraham in the promises to him, and was now being fulfilled in the eyes of the Jews of the first century, as they stood in a ring around Jesus, “the word (of promise) made flesh”.
4. "I am" may indeed be a reference to the Divine Name which Jesus, as the Father's Son, carried (Jn. 5:43). But "I am" is also used by the healed blind man in Jn. 9:9 with no apparent reference to the Name. The same Greek words are also used by Asahel in the LXX of 2 Sam. 2:20. Jesus and the Father were "one" and so for Jesus to bear the Father's Name is no reason to think that 'Jesus = God". Note however that the unity between Father and Son spoken of e.g. in Jn. 10:30 is the same kind of unity possible between the Father and all His children (Jn. 17). The use of the neuter form for "one" (
A related misunderstanding is often applied to the comment of John the Baptist about Jesus- that “He was before me” (Jn. 1:30). John the Baptist was actually older than the Lord Jesus; he therefore meant that Jesus was “before” him in the sense of being more important than him. C.H. Dodd interprets this passage as meaning: “There is a man in my following who has taken precedence over me, because he is… essentially my superior”(1).
Notes
(1) C.H. Dodd,
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7 "The glory I had with you before the world was" (Jn. 17:5)
What does the Bible mean when it speaks about “glory”? The glory of God was revealed to Moses at Sinai- and what he heard was the declaration of God’s Name or character, that Yahweh is a God full of grace, mercy, truth, justice, judgment etc. (Ex. 33:19; 34:6,7). Jesus alludes to what happened at Sinai by saying that He has “glorified you… manifested your name” (Jn. 17:4,6). Whenever those characteristics of God are recognized, manifested or openly shown, God is glorified. In this sense, God is the “God of glory” (Ps. 29:3 etc.). He is totally associated with His Name and characteristics- it’s not that He just shows those particular attributes to men, but He Himself personally is someone quite different. He
That glory of God was of course always with God, right at the beginning of the world. He hasn’t changed His essential characteristics over time. The God of the Old Testament is the same God as in the New Testament. As John begins his Gospel by saying, the essential “Word”,
The request of Jesus to be glorified is therefore asking for the Name / attributes / characteristics / glory / word of God to be openly revealed in Him. Surely He had in mind His resurrection, and the glorifying of God which would take place as a result of this being preached and believed in world-wide.
But in what sense was this the glory which Jesus had with God before the world was? As we have said, the “glory” of God was revealed to Moses at Sinai in Ex. 34 as the declaration of His character. In this sense, the Lord Jesus could speak of having in His mortal life “that glory which was with [the Father]” when the [Jewish] world came into existence at Sinai (Jn. 17:5 Ethiopic and Western Text). It was that same glory which, like Moses, He reflected to men. But according to 2 Cor. 3:18, the very experience of gazing upon the glory of His character will change us into a reflection of it. There is something transforming about the very personality of Jesus. And perhaps this is why we have such a psychological barrier to thinking about Him deeply. We know that it has the power to transform and intrude into our innermost darkness.
There is essentially only one glory- the glory of the Son is a reflection or manifestation of the glory of the Father. They may be seen as different glories only in the sense that the same glory is reflected from the Lord Jesus in His unique way; as a son reflects or articulates his father’s personality, it’s not a mirror personality, but it’s the same essence. One star differs from another in glory, but they all reflect the same essential light of glory. The Lord Jesus sought only the glory of the Father (Jn. 7:18). He spoke of God’s glory as being the Son’s glory (Jn. 11:4). Thus Isaiah’s vision of God’s glory is interpreted by John as a prophecy of the Son’s glory (Jn. 12:41). The glory of God is His “own self”, His own personality and essence. This was with God of course from the ultimate beginning of all, and it was this glory which was manifested in both the death and glorification of the Lord Jesus (Jn. 17:5). The Old Testament title “God of glory” is applied to the Lord Jesus, “the Lord of glory” (1 Cor. 2:8; James 2:1). It is
What all this exposition means in practice is this. There is only “one
glory” of God. That glory refers to the essential “self”, the personality,
characteristics, being etc. The Lord Jesus manifested that glory in His
mortal life (Jn. 2:11). But He manifests it now that He has been “glorified”,
and will manifest it in the future day of His glory. And the Lord was
as in all things a pattern to us. We are bidden follow in His path to
glory. We now in our personalities reflect and manifest the one glory
of the Father, and our blessed Hope is glory in the future, to be glorified,
to be persons who reflect and ‘are’ that glory in a more intimate and
complete sense than we are now, marred as we are by our human dysfunction,
sin, and weakness of will against temptation. We now reflect that glory
as in a dirty bronze mirror (2 Cor. 3:18). The outline of God’s glory
in the face of Jesus is only dimly reflected in us. But we are being changed,
from glory to glory, the focus getting clearer all the time, until that
great day when we meet Him and see Him face to face, with all that shall
imply and result in. But my point in this context is that there is only
one glory. That glory was with God from the beginning. Jesus was in the
mind and plan of God from the beginning. It was God’s original plan to
resurrect and glorify and justify His Son. And in Jn. 17:5, Jesus is asking
that this will happen. The glory which Jesus had “before the world was”
is connected with the way that He was “foreordained before the foundation
of the world” (1 Pet. 1:20), the way God promised us eternal life (through
His Son) before the world was (Tit. 1:2). 2 Tim. 1:9 speaks of us as being
called to salvation in Christ “before the world began”, He “chose us in
Him before the foundation of the world” (Eph. 1:4). In the same way as
we didn’t personally exist before the world began, neither did Christ.
Indeed 1 Cor. 2:7 speaks of
Jewish Perspective
We need to remember that the Lord was speaking, and John was writing,
against a Jewish background. The language of 'pre-existence' was common
in Jewish thinking and writing. To be 'with God' didn't mean, in Jewish
terms, to be up there in heaven with God literally. Mary had favour
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8 The Rock That Followed Them (1 Cor. 10)
It should be evident enough that the rock which Moses smote in the desert was simply a rock; it wasn't Christ personally. The Jewish book of Wisdom claimed that "the rock was Wisdom" (Wisdom 11). Paul, as he so often does, is picking up this phrase and saying that more essentially, the rock represented Jesus personally, and not 'Wisdom' in the Jewish misunderstanding of this figure. It "was" Him in the sense that it represented Him. Likewise He said about the communion wine: "This is my blood". It wasn't literally His blood; it was and is His blood only in that it represents His blood. Paul is describing the experience of Israel in the wilderness because he saw in it some similarities with the walk of the Corinthian believers towards God's kingdom. The whole of 1 Cor. 10 is full of such reference. And this is why he should speak about the rock which Moses smote as a symbol of Christ. The Israelites had been baptized into Moses, just as Corinth had been baptized into Christ; and both Israel and Corinth ate "the same spiritual food; and did all drink the same spiritual drink". "Spiritual food... spiritual drink"shows that Paul saw the manna they ate and the water they drank as spiritually symbolic- just as He saw the rock as symbolic. Paul goes on in 1 Cor. 10:16,17 to write of how Corinth also ate and drank of Christ in the breaking of bread, and in chapter 11 he brings home the point: like Israel, we can eat and drink those symbols, "the same spiritual meat...the same spiritual drink", having been baptized into Christ as they were into Moses, and think that thereby we are justified to do as we like in our private lives. This is the point and power of all this allusion. The picture of their carcasses rotting in the wilderness is exhortation enough. Baptism and observing the 'breaking of bread' weren't enough to save Israel.
Jesus Himself had explained in John 6 how the manna represented His words and His sacrifice. He spoke of how out of Him would come "living water", not still well water, but bubbling water fresh from a fountain (Jn. 4:11; 7:38). And He invites His people to drink of it. It was this kind of water that bubbled out of the smitten rock. Ps. 78:15,16,20; 105:41; Is. 48:21 describe it with a variety of words: gushing, bursting, water running down like a high mountain stream, "flowed abundantly".....as if the fountains of deep hidden water had burst to the surface ("as out of the great depths", Ps. 78:15). So the Lord was saying that He was the rock, and we like Israel drinking of what came out of Him. The Law of Moses included several rituals which depended upon what is called "the running water"(Lev. 14:5,6,50-52; 15:18; Num. 19:17). "Running"translates a Hebrew word normally translated "living". This living water was what came out of the smitten rock. The Lord taught that the water that would come out of Him would only come after His glorification (Jn. 7:38)- an idea He seems to link with His death rather than His ascension (Jn. 12:28,41; 13:32; 17:1,5 cp. 21:19; Heb. 2:9). When He was glorified on the cross, then the water literally flowed from His side on His death. The rock was "smitten", and the water then came out. The Hebrew word used here is usually translated to slay, slaughter, murder. It occurs in two clearly Messianic passages: "...they talk to the hurt of him [Christ] whom thou hast smitten"(Ps. 69:26); "we esteemed him [as He hung on the cross] smitten of God"(Is. 53:4). It was in a sense God who "clave the rock"so that the waters gushed out (Ps. 78:15; Is. 48:21). "Clave"implies that the rock was literally broken open; and in this we see a dim foreshadowing of the gaping hole in the Lord's side after the spear thrust, as well as a more figurative image of how His life and mind were broken apart in His final sacrifice. Yahweh, presumably represented by an Angel, stood upon [or 'above'] the rock when Moses, on Yahweh's behalf, struck the rock. Here we see a glimpse into the nature of the Father's relationship with the Son on the cross. He was both with the Son, identified with Him just as the Angel stood on the rock or hovered above it as Moses struck it... and yet He also was the one who clave that rock, which was Christ. As Abraham with Isaac was a symbol of both the Father and also the slayer, so in our far smaller experience, the Father gives us the trials which He stands squarely with us through. And within the wonder of His self-revelation, Yahweh repeatedly reveals Himself as "the rock"- especially in Deuteronomy. And yet that smitten rock "was [a symbol of] Christ". On the cross, "God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself". There He was the most intensely manifested in His beloved Son. There God was spat upon, His love rejected. There we see the utter humility and self-abnegation of the Father. And we His children must follow the same path, for the salvation of others.
The rock "followed [better, 'accompanied'] them"(1). We must understand this as a metonymy, whereby "the rock"is put for what came out of it, i.e. the fountain of living water. It seems that this stream went with them on their journey. The statement that "they drank"of the rock is in the imperfect tense, denoting continuous action- they
Notes
(1) Marvin Vincent [
(2) There is repeated emphasis in the records that the water came from the [singular] rock. However Ps. 78:16 speaks of God cleaving the rocks. I suggest this is an intensive plural- the sense is 'the one great rock'. The next verses (17,20) go on to speak of how the water came from a singular rock.
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9 “Being in the Form of God” (Phil. 2)
“Jesus...being in the form of God, thought it not a thing to be grasped at, to be equal with God; but made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant” (Phil. 2:5-11).
These verses are taken to mean that Jesus was God, but at his birth he became a man. It is significant that this is almost the only passage which can be brought forward to explain away the ‘missing link’ in trinitarian reasoning - how Jesus transferred himself from being God in Heaven to being a baby in Mary’s womb. The following analysis seeks to demonstrate what this passage really means.
1. There are a number of almost incidental phrases within this passage which flatly contradict the trinitarian idea.
a) “God also has highly exalted” Jesus “and given him a name” (v.9) shows that Jesus did not exalt himself - God did it. It follows that he was not in a state of being exalted before God did this to him, at his resurrection.
b) The whole process of Christ’s humbling of himself and subsequent exaltation by God was to be “to the glory of God the Father” (v.11). God the Father is not, therefore, co-equal with the Son.
2. The context of this passage must be carefully considered. Paul does not just start talking about Jesus ‘out of the blue’. He refers to the mind of Jesus in Phil. 2:5. Back in Phil. 1:27 Paul starts to speak of the importance of our state of mind. This is developed in the early verses of chapter 2: “Being of one accord, of one mind...in lowliness of mind...look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others. Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus...” (Phil. 2:2-5). Paul is therefore speaking of the importance of having a mind like that of Jesus, which is devoted to the humble service of others. The verses which follow are therefore commenting upon the humility of mind which Jesus demonstrated, rather than speaking of any change of nature. Just as Jesus was a servant, so earlier Paul had introduced himself with the same word (Phil. 1:1 cp. 2:7). The attitude of Jesus is set up as our example, and we are urged to join Paul in sharing it. We're not asked to change natures; we're asked to have the mind of Jesus- so that we may know the "fellowship of sharing in his [Christ's] sufferings, becoming like him in his death and so to attain to the resurrection from the dead" (Phil. 3:10,11).
3. Jesus was “in the form of God”. We have shown in an earlier study that Jesus was of human nature, and therefore this cannot refer to Christ having a Divine nature. The N.I.V. translation of this passage goes seriously wrong here. In passing, it has to be noted that some modern translations designed for ‘easy reading’, tend to gloss over the precise meaning of the Greek text, and tend to give a paraphrase rather than a translation in certain passages. Phil. 2:5-8 is a classic example of this. However, this is not to decry their use in other ways.
That “form” (Greek ‘morphe’) cannot refer to essential nature is proved by Phil. 2:7 speaking of Christ taking on “the form of a servant”. He had the form of God, but he took on the form of a servant. The essential nature of a servant is no different to that of any other man. In harmony with the context, we can safely interpret this as meaning that although Jesus was perfect, he had a totally God-like mind, yet he was willing to take on the demeanour of a servant. Some verses later Paul encourages us to become “conformable unto (Christ’s) death” (Phil. 3:10). We are to share the ‘morphe’, the form of Christ which he showed in his death. This cannot mean that we are to share the nature which he had then, because we have human nature already. We do not have to change ourselves to have human nature, but we need to change our way of thinking, so that we can have the ‘morphe’ or mental image which Christ had in his death.
The Greek word ‘morphe’ means an image, impress or resemblance. Human
beings can have a ‘morphe’. Gal. 4:19 speaks of “Christ (being) formed in” believers. Because
he had a perfect character, a perfectly God-like way of thinking, Jesus
was “in the form of God”. Because of this, Jesus did not consider equality
with God “something to be grasped at”. This totally disproves the theory
that Jesus was God. Even according to the N.I.V. translation, Jesus did
not for a moment entertain the idea of being equal with God; he knew that
he was subject to God, and not co-equal with Him. There are many examples
in the Greek Old Testament of the Greek word
4. Christ “made himself of no reputation”, or “emptied himself” (R.V.), alluding to the prophecy of his crucifixion in Is. 53:12: “He poured out his soul unto death”. He “took upon himself the form (demeanour) of a servant” by his servant-like attitude to his followers (Jn. 13:14), demonstrated supremely by his death on the cross (Mt. 20:28). Is. 52:14 prophesied concerning Christ’s sufferings that on the cross “his visage was so marred more than any man, and his form more than the sons of men”. This progressive humbling of himself “unto death, even the death of the cross” was something which occurred during his life and death, not at his birth. We have shown the context of this passage to relate to the mind of Jesus, the humility of which is being held up to us as an example to copy. These verses must therefore speak of Jesus’ life on earth, in our human nature, and how he humbled himself, despite having a mind totally in tune with God, to consider our needs.
5. If Christ was God in nature and then left that behind and took human nature, as trinitarians attempt to interpret this passage, then Jesus was not “very God” while on earth; yet trinitarians believe that he was. This all demonstrates the contradictions which are created by subscribing to a man-made definition such as the trinity.
6. A point concerning the phrase “being in the form of God”. The Greek word translated “being” does not mean ‘being originally, from eternity’. Acts 7:55 speaks of Stephen “being full of the Holy Spirit”. He was full of the Holy Spirit then and had been for some time before; but he had not always been full of it. Other examples will be found in Lk. 16:23; Acts 2:30; Gal. 2:14. Christ “being in the form of God” therefore just means that he was in God’s form (mentally); it does not imply that he was in that form from the beginning of time.
7. "In the likeness of man... in human form" (Phil. 2:7) doesn't mean that the Lord Jesus only appeared as a man, when He was in fact something else. Rather the emphasis is upon the fact that He truly was like us. Going deeper, F.F. Bruce has suggested that these terms "represent alternative Greek renderings of the Aramaic phrase
Philippians 2 In First Century Context
It has been shown that the hymn of Phil. 2:6-11 is alluding to various Gnostic myths about a redeemer, the son and image of the "highest God", who comes down to earth, hides himself as a man so as not to be recognized by demons, shares human sufferings, and then disappears to Heaven having redeemed them (2). I suggest that these allusions are in order to deconstruct those myths. Paul's point is that the redemption of humanity was achieved by the human Jesus, through His death on the cross, and not through some nebulous mythical figure supposedly taking a trip to earth for a few years. The hymn also alludes to the many wrong ideas floating around Judaism at the time concerning Adam. Messiah was
We can understand 2 Cor. 8:9 in this same context- the choice of Jesus to 'become poor' for our sakes is held up as an example to the Corinthians, to inspire their financial giving. The choice is whether or not to live out the cross in our lives- rather than deciding whether or not to come down from Heaven to earth. Jesus gave up the 'riches' of His relationship with God, calling Him "abba", to the 'poverty' of the cross, in saying "My God, Why have you forsaken me?" (Mt. 27:46). Poverty was associated with crucifixion, rather than with a God coming from Heaven to earth: "Riches buy off judgment, and the poor are condemned to the cross" (3). It is Christ's cross and resurrection, and not this supposed 'incarnation', which is repeatedly emphasized as being the source of our salvation (Rom. 5:15,21; Gal. 2:20; 3:13; Eph. 1:6; 2 Cor. 5:21; 1 Pet. 3:18). This is a far cry from the teaching of Irenaeus, one of the so-called 'church fathers', that Christ "attached man to God by his own incarnation" (
One of the dangers of the Trinity is that it de-emphasizes the colossal human achievement of Jesus as a man. It also makes God Himself somewhat of an irrelevancy, if Jesus is our Saviour God. And thus it's been observed that the history of Christian art shows icons etc. progressively giving prominence to Jesus, with God Himself portrayed increasingly as an old man with a white beard, somewhere in the background. Yet Jesus came to bring us to God, living out a breathtaking partnership of God and man which remains our constant pattern.
Trinitarian theology sees God's salvation of humanity as being on account of His supposed 'incarnation' in Christ, and His sending of the [supposedly] pre-existent Christ into the world. But the New Testament emphasis is upon the
My friend Paul Clifford pointed out to me that we should remember that Philippi was in Macedonia, it was named after Philip, the father of Alexander the Great. Alexander was some sort of hero there. He was held to be successful in his exploits because after conquering a people, he did not have a policy of ruling by suppression but instead made all attempts to befriend them by making himself a servant to the people. Alexander was perceived to have an
The Acme Of Humility
Trinitarian theology uses Phil. 2 to justify their 'V-pattern' view of Christ- that He was high in glory in Heaven, then descended briefly to earth, and then returned to high glory in Heaven. All such talk of a V-pattern, albeit on the lips of eloquent churchmen and theologians (4), is frankly a serious missing of the point. Phil. 2- and the whole teaching of Jesus- is that the true greatness is in humility, the servant of all becomes Lord of all. The pinnacle, the zenith, the acme- was in the humility of the cross. The New Testament presents the death of Christ as His final victory, the springboard to a J-curve growth, involving even literal ascent into Heaven. What seemed to be defeat turned out to be the ultimate victory.
Notes
(1) F.F. Bruce,
(2) Documented in Rudolf Bultmann,
(3) Quoted in Martin Hengel,
(4) The V-pattern analogy is to be found, e.g., in C.F.D. Moule,
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10 Colossians 1:15-18: By Jesus Were All Things Created
“The firstborn of every creature: for by (Jesus) were all things created that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers; all things were created by him, and for him: and he is before all things, and by him all things consist. And he is the head of the body, the church: who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead...” (Col. 1:15-18). This is typical of those passages which can give the impression that Jesus actually created the earth.
1. If this were true, then so many other passages are contradicted which teach that Jesus did not exist before his birth. The record in Genesis clearly teaches that God was the creator. Either Jesus or God were the creator; if we say that Jesus was the creator while Genesis says that God was, we are saying that Jesus was directly equal to God. In this case it is impossible to explain the many verses which show the differences between God and Jesus (see
2. Jesus was the “firstborn”, which implies a beginning. There is no proof that Jesus was God’s “firstborn” before the creation of the literal earth. Passages like 2 Sam.7:14 and Ps. 89:27 predicted that a literal descendant of David would become God’s firstborn. He was clearly not in existence at the time those passages were written, and therefore not at the time of the Genesis creation either. Jesus became “the Son of God with power” by his resurrection from the dead (Rom. 1:4). God “has raised up Jesus again; as it is also written in the second psalm, You are My Son, this day have I begotten you” (Acts 13:32,33). Thus Jesus became God’s firstborn by his resurrection. Note too that a son standing at his father’s right hand is associated with being the firstborn (Gen. 48:13-16), and Christ was exalted to God’s right hand after his resurrection (Acts 2:32 R.V.mg.; Heb. 1:3).
3. It is in this sense that Jesus is described as the firstborn from the dead (Col. 1:18), a phrase which is parallel to “the firstborn of every creature” or creation (Col. 1:15 R.V.). He therefore speaks of himself as “the first begotten of the dead...the beginning of the creation of God” (Rev. 1:5; 3:14). Jesus was the first of a new creation of immortal men and women, whose resurrection and full birth as the immortal sons of God has been made possible by the death and resurrection of Jesus (Eph. 2:10; 4:23,24; 2 Cor. 5:17). “In Christ shall all (true believers) be made alive. But every man in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, afterward they that are Christ’s at his coming” (1 Cor. 15:22,23). This is just the same idea as in Col. 1. Jesus was the first person to rise from the dead and be given immortality, he was the first of the new creation, and the true believers will follow his pattern at his return.
4. The creation spoken about in Col. 1 therefore refers to the new creation, rather than that of Genesis. Through the work of Jesus “were all things created...thrones...dominions” etc. Paul does not say that Jesus created all things and then give examples of rivers, mountains, birds etc. The elements of this new creation refer to those rewards which we will have in God’s Kingdom. “Thrones...dominions” etc. refer to how the raised believers will be “kings and priests, and we shall reign on the earth” (Rev. 5:10). These things were made possible by the work of Jesus. “In him were all things created in the heavens” (Col. 1:16 R.V.). In Eph. 2:6 we read of the believers who are in Christ as sitting in “heavenly places”. If any man is in Christ by baptism, he is a new creation (2 Cor. 5:17). By being in Christ we are saved by His death (Col. 1:22). The literal planet could not be created by being in Christ. Thus these verses are teaching that the exalted spiritual position which we can now have, as well as that which we will experience in the future, has all been made possible by Christ. The “heavens and earth” contain “all things that needed reconciliation by the blood of (Christ’s) cross” (Col. 1:16,20), showing that the “all things...in heaven” refer to the believers who now sit in “heavenly places...in Christ Jesus”, rather than to all physical things around us.
5. If Jesus were the creator, it is strange how He should say: “…from the beginning of the creation God made them…” (Mk. 10:6). This surely sounds as if He understood God to be the creator, not He Himself. And if He literally created everything in Heaven, this would include God.
6. That "by him" is a poor translation is readily testified
by reliable scholars. Take J.H. Moulton: "for
7. Many of Paul's more difficult passages are understandable once it
is appreciated that he is alluding to existing Jewish and Gentile literature
which was familiar to his readers. He does this in order to deconstruct
it and give the Lord Jesus His rightful place of exaltation. There are
a number of connections between Col. 1:15-20 and Jewish Wisdom theology
concerning Adam and the mystical "heavenly man". The terms "image
of God" and "firstborn" refer to Adam; it's as if Paul
is showing that Jesus should be afforded the place of all exaltation,
and not the mystical "Adam" or "Heavenly Adam" which
Judaism then believed in (3). Another possibility, not necessarily mutually
exclusive, is that Paul is alluding to and even quoting a "pre-Christian
Gnostic redeemer hymn" (4)- and seeking to demonstrate that Jesus
is the true redeemer. We may apply the words of a well known song or character
to someone we know, in order to show the similarities and bring out the
contrasts; but the correspondence isn't 100%. And so with the manner in
which Paul quotes Gentile or Jewish literature and terminology about Jesus-
not every word must be literalistically pressed into relevance to Him.
It's like the idea of types- Joseph was a type of Christ, but not
It should be noted, as a general point, that God the Father
James Dunn comments on Col. 1:20: “Christ is being identified here not with a pre-existent being but with the creative power and action of God…There is no indication that Jesus thought or spoke of himself as having pre-existed with God prior to his birth" (5).
Notes
(1) J.H. Moulton,
(2) W.R. Nicoll, ed.,
(3) This case is made at length in H. Ridderbos,
(4) See E. Käsemann, "A Primitive Christian Baptismal Liturgy"
in
(5) James Dunn,
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10a Colossians 2:9: “Christ... In whom dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily”
Colossians 2:9 “Christ... In whom dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily”.
The Lord Jesus has now been exalted to Heaven, and shares God’s nature. This verse refers to how Jesus is now, after His resurrection, and not how He was during His mortal life on earth.
Reading the rest of Colossians chapter 2, we see that Paul is writing to counter various heresies that were being introduced to the ecclesia in Colosse- especially those which required a return to the Law of Moses. Yet Paul reasons that now God supremely “dwells” or ‘tents’ in Jesus- not in the Jewish tabernacle or temple (Jn. 1:14; 2:19). He emphasizes the supremacy of Jesus; His greatness. Because the Jewish false teachers were trying to persuade the Christian converts to join Judaism and devalue Jesus. Paul isn’t saying that Jesus is God Himself. Rather is he saying that the fullness of God’s personality and glory is manifested in the person of Jesus.
“All the fullness”
The Greek word for "fullness" is
The fullness which is Christ’s- and His “fullness” is God’s fullness- is shared with us: “Of His fullness have all we received” (Jn. 1:16). In this sense the church, as the body of Christ, is “the fullness of Him that fills all in all” (Eph. 1:23; 4:13). Through knowing Christ, the believers are therefore “filled with all the fullness of God” (Eph. 3:19). So the fact that Jesus had “all the fullness of God” doesn’t make Him "God" Himself in person; because we will not become God Himself in person because we are filled with God’s fullness; any more than a son
The Colossian Heresy
It’s clear that Paul was writing his letter to the Colossians in order to combat some specific heresies which were developing there. We can try to reason back from what Paul wrote, to get some idea of the false teachings that were being circulated. The words “fullness” and “bodily” are terms which were common amongst the Gnostics. The Gnostic heresy was developing at the time Paul wrote to the Colossians. The Gnostics spoke about how they had a “fullness of knowledge” which Christians only had part of. The 2010 Wikipedia article about Gnosticism defined it as: “Gnostic systems are typically marked out by... The notion of a remote, supreme source - this figure is known under a variety of names, including '
Paul was deconstructing and correcting these ideas. The fullness of God Himself was manifested in one specific person- the risen Lord Jesus. This “fullness” wasn’t some “region of light”- it was an actual person, i.e. the Lord Jesus. It’s been shown that Colosse was a centre of Gnosticism, and that many Jews living there had mixed their ideas with it (1). William Barclay makes the point that “There was not infrequently a strange alliance between Gnosticism and Judaism; and it is just such an alliance that we find in Colosse, where... there were many Jews” (2).
The Gnostics believed that all matter was hopelessly evil, including the human body. Paul is arguing against this by pointing out that the Lord Jesus even now has a body, which is full of God’s fullness in a bodily way. William Barclay explains further: “If matter was altogether evil and if Jesus was the Son of God, then Jesus could not have had a flesh and blood body so the Gnostic argued. He must have been a kind of spiritual phantom. So the Gnostic romances say that when Jesus walked, he left no footprints on the ground. This, of course, completely removed Jesus from humanity and made it impossible for him to be the Saviour of men. It was to meet this Gnostic doctrine that Paul insisted on the flesh and blood body of Jesus and insisted that Jesus saved men in the body of his flesh” (3).
Notes
(1) Edwin Yamauchi, “Sectarian Parallels: Qumran and Colosse,”
(2) William Barclay,
(3) Barclay,
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11 Hebrews 1:2: "The Son... by whom [God] made the worlds"
Heb. 1:2 is another passage misunderstood to believe that Jesus created the earth. It could be argued that the prologue to Hebrews is based upon the prologue to John's Gospel. The same ideas recur- the Word of God from the beginning come to expression in Christ, "all things", glory, etc. Note the similarity between "apart from him not one thing came into being" (Jn. 1:3) and Heb. 2:8, "not one thing is not left put under him". Jn. 1:3 stated that "all things" were created by the Word, i.e. the logos / intention which God had of the Messiah. Heb. 1:2 clarifies this (because of misunderstandings in the early church?) to define the "all things" as all the ages of human history. These were framed by God with Christ in mind. Later in Hebrews we meet the same idea- Heb. 11:3 speaks of how the ages were framed and then goes on to give examples of Old Testament characters who displayed their faith and understanding of
the future Messiah.
It should be noted that the 'ages' which Christ was to be involved in creating refer to "the world to come"- for Heb. 2:5 says that this passage is speaking about "the world to come". Heb. 9:26 adds indirect support by commenting that Christ died at the end of "the (singular) age"; the ages to come are the eternity of God's Kingdom which is made
possible through His work. Thus the idea is not that He created the world, but rather that through His work, the ages /to come/ were made possible through Him. And therefore those ages before Him find their meaning in the context of He who was to come and open the way to eternal ages.
We read of “the Son… by whom [Gk.
- In a creation context, we read that all things were created
- The context of Heb. 1:2 features many examples of where
- Because of [
- The Mosaic law was “disannulled”
- Levi paid tithes
- Jesus was not an Angel
- Scripture was written
- The martyrs were executed
- Israel today are loved by God
- Cold and wet people made a fire
- Timothy was circumcised
- When the voice came from Heaven, Jesus commented that the voice came not
- “
- The authorities couldn’t punish the apostles
- Paul wrote
- “By reason of” (Gk.
- We labour
- Christ was manifested “for [
- “Wherefore”-
- “For the truth’s sake”-
- Those who are “of the world”
- There was a division “because of” (
- “They could not… bring him in because of (
- ‘For the sake [
- Herod bound John
- A ship waited on Jesus
- “The Sabbath was made
Then,
Consider other uses of the word
- “The cares of this world” (Mk. 4:19)
- The prophets which have been “since the world began” (Lk. 1:70). There were no prophets standing there at creation. The context clearly refers to the prophets of the Old Testament Scriptures.
- “The children of this world” (Lk. 16:8)
- “Be not conformed to this world” (Rom. 12:2)
- “The wisdom of this world” (1 Cor. 2:6; 1 Cor. 3:18), “the princes of this world” (1 Cor. 2:8)
- “This present evil world” (Gal. 1:4)- there’s nothing evil about the physical planet, the reference is clearly to the world-system.
- “The darkness of this world” (Eph. 6:12)
- Loving “this present world” (2 Tim. 4:10) is wrong, Paul says. Surely he wasn’t referring to the literal planet.
The whole of history, with all its ages, and all that is to come, exists solely for the sake of Christ. He is the One who gives meaning to history. Further, if this verse means 'Jesus created the earth', then OK, question: Genesis and many other passages say
It is often commented that a few verses later, Heb. 1:10 appears to quote words about God (from Ps. 102:25) and apply them to Jesus. To take a Psalm or Bible passage and apply it to someone on earth, even a normal human, was quite common in first century literature (1). It's rather like we may quote a well known phrase from Shakespeare or a currently popular movie, and apply it to someone. It doesn't mean that that person is to be equated with Romeo, Juliet, Othello, Hamlet, Macbeth etc. By quoting the words about them, we're saying there are similarities between the two people or situations; we're not claiming they're identical. And seeing that the Son of God was functioning for His Father, it's not surprising that words about God will be quoted about the Lord Jesus.
Footnote:
It is argued by trinitarians that
"1. With a genitive, through
a. Used of place or medium through
b. Used of time, during in the course of; through
c. Used of immediate agency, causation, instrumentality, by means of,
by; of means or manner, through, by, with
d. Used of state or condition, in a state of".
Meaning (b) appears relevant to Heb. 1:2 because it is
Notes
(1) Oscar Cullmann,
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12 Who Was Melchizedek?
In the commentary on Melchizedek in Hebrews; the writer admitted he was going deep, speaking of things which could only be grasped by very mature believers (Heb. 5:10,11,14). It is therefore not wise to base fundamental doctrine on the teaching of such verses; nor should the Melchizedek passages loom large in the minds of those who are still coming to learn the basic doctrines of Scripture.
“This Melchizedek, King of Salem (Jerusalem), priest of the most high God, who met Abraham returning from the slaughter of the kings, and blessed him” is spoken of as being “without father, without mother, without descent (genealogy), having neither beginning of days, nor end of life; but made like unto the Son of God” (Heb. 7:1,3). From this it is argued by some that Jesus literally existed before his birth, and therefore had no human parents.
Jesus has a Father (God) and a mother (Mary) and a genealogy (see Mt. 1, Lk. 3 and cp. Jn. 7:27). ‘Melchizedek’ therefore cannot refer to him personally. Besides, Melchizedek was “made
The language of Hebrews about Melchizedek just cannot be taken literally. If Melchizedek literally had no father or mother, then the only person he could have been was God Himself; He is the only person with no beginning (1 Tim. 6:16; Ps. 90:2). But this is vetoed by Heb. 7:4: “Consider how great this man was”, and also by the fact that he was seen by men (which God cannot be) and offered sacrifices to God. If he is called a man, then he must have had literal parents. His being “without father, without mother, without descent” must therefore refer to the fact that his pedigree and parents are not recorded. Queen Esther’s parents are not recorded, and so her background is described in a similar way. Mordecai “brought up...Esther, his uncle’s daughter: for she had neither father nor mother...whom Mordecai, when her father and mother were dead, took for his own daughter” (Esther 2:7). The author of Hebrews was clearly writing as a Jew to Jews, and as such he uses the Rabbinic way of reasoning and writing at times. There was a Rabbinic principle that "what is not in the text, is not" (1)- and it seems that this is the principle of exposition being used to arrive at the statement that Melchizedek was "without father". Seeing no father is mentioned in the Genesis text, therefore he was "without father"- but this doesn't mean he actually didn't have a father. It's not recorded, and therefore, according to that Rabbinic principle, he effectively didn't have one.
The book of Genesis usually goes to great lengths to introduce the family backgrounds of all the characters which it presents to us. But Melchizedek appears on the scene unannounced, with no record of his parents, and vanishes from the account with equal abruptness. Yet there can be no doubt that he was worthy of very great respect; even great Abraham paid tithes to him, and was blessed by him, clearly showing Melchizedek’s superiority over Abraham (Heb. 7:2,7).
The writer is not just doing mental gymnastics with Scripture. There was a very real problem in the first century which the Melchizedek argument could solve. The Jews were reasoning:
‘You Christians tell us that this Jesus can now be our high priest, offering our prayers and works to God. But a priest has to have a known genealogy, proving he is from the tribe of Levi. And anyway, you yourselves admit Jesus was from the tribe of Judah (Heb. 7:14). Sorry, to us Abraham is our supreme leader and example (Jn. 8:33,39), and we won’t respect this Jesus’.
To which the reply is:
‘But remember Melchizedek. The Genesis record is framed to show that such a great priest did not have any genealogy; and Messiah is to be both a king and a priest, whose priesthood is after the pattern of Melchizedek (Heb. 5:6 cp. Ps. 110:4). Abraham was inferior to Melchizedek, so you should switch your emphasis from Abraham to Jesus, and stop trying to make the question of genealogies so important (see 1 Tim. 1:4). If you meditate on how much Melchizedek is a type of Jesus (i.e. the details of his life pointed forward to him), then you would have a greater understanding of the work of Christ’.
And we can take that lesson to ourselves.
Notes
(1) See James Dunn,
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