Here are posts I have written about the Real
Jesus.
Study Him this
Christmas, so as to know Him more fully.
Merry Christmas!
***
Jesus Is the
Pre-existent Son of God
Jesus Is the Agent of
Creation
***
A major difference
between Christianity and the other major world religions is that, in
Christianity, God came to us. In the other world religions we
are left on our own to try to discover God (or achieve enlightenment, as in
Buddhism).
Christmas is about God coming to us, in the form of his Son.
This is called the "Incarnation." (Which means: "in
flesh.") At Christmas God descended the honor/shame hierarchy and took on
a human body.
We see this in the first chapter of the Gospel of John. It reads:
In the beginning was the Word,and the Word was
with God,
Who was "the Word?" We find out in John 1:14:
The Word became flesh and made his dwelling
among us.
The Word, the one and only Son, came to us from the Father and took on human
flesh. This is the language of God as a Trinity of persons. God is
a "triune" being: Father, Son, and Spirit.
Godis a three-personed being. Imagine a 3-headed person: 3 heads, 3 distinct
personalities, sharing the same body.
The idea of God as a Trinity makes conceptual sense of the idea that God is love.
This is because love requires relationship. In the very being of God there is,
and everlastingly has been, loving relationship. God, in his being, is
relational. I love this way of thinking about God! It is so rich and wide
and deep and long and high.
Early Christians came up with a word to express the 3-personed being of
God: perichoresis. The prefix "peri" means
"around." Like the peri-meter of a circle.
"Choresis" is the word we get "choral" from, which can mean
to sing, but also to dance, as in a "chorus line."
"Perichoresis" is to dance in a circle. With this word our 3-Personed
God is described as Father, Son, and Spirit engaged in an everlasting circle
dance. I like to refer to this as the Big Dance, into which we are invited
(John 14,15, and 16).
God the Son has existed everlastingly in the Big Dance that is the being of
God. Then, in the infant Jesus, God brought the Dance to us by becoming one of
us.
To understand the the Real Jesus we must begin with the Incarnation of God the
Son, in whom there is neither beginning nor end. Jesus is the pre-existent God
the Son, who has existed everlastingly.
***
This view of God as Trinity has been called "social
trinitarianism"; viz., that in the being of God there is a
"society" of three persons. See here, for academic ideas on this. But not, of
course, for Islam, which vehemently denies the Christian idea of God as a
Trinity of 3 Persons. Islam misunderstands this, as Judeo-Christianity has
never claimed there are three Gods.
I also love the book The Shack as a way of figuratively
expressing Trinitarian theism - i.e., God as a 3-Personed Being.
Two excellent
Trinitarian resources are:
Stephen Seamands, Ministry
in the Image of God: The Trinitarian Shape of Christian Service
Baxter Kruger, The
Great Dance: The Christian Vision Revisited
In my next book How
God Changes the Human Heart I will explain the importance of
Trinitarian Theism in our spiritual formation.
***
Jesus of Nazareth is the
incarnation of God the Son. God became one of us.
Years ago I heard an
analogy that still makes sense to me.
If you were an architect observing ants build an anthill and wanted to
share your architectural knowledge with them, what would be a good way to do
this? It would be to become an ant, live in the ant world, and
communicate in ant language to them. You would take on "ant flesh."
By analogy, this is what God has done for us. God, in his Son, took on human
flesh and lived among us.
I am still captivated by the brilliance and beauty of this divine strategy.
What makes this story so stunning is what God the Son gave up to come
to us. The One through whom all things were created took on our flesh-and-bone,
ever-so-limited humanity.
The everlasting supremacy and majesty of the Son is seen in John 1:3, where
we are told that through him all things were made; without him
nothing was made that has been made. God the Son is the agent of creation!
New Testament scholar writes that John 1:3 "describes Jesus as the agent
of creation, and action that Genesis attributes to god alone. Thus, the
Johannine narrator starts his story by claiming that Jesus does what the one
God does, is eternal as the one God is eternal, and, as the Word, 'was
God'." (Larry Hurtado and Chris Keith, Jesus Among Friends and
Enemies: A Historical and Literary Introduction to Jesus in the Gospels,
Kindle Locations 1037-1039).
Paul understands this
when he writes:
15 The Son is the image of the invisible
God, the firstborn over all creation.
16 For in him all things were created: things
in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or
rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for
him.
During this Christmas season, orient your heart and mind towards Christ, who is
God the Son come to earth in the form of a person. Think of his supremacy
and majesty.
Think of his creational agency.
***
34 “How will this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since
I am a virgin?”
35 The angel answered,
“The Holy Spirit will come on you,
and the power of the Most High will
overshadow you.
- Luke 1:34-35
Father Stephen Rooney, a local priest in the Monroe area, graciously invited me
to speak at the Roman Catholic Unity Service in January 2001. I will never forget
that event for two reasons.
First, that was the evening my father died. He was suffering and dying as
I was speaking. My friend Stephen knew about this, and was praying for me as I
spoke.
Second, St Michael's was packed out as I spoke on the Jesus-unity
Father Rooney and I have. I used the "Stations of the Cross" that
encompassed the sanctuary to illustrate this. I affirmed the truth of every
"station" except for the "Veronica" story (the woman who,
according to legend, wiped Jesus' bloody face with her cloak). One of my
affirmations was, of course, the virgin birth of Christ.
The Pope at that time was Benedict. He had just published a book that defended,
among other things, the virgin birth. Benedict reasons like this. (From The Infancy Narratives.)
1. Christian teaching affirms that "Jesus was the son of God and was not
conceived through sexual intercourse but by the power of the Holy Spirit,
one part of the divine trinity."
2. The story of the virgin birth is not just a reworking of earlier Greek
or Egyptian legends and archetypal concepts but something totally new in
history. (Contra the intellectually embarrassing "Zeitgeist" mini-phenomenon.)
3. God is a Creator. God creates. God invents. This is part of the nature
of God.
4. God is omnipotent.
5. Therefore, God's creative word is able to bring about something
completely new. (See my post God's Commands are Authoritative Words that Have
Illocutionary Force.)
Benedict's reasoning is grounded in the understanding of the power of God. An
all-powerful being is, by logical extension, able to bring
about any logically possible state of affairs. "If God does not also have
power over matter, then he simply is not God," Benedict writes. "But
he does have this power, and through the conception and resurrection of Jesus
Christ he has ushered in a new creation."
Could the story of Jesus' virgin birth been invented by early Christians to
spice up the Jesus story? New Testament scholar Ben Witherington writes:
"I would argue that it is highly unlikely Christians would make up a story
about a virginal conception, precisely because it would lead to the charge of
Jesus' illegitimacy by opponents of the Christian movement. There must have
been some historical substance to this tradition for both Matthew and Luke to
refer to the matter, independently of each other and in differing ways."
(See Witherington, "Misconceptions About the Virginal Conception: Our lack of
access to narratives about Jesus' birth shouldn't led us to assume the miracle
of his conception didn't happen.")
Jesus was born of a virgin. This is an unequivocal truth of Christian
faith.
***
While most people are
trying to move up the social honor-shame ladder and thus be
upwardly mobile, the Word (God the Son) moved down when he
became flesh and tabernacled (dwelt) among us. That was a move downwards. The
Word exercised downward mobility. Love came down.
This act of downward mobility is called the "kenosis," after a word
in Philippians 2:7. Phil. 2:5-11 expresses the entire idea.
did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own
advantage;7 rather, he made himself nothing (Greek kenosis; ἐκένωσεν ]
by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human
likeness.
8 And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
by becoming obedient to death—
even death on a cross!
New Testament scholar Wayne Grudem writes:
"The best understanding of this passage is that it talks about Jesus
giving up the status and privilege that were
his in heaven. He did not "cling to his own advantage" but
"emptied himself" or "humbled himself" for our sake, and
came to live as a man." (Wayne Grudem, Bible Doctrine: Essential Teachings of the Christian
Faith, 240)
In John 17:5 Jesus spoke of the "glory" he had with the Father
"before the world was made." In the kenosis he gave
up that glory (status, privilege), but would regain it upon his
return to heaven.
For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus
Christ,
Here we have Christ, who
temporarily gave up the privilege and honor he deserved, for you and I.
Today think of the glorious status Christ gave up, for you, when he humbled
himself and took on the form of humanity.
Think of Jesus descending into greatness.
***
Notes
The issue of what Christ emptied himself of has been a by the preexistent
divine Son, whereby in "becoming human" he took the "form"
of a slave - one who expressed his humanity in lowly service to others."
(Grudem, 384)
See also Gordon Fee's article in Exploring Kenotic Christology: The Self-Emptying of God,
ed. Stephen Evans. Fee writes:
"An orthodox biblical Christology almost certainly must embrace some form
of a 'kenotic' [emptying] understanding of the Incarnation, that the One who
was truly God, also in his Incarnation lived a truly human life, a life in
which he grew both in stature and in wisdom and in
understanding (Luke 2:52), learned obedience through what he suffered (Heb.
5:8), and who as Son of the Father did not know the day or the hour (Mark
13:32). (Grudem, p. 43)
***
This shocked a number of
students. The teacher then said, "If you can show me evidence please feel
free to bring it to class."
I suggested to her that she bring me into the class to present the case for the
existence of Jesus. I wrote a letter to the teacher. When I learned his name I
realized he was, at that time, a student in my MCCC Philosophy
of Religion class!
When the time came for me to speak on the existence of Jesus at Monroe High
School so many students had heard about this that it was decided to hold the
event in the school auditorium. 175 students filled the auditorium as I spoke
for 90 minutes, making the historical case for Jesus' existence.
There was a Q&A
after my talk. Many students asked questions. They were so interested in the
subject of Jesus! Now, years later, I've had people who were in the auditorium
that day tell me how much it impressed and influenced them. Some of them
enrolled in my college philosophy classes as a result of this.
Perhaps you have heard, or read on the Internet, the claim that Jesus never
really existed, and that the figure of Jesus in the Bible is all made up. That
claim is false. As small a point as it seems to be, Jesus actually existed. No
reputable New Testament scholar believes otherwise (actually, maybe one
does, but he is in the extreme minority). Even the skeptical Bart Ehrman believes Jesus existed.
If you want to read some more check out:
"Jesus Existed," by Craig
Keener
See my "Jesus Existed (but of course...)"
***
I hope one day you will
get to travel to Israel. Linda and I were privileged to do this ten years ago.
We landed in Tel Aviv, and went first to Mount Carmel. Then to Tiberias,
located on the shores of the Sea of Galilee. We spent three days touring the
Galilee area, to include Capernaum.
Then we traveled south along the Jordan river. We stayed for 2 days on the Dead
Sea, from where we saw Qumran (famous for the Dead Sea Scrolls)
and the incredible fortress at Masada.
We ended up with four more days in Jerusalem and the surrounding area, to
include Bethlehem.
One of the many highlights for us was a visit to Nazareth, which is west of
Tiberias in the area of Galilee. We were walking on the very ground Jesus
walked on. Amazing! And insightful. To understand the Real Jesus we must know
about the land he lived in.
The strong probability is that Jesus worked with Joseph in the family business,
which was the building trade.
***
Note: two excellent books on Jesus are Wright's Simply Jesus and Bauckham's Jesus: A Very Short Introduction.
***
Therefore the Lord himself will give you a
sign:
All this took place to fulfill what the
Lord had said through the prophet:
Robert Wilken writes:
"Among the ancient Jewish prophets Isaiah was the most beloved, the most
esteemed, and the most quoted by early Christians. His book contained all the
mysteries of the Lord, his birth from a virgin, his miracles, his suffering,
death, and resurrection, as well as prophecies from the Church's mission to the
nations. Augustine said that Isaiah contains more prophecies of Christ and of
the Church than all the other prophets. Over time Isaiah's soaring language and
unforgettable imagery were woven into the tapestry of Christian worship, life,
and thinking." (Wilken, Isaiah: Interpreted by Early Christian Medieval
Commentators, xx)
Isaiah has been referred to as the "Fifth Gospel" because the
Messianic prophecies point so clearly to the description of Jesus in Matthew,
Mark, Luke, and John. See, e.g., The Gospel According to Isaiah 53: Encountering the
Suffering Servant in Jewish and Christian Theology (eds. Darrell Bock and Mitch Glaser). If this
interests you then see the entire article from this book by the great Messianic
Jewish scholar Michael Brown - "Jewish Interpretations of Isaiah 53."
In Isaiah 7:14 the birth of the promised Messiah is prophesied, whose name
shall be "Immanuel." J. Alec Motyer says that "the title Immanuel is
peculiar to Isaiah but the thought is part of the Davidic-Messianic
fabric." (Motyer, The Prophecy of Isaiah, 85)
I like how Motyer then explains this amazing verse. He writes:
"It is impossible to separate this Immanuel from the
Davidic king whose birth delivers his people (Isaiah 9:4-7) and whose complex
name indicates the designation Mighty God (Isa. 9:6).
Following these pointers, we have a sign that lives up to its promise. Heaven
and earth will be truly moved. Isaiah foresaw the birth of the divine son of
David and also laid the foundation for the understanding of the unique nature
of his birth." (Ib.)
"Immanuel," as we see in Matthew 1:22, means "God with us."
Michael Brown says that the term "Immanuel" is unique to Isaiah - it
is "a name found nowhere else in the Bible or the Ancient Near East."
(Michal Brown, Answering Jewish Objections to Jesus: Messianic Prophecy
Objections, 25)
Brown continues: "We ask again, who was this Immanuel? He was a king
promised to the line of David - with an important, symbolic name - whose birth
would serve as a divine sign." (Ib., 26)
Today think about God who loved us so much that he came to us, tabernacled
among us ("pitched his tent with ours," "dwelt with
us"), and is with you.
***
Notes
For an explanation of the meaning of the Hebrew word alma ("virgin")
in Isa. 7:14, see J. Alec Motyer, The Prophecy of Isaiah, 84-85. Motyer writes:
"Isaiah thus used the word which, among those available to him, came
nearest to expressing 'virgin birth' and which, without linguistic impropriety,
opens the door to such a meaning." (85)
For a lengthy, detailed study of alma, see Michael Brown's Answering Jewish Objections to Jesus: Messianic Prophecy
Objections. Section 4:3.
***
Back in the 1970s I read
German theologian Wolfhart Pannenberg's magnum opus Jesus: God and Man. I was so inspired by
Pannenberg's study, especially his analysis of the resurrection of Christ, that
I incorporated his thinking into my doctoral dissertation.
My studies began
focusing more and more on the
matter of the nature of Christ, and led to a doctoral qualifiying exam on what
the early Church Fathers said about Christ as both divine and human, and
the eventual development of the great Christological Creeds. (See, e.g., J.N.D.
Kelly's Early Christian Doctrines and Early Christian Creeds.)
I grew up in a Lutheran Church (ELCA), and on Sunday mornings we
recited The Nicene Creed. The word
"creed" is from the Latin word credo, which means "I
believe." The Nicene Creed begins with "We
believe..."
It reads:
the Father, the Almighty,
As I read this today, I see that I still believe it, now more than ever. In
Jesus, true God was made man. Here's a brief look at this.
Jesus is True God
In the four Gospels we see many places where Jesus acts like he is God and even
claims to be God. This is recognized by the religious leaders, who accuse him
of claiming to be God. They pick up stones to throw at him, viewing his
claim as blasphemous.
For example, Jesus claims to forgive sins. From the ancient Jewish point of
view, only God can do this. This still holds today.
Imagine you are in
a heated conflict with someone. I walk by, see you arguing, and invite
myself into it. I raise my hands before you both and say, "Why not use
some conflict resolution and anger management techniques to work this thing
out?" Presumably, you would not have a problem with me saying that.
But if I said to you,
"I forgive you both for acting this way," you would wonder,
"Does John think he is God?"
The religious leaders
asked, "Who can forgive sins but God alone?" Jesus walked around
doing that. He went to a bloody death because of that and
to accomplish that. Jesus was speaking and acting as if he
were God.
N.T. Wright explains this God-thing about forgiving sins in his excellent
book Simply Jesus. Wright writes:
"How does God normally forgive sins within Israel? Why, through the Temple
and the sacrifices that take place there. Jesus seems to be claiming that God
is doing, up close and personal through him, something that you’d normally
expect to happen at the Temple. And the Temple— the successor to the tabernacle
in the desert— was, as we saw, the place where heaven and earth met. It was the
place where God lived. Or, more precisely, the place on earth where God’s
presence intersected with human, this-worldly reality." (Wright, N.
T., Simply Jesus: A New Vision of Who He Was, What He Did,
and Why He Matters, pp. 79-80)
There are many examples in Scripture where Jesus acts like he is God. He claims
such an intimate relationship with the Father that it causes the religious
leaders to accuse him of making himself equal with God. (For example, Jesus
said, "I and the Father are one.") Their accusations were on target.
In Jesus, God's very presence intersected with earth in the form of humanity.
Jesus is Human - The Humanity of Jesus
"What if God was one of us?
Jesus is fully and completely human. He was conceived in a human womb. Jesus
had a physical, human body, like we have. Jesus got tired (John 4:6), hungry
(Matt. 4:2), and thirsty (John 19:28).
Jesus went through a learning process, as we do. We read:
And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature,
Jesus felt a variety of different emotions, as we do. He marveled (Matt. 8:10),
he wept (Jon 11:35), and he was inwardly troubled (Matt. 26:38; John 12:27).
Jesus was like us in every way except one. Jesus was without sin (1 Peter
2:22).
OK. Jesus was fully God. But why did he have to be also fully human? Wayne
Grudem writes: "Jesus had to be fully human to
serve as our perfectly obedient representative... If Jesus wasn't fully human,
his obedience in our place would be meaningless. Just as Jesus had to be human
to live in our place, he had to be human to die in our place."
Hebrews 2:17 says:
It’s obvious, of course,
I have always loved and held closely to Hebrews 4:15:
In Jesus full God-ness and full human-ness converge. The everlasting,
world-creating Word became flesh and dwelt among us.
Christmas is coming, and I believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, true God from
true God, who came down from heaven and was made man.
***
Linda's mother, Martha,
was Jewish. One of her lifelong dreams, which was never fulfilled, was to
travel to Israel and see her homeland.
I'll never forget when
Linda and I got to go to Israel. I remember flying over the Mediterranean, and
seeing Tel Aviv below us. We looked at one another - "We are in
Israel!" For Linda this was fulfilling a dream, and was a way of honoring
her mother as well.
When you visit Israel you walk the very land that Jesus walked. Why did Jesus
walk there? Was he a tourist who flew in from some other country, only to
visit? No. Jesus was Jewish. In order to understand the Real Jesus we
must understand this.
A few years ago I read Vanderbilt University professor Amy-Jill Levine's The Misunderstood Jew: The Church and the Scandal of the
Jewish Jesus. Of this book Ben Witherington writes: "The
Misunderstood Jew is simply the best book ever written about the
Jewishness of Jesus and his earliest followers. This book is such a seminal
work that it makes us all reexamine what it really means to be a Jew or a
Christian." (From the back cover.)
Levine writes:
"Jesus had to have made sense in his own context, and his context is that
of Galilee and Judea. Jesus cannot be understood fully unless he is understood
through first-century Jewish eyes and heard through first-century Jewish
ears." (Levine, 20)
Just as I could not
understand you apart from understanding the ethnic, social, and temporal
context into which you were born and now live, so we will make a big-time
mistake if we try to understand Jesus from our current cultural perspective.
For example, Jesus spoke, at times, using parables. "Parables" are
from first-century Jewish culture, not 21st-century North American
culture.
Here's another example.
The healings of Jesus made sense and were assessed according to the
first-century Jewish worldview, not our Western anti-supernaturalistic
worldview.
And another: the debates
going on in the four Gospels about how to follow Torah (Genesis through
Deuteronomy) only make sense within Jewish first-century legal parameters and
ways of talking, not our legal system and modern language. Levine writes:
"To understand Jesus' impact in his own setting - why some chose to follow
him, others to dismiss him, and still others to seek his death - requires an
understanding of that setting." (21)
The Gospels are more relevant and powerful when we uncover their
meaning as it was understood and apprehended within their first-century Jewish
worldview. I like how Levine expresses this. She writes: "When Jesus was
located within the world of Judaism, the ethical implications of his teachings
take on a renewed and heightened meaning; their power is restored and their
challenge sharpened." (21)
Here is another example. Jesus dressed like a Jew (but of course, right?).
He wore tzitzit, or "fringes." The book of Numbers
instructs all Israelite men to wear fringes, and today many Orthodox Jewish men
still wear them. They can be seen on the prayer shawls Jewish men wear in the
synagogue during worship. Numbers 15:37-40 reads:
“Speak to the Israelites and say to them:
These tassels (tzitzit) were the WWJD bracelets of the time. Levine
writes: "Just as the bracelets remind their Christian wearers to ask,
"What would Jesus Do?" so the fringes remind Jewish wearers of all
613 "commandments," or mitzvot. The Gospels do not shy
away from the fact that Jesus wore these fringes." (24)
Those were the fringes the woman with the twelve-year bleeding touched in hopes
of a healing (Matthew 9:20). Wherever Jesus went, people begged to simply touch
the fringe of Jesus' cloak (Mark 6:56). And Jesus, in Matthew 23:5, accuses the
Pharisees and scribes of making their fringes long, which suggests that Jesus'
fringes were shorter. Levine concludes: "Jesus thus does not
dismiss the Torah; in the modern idiom, he "wears it on his
sleeve."" (Levine, 24; emphasis mine)
Jesus dressed like a Jew, ate like a Jew (see Levine pp. 24 ff.), and spoke
like a Jew. In Jesus, God came to us and took on, specifically, Jewish
flesh.
The Christmas outcome
for us today is that, in and through the death and resurrection of Christ, we
Jesus-followers gain family status "God's chosen people, holy
and deeply loved" (Colossian 3:12, which is a very Jewish way of speaking
as it reduplicates the family status of Deuteronomy 7:6 and applies it to us).
Rejoice, rejoice
Immanuel
Shall come to thee
O Israel
***
I was baptized by one of
my campus ministry leaders, Ray Anderson, in a Wesleyan church in DeKalb,
Illinois. I was 21. My parents came to witness this.
For all of us this was a great day. Baptism is an identification rite.
I had cast off the old clothing of my life in the kingdom of blindness and
put of the new garment of Christ. (Colossians 3:12-15) This was a joyful and
serious thing, and its effect continues in me today.
Baptism is serious and joyful business. I found this out when I was teaching at
an Assemblies of God Bible college in Singapore. One of my Chinese students was
named Kek (pronounced 'cake'). I asked Kek a question: "What was the
hardest thing for you when you left primitive Chinese religion and becamae a
follower of Jesus?"
Immediately Kek said: "It was when I was baptized. Then my parents knew I
was serious. They knew I would not be a son who bowed before their graves. They
knew I would not be a son who kept a family offer and offered sacrifices and
prayers to them after they died."
This is baptism as revolutionary activity.
Jesus got baptized. To understand the Real Jesus we must understand his
baptism, in the River Jordan, by John the Baptist. New Testament scholar
Michael McClymond writes:
“The story of Jesus’ adult life begins with John the Baptist… [T]he beginning
of Jesus’ ministry and the beginning of the gospel message lie in John and his
preaching. John the Baptist is part of Jesus’ identity... John is
important for understanding Jesus because the gospel accounts consistently
portray Jesus’ baptism as a major transition… Once he had been baptized by
John, Jesus began to announce that “the kingdom of God has come near” (Mark
1:15).” (McClymond, Familiar Stranger, 66)
Jesus, in allowing himself to be baptized by John, identified with John's
cause. So... who was John the Baptist, and what was his mission? McClymond
nicely summarizes for us.
“John was the leader of a sectarian baptizing movement centered in the
wilderness of Judea – a place with eschatological as well as ascetic
associations. Like earlier prophetic and apocalyptic figures, John
announced the imminent end of the world and the time of divine judgment. John
also spoke of a “Coming One” who would carry out the judgment. He
summoned people to repentance because the remaining time was short, and the end
was drawing near… " (McClymond, 62)
John's baptism was a baptism of repentance. To repent is to
turn and go in the other direction. Jesus, in submitting to John's baptism,
identified with the idea that our world is a freight train rushing headlong
towards destruction.
Eventually, John was imprisoned. Jesus left Nazareth, withdrew to Galilee, and
lived in Capernaum. "From that time on Jesus began to preach,
'Repent......'" (Matthew 4:17)
Today think about Jesus as your Rescuer, who turned your soul away from death,
and called you to run in the other direction towards life.
In my Philosophy of
Religion classes at MCCC I teach, at times, on the major
comparative religions (Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam).
When it comes to Christianity I have asked students the question: "What
was the main thing Jesus taught about?" They give a variety of
answers, but no one ever gets this right. The correct answer is: Jesus' main
message was about "the kingdom of God."
The parables of Jesus were all about this kingdom. Many begin with Jesus
saying, "The kingdom of heaven is like..." (Note: "kingdom of
God" and "kingdom of heaven" mean the same thing. Observant Jews
of the time would prefer "kingdom of heaven" so as not to say the
sacred name of God [YHWH].) In the Lord's Prayer Jesus tells us to pray for
God's kingdom to come on earth, as it is in heaven. After Jesus was baptized
and tempted in the wilderness he began to preach "Repent, for the
kingdom of heaven is near." (Matthew 4:17))
What, to Jesus and his hearers, did "kingdom of God" mean? It
did not mean a place, or a location. It meant, and means
today, the rule or reign of God. Because
Jesus said, “If you see me cast out demons by the finger of God then the
kingdom of God has come to you.” (Matthew 12:28) By this Jesus does not
mean a place. Further, Jesus said his kingdom “is not of this world.”
(John 18:36)
Few things have impacted me as deeply as coming to understand the kingdom of
God. New Testament scholar Michael McClymond writes that this term “is
meant to conjure up the dynamic notion of God powerfully ruling over his
creation, over his people, and over the history of both… the kingdom of God
means God ruling as king. Hence his action upon and his dynamic
relationship to those ruled, rather than any delimited territory, is what is
primary.” (McClymond, Familiar Stranger, 74)
N.T. Wright asks: What would it "look like if we really
believed that the living God was king on earth as in heaven? That, after all,
is the story all four gospels tell." (Wright, N. T., How God Became King: The Forgotten Story of the
Gospels, K62) What would it look like in your life,
in your church family, in your community if, in the midst of it all, the reign
of God was established?
When I understood more about the kingdom of God I began to pray The Lord's
Prayer in a different way. Now I pray like this, because I believe this is how
the early Jesus-followers understood it.
God, let your kingdom come...,
not only in the future,
but here
and now.
God, reign over my heart and mind
NOW.
As I am typing this sentence
As I take my next breath
As I walk into whatever this day has for me
Let things be here
in my home
in my church family
in my community
and beyond,
on this earth,
as things are in heaven.
Truly!
When you read the four
Gospels you discover that Jesus thinks and acts like he is a king. N.T. Wright
says that “throughout his short public career Jesus spoke and acted as if
he was in charge.” (Wright, Simply Jesus, K292) Jesus
“behaved suspiciously like someone trying to start a political party or a
revolutionary movement.” (Ib., K296) For example:
- Mark 6:39
This verse is about Jesus feeding the 5,000. To understand what's going on here
we need to realize that this is a highly politicized situation. It’s volatile
in Galilee under Roman rule. Imagine a country under the
rule of a foreign government. The people are oppressed. Four Jewish
political groups are offering their various suggestions. There’s an
undercurrent of Zealot sympathies.
Their immediate ruler is Herod Antipas. He calls himself
"king," but he’s not actually a king. Yet, he really wants to be
king and have that power. Antipas is an adulterer, a child pornographer, a
drunken party-guy who mostly sits in his palace far to the south of the
sea of Galilee where he spends part of his time cutting off the heads of
prophets.
Jesus views the
people as leaderless, “kingless people.” He has compassion on them, not
simply because they are hungry.
So they sat down in groups of hundreds and
fifties.
- Mark 6:40
Jesus instructs the disciples to organize the crowds into groups, to get ready
for the meal. They were eating in prasia – literally, “garden plots,”
or “flower beds.” New Testament scholar R.T. France says this
is “a remarkably visual impression of the scene, with men lined
up in groups like plots of vegetables on the green grass... The vivid
description suggests the eyewitness account of someone who was present at this
extraordinary picnic.” (France, Gospel of Mark, 267)
Jesus has the people sit down in ranks, in groups of 50s and
100s. He formally organizes them. They look like military
troops. N. T. Wright says, “Anybody watching this might be asking,
“Who does this man think he is?”"
This explains John 6:14-15:
After the people saw the miraculous sign that
Jesus did,
R.T. France sums this up: a strong case can be made for a political,
and indeed military, character to the outcome.
Jesus is King. But not
the kind of king they were looking for.
***
Several years ago, at
Redeemer, we preached through the four Gospels chronologically. This took
almost seven years! Then, we preached through the Pauline Epistles, 1 and 2
Peter, the book of James, Hebrews, and (for over one year) the book of
Revelation.
Verse by verse, bit by bit, brick by brick, we have been laying a foundation
for our people, building a Jesus-literate house to live and move in.
Whenever I preach I expect God to do something. It wasn't
always this way for me. I wasn't taught this. Now I expect the proclamation of
God's Word to be accompanied by demonstrations of his love and power.
Proclaim and
demonstrate.
If Jesus had a method,
that was it. Jesus' words had authority. Jesus' actions validated that
authority. (I do believe that God's Spirit does things in the hearts and minds
of people as his Word is simply proclaimed. But it is instructive to note that,
as Jesus' words had illocutionary power, Jesus also acted in
demonstrations of power. Kind of like "tell and show.")
New Testament scholar Richard Bauckham writes:
Jesus "saw the
kingdom arriving in the sorts of things he was doing: bringing God’s healing
and forgiveness into the lives of people he met, reaching out to those who
were pushed to the margins of God’s people, gathering a community in which
service would replace status. These are the sorts of things that happen
when God rules." (Bauckham, Jesus: A Very Short Introduction, p. 38.
Emphasis mine. This is a beautiful little book on the Real Jesus. Tolle lege!!!)
George Ladd writes:
“Jesus’s ministry and
announcement of the Good News of the Kingdom were characterized by healing, and
most notably by the casting out of demons. He proclaimed the
Good News of the Kingdom of God, and He demonstrated the Good
News of the Kingdom of God by delivering men from the bondage of Satan.”
(Ladd, Gospel of the Kingdom: Scriptural Studies in the Kingdom
of God, 47. Emphasis mine.)
Pick up your Bible and read. Expect Jesus to demonstrate his love and power in
your life today.
***
See also Gordon Fee, Pauline Christology: An Exegetical-Theological Study.
***
Anyone remember the game "Trivial Pursuit?" Christians came out with
their own version, called "Bible Trivia." I played both these games.
I was not good at either. For at least two reasons.
First, I tend to be
slow. When asked a question, I often ruminate on it. The dial in my
brain gets set to 'slow cook', and my chin tilts slightly
downward while being held in my hand. I am....
thinking.... about this.... question.
Secondly, I am not very good at remembering and memorizing Bible facts.
Like:
Q: "Which of the two dreamers in prison with Joseph was executed?"
A: The "chief baker." (Gen. 40:22)
Fortunately, my status as a child of God does not depend on answering these
kind of questions.
I've had difficulties naming Jesus' 12 disciples. I never took the time to
memorize them. I do know that Jesus called twelve to follow him, told them to
leave everything for the sake of his kingdom mission, and that none of them had
graduate degrees.
I also know - and this is what really interests me - that Jesus
"discipled" them, mentored them, to do the things he was doing. This
is more important to understand than what their names were. New Testament
scholar Richard Bauckham explains:
"By accompanying Jesus at all times, they were to learn from him how to
continue his own mission: to heal and to exorcize, to bring the good news of
the kingdom to the destitute and the outcasts." (Bauckham, Jesus: A Very Short Introduction, p. 51)
(Pastors - instead of trying to attract people and grow a big church, mentor
some disciples. Twelve would be enough.)
These twelve no-name Jesus-followers began to do what Jesus did. Jesus equipped
them and gave them authority. He taught them to testify, proclaim, and
demonstrate. He taught them to tell and show, show and tell.
I may not remember the names of "the Twelve." I do remember what
Jesus mentored them to do. This so impressed me that at Redeemer we changed our
mission statement to read:
Jesus and his followers came to proclaim the good news, drive out demons, and
heal people everywhere.
***
"For general purposes used here,
- Craig Keener, Miracles: The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts -
Vol 1, 110
I have witnessed miracles. Here's one that happened with us at Redeemer,
which Craig Keener records in his book Miracles, and Lee
Strobel share in The Case for Miracles.
Craig writes:
"In March 2006, after a spiritual retreat in Branson, Missouri, Carl
[Cocherell] was checking the oil in his car when he stepped down and felt
a sharp crack. Although he was a Vietnam veteran, he says that he had never
felt such pain, and he fainted. X-rays in the emergency room in the Branson
hospital revealed such a serious break of the ankle that after setting the
break the orthopedist ordered him to stay overnight. During that night, though,
Carl recounts that he experienced a voice from the Lord assuring him that his
foot was not broken. After putting Carl's foot in a cast and warning that he
would need months of therapy, the doctor referred him to his family physician.
Carl's wife drove them back to Michigan, and the next day his family doctor
sent him to the hospital for some more X-rays. After receiving the X-rays, his
doctor called him into the office and explained that there were no breaks, or
even tissue indicating where the break had been. "You never had a broken
ankle," the doctor explained.
Carl pointed out the X-rays from Missouri. "That is a broken
ankle," the doctor admitted. But now there was no sign that he had even
had one, so the doctor removed the cast right away.
Apart from the ankle being blue for a couple of
days, Carl had no problem with it. At church that Sunday, where he used no
crutches or other support, he testified how God healed him. Carl provided me
with the radiology reports from before and after the healing supporting his
claim."
- Keener, Miracles, 440
I'll add that Carl is especially sensitive to his feet, since he is a
long-distance runner who has run the Boston Marathon. And, I have the radiology
reports sitting next to me in my office at home.
Jesus performed miracles. "Scholars often note that miracles characterized
Jesus's historical activity no less than his teaching and prophetic activities did.
So central are miracle reports to the Gospels that one could remove them only
if one regarded the Gospels as preserving barely any genuine information about
Jesus. Indeed, it is estimated that more than 31 percent of the verses in
Mark's Gospel involve miracles in some way, or some 40 percent of his
narrative! Very few critics would deny the presence of any miracles in the
earliest material about Jesus." (Ib., 23-24)
Western culture, influenced by David Hume's arguments and the Enlightenment,
dismisses the possibility of miracles. Thomas Jefferson, architect of the
"American Jesus," insisted that miracles "were an affront to the
demands of reason and the laws of nature, and Jesus had performed not a
one." (Stephen Prothero, American Jesus, p. 23).
Today, remember that all things are possible with God, as you connect with
Christ.
***
I had only been a
Jesus-follower for a year when I had my first physical encounter with a demon.
It happened this way.
I was working as Youth Leader at Tabor Lutheran Church in my hometown of
Rockford, Illinois. One day the pastor invited me to a meeting. A few of our
long-attending members had been exposed to the charismatic movement and were
now speaking in tongues. They wanted to talk with church leadership about this.
I was unfamiliar with charismatic phenomena, and brand new to the study of
Scripture, so I just listened to the conversation.
The people shared their newfound spiritual experiences. Our leaders listened
and responded. After a lot of dialogue, questions, and interaction we
prayed. This is when it happened.
I can't remember who prayed out loud. I do remember that, as we were praying, I
felt like my soul and body were being assaulted by something evil. I had
never felt anything like this before. I didn't know how to interpret it. I do
remember silently calling out, crying out, "Jesus! Help!"
After the meeting I called Linda. I was dating her at the time. As
I shared what had just happened to me I was crying. "I am really
weirding out on her," I thought. I did not know how to interpret
this. Experientially, it was real. Something did just happen,
something I had never experienced before. I told her words I had never
spoken in my life: "I think I was attacked by a demon."
Jesus believed in demons. New Testament scholar Richard Bauckham
writes:
"Jesus’ exorcisms
had the special value of dramatizing his power to overcome the forces of evil
and to rescue those who were enslaved to them. He said: If it is by the
finger of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come to you. (Luke 11:20) Though Jesus was by no means the
only Jewish exorcist, so far as we know he was the only one to link his
exorcisms with the new thing that God was doing: the coming of the kingdom. For
this to have been at all plausible, he must have been an exceptionally
successful exorcist, something which is also suggested by the fact that
other exorcists apparently took to using Jesus’ name as the word of power with
which they drove out demons. Jesus’ success as an exorcist provoked his enemies
to find an alternative explanation for it. They said that Jesus was in league
with the powers of evil and was himself possessed by the prince of the
demons." (Bauckham, Jesus: A Very Short Introduction, p. 40)
From the beginning of the Gospels to their very end, Jesus lived with a warfare
worldview. The real battle for him, as the apostle Paul knew, was not against
flesh and blood, but against spiritual principalities and powers. (Ephesians 6:12)
After my encounter with a demon I began to consider their actual existence.
Now, many years later, I reason this way.
1. Textually, I find the stories of Jesus's demonic encounters to be
historical.
2. Jesus-followers in non-Westernized cultures affirm the reality of satan and
demons, and angels as well. I've been in these countries, and am friends with
Asian and African scholars (including some Fulbright scholars) who embrace the
reality of a supra-natural realm. (= beyond what is natural) Belief or disbelief
in satan and demons (and angels) is a matter of worldview, not intelligence.
3. The worldview of Christian theism sees reality as more than merely physical.
I embrace that worldview. I am not under the Enlightenment
spell of metaphysical naturalism. I am not an anti-supernaturalist who
denies the reality of miracles and non-physical realities.
4. In the Gospels Jesus encountered and cast out demons. Why wouldn't we
do the same?
And defeat them, as Jesus did, in Jesus' name.
4 You, dear children, are from God
and have overcome them,
because the one who is in you
***
FOR FURTHER READING
Greg Boyd, God at War: The Bible and Spiritual Conflict;
and Satan & the Problem of Evil: Constructing a Trinitarian
Warfare Theodicy.
Charles Kraft, Defeating Dark Angels: Breaking Demonic Oppressions in
the Believer's Life. Note: See Kraft's Christianity with Power: Your Worldview and Experience of
the Supernatural. Kraft is an anthropologist (formerly at Michigan
State University) and missiologist at Fuller Theological Seminary. When I read
Clark Pinnock's introduction to this book I knew I needed to read it. See esp.
the chapter "Jesus Had a Worldview." It's scholarly and readable.
M. Scott Peck, People of the Lie. For me it was chilling to
read this book, written by Peck the psychiatrist as he tells clinical stories
of demon possession.
Does Satan Exist? Greg Boyd's "S.I.N.
Hypothesis"
John Calvin on Demons
Richard Beck, Reviving Old Scratch: Demons and the Devil for Doubters
and the Disenchanted.
I am not a philosophical
naturalist or physicalist. Therefore, I do not believe reality is only
physical. Once one admits there are non-physical elements of reality the door
is open to logically believe in spiritual beings, such as angels and demons. To
examine problems with philosophical naturalism see, e.g., texts such as: Naturalism, by Stewart Goetz and Charles
Taliaferro; The Waning of Materialism, by Robert Koons
(ed.) and George Bealer (ed.); and The Recalcitrant Imago Dei: Human Persons and the Failure
of Naturalism, by J.P. Moreland.
***
I was meeting with one
of Detroit's Muslim leaders in his office in Dearborn, at the Islamic Center of
America. He picked up a Qur'an and said, "The Qur'an is a rulebook. If I
didn't have this rulebook to tell me what to do and what not to do, I wouldn't
do the right thing."
He shared some specific
Muslim rules, and emphasized that God gave these rules to prevent us from doing
wrong. For example, the Qur'an instructs people to pray morning, noon, and
night. My Muslim friend said, "If the Qur'an didn't tell I am supposed to
pray I would not pray. So I am thankful that God gave me these rules."
While he was sharing I couldn't help thinking how different Christianity is
from Islam, and how very different Jesus is from Muhammed. Jesus didn't come to
articulate some rules for living, he came to change the human heart. If a
person's heart could be changed, then rules wouldn't be needed. If a
person loved God, and understood prayer as conversation with the God they
adore, they wouldn't need to be commanded to communicate with him. Out of
heart-desire, they would pray.
Dallas Willard expresses this when he writes:
"The Revolution of Jesus is in the first place and continuously a
revolution of the human heart or spirit. It did not and does not proceed by
means of the formation of social institutions and laws, the outer forms of our
existence, intending that these would then impose a good order of life upon
people who come under their power. Rather, his is a revolution of character,
which proceeds by changing people from the inside through ongoing personal
relationship to God in Christ and to one another." (Willard, Renovation of the Heart: Putting on the Character of
Christ)
This, says Willard, is the "Revolution of Jesus."
There are so many examples of this in the Gospels that it's hard to choose
among them. For example, Jesus said, "Where your treasure is, there will
be your heart also." (Matthew 6:21) Commenting on this New Testament
scholar Craig Evans writes: "The type of treasure that one accumulates is
a reliable indicator of what one values." (Evans, Matthew, 154)
In other words, look
around at your stuff; there you will see your true heart. Or, look at your
datebook and what you do with your time; there you will view your true
heart.
If Jesus can wrap
himself around your heart and transform it, your life and choices and things
and goals will look different because they are different, due
to a radical change of heart. As Proverbs 4:23 says, "Guard your heart
with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life."
The mouth speaks what the heart is full of. (Matthew 12:34) Jesus came to fill our hearts
with himself.
Willard writes: "He saves us by realistic restoration of our heart to God
and then by dwelling there with his Father through the distinctively divine
Spirit. The heart thus renovated and inhabited is the only real hope of
humanity on earth."
***
While flying to Bangkok
I had many tear-filled moments. I was reading Richard Stearns's heartbreaking,
hopeful The Hole in Our Gospel: What Does God Expect of Us?, and
Siddharth Kara's soul- troubling Sex Trafficking: Inside the Business of Modern Slavery.
In Kara's book the poorest of the poor are bought and sold as sex slaves to
satisfy the desires of the rich. In Stearns's book we see rich Christians
watching flat-screen TVs and viewing the world's poor suffer.
Something is wrong with this picture.
Enter Jesus.
Jesus...
ii. ...was
not impressed with the rich and famous. Jesus mostly viewed the rich and famous
as spiritually bankrupt. It's near-impossible for the rich to come under
the rule of God, taught Jesus. (Mark 10:23) Note: "Anyone earning fifty
thousand a year has an income higher than 99 percent of the people in the
world. Simply stated, by comparison the average American is, well,
wealthy." (Stearns, 266)
iii. ...did
not come to raise money for his ministry. Jesus didn't carry
cash. Jesus was always giving away to others. Ironically, Judas
carried what little money the entourage of Jesus had. Since Judas had
charge of the money, some thought Jesus was telling him to buy what was
needed for the festival, or to give something to the poor. (John 13:29)
vi. ...was
not self-seeking. Jesus came, not to be served, but to serve others. (Matthew 20:28)
Scott Rodin writes, in his book Stewards in the Kingdom:
"We must never for single moment lose sight of the stark realization that
whenever we deal with money, we are dealing with dynamite. That is the one day
that which we control, the next day becomes the controller. Such dynamite must
be defused, and the greatest defuser that we as Christians have at our disposal
is the opportunity to take that which seeks to dominate us and simply give it
away. Think about it. There is not greater expression of money's total lack of
dominance over us or of its low priority in our lives than when we can with joy
and peace, give it away for the Lord's work. You cannot worship the God of
mammon and be a free and cheerful giver. Likewise, you cannot serve the living
God and be a hoarder of his resources. Giving, both how we give and how much we
give, is the clearest outward expression of who our God really is. Our check
stubs speak more honestly of our priorities than our church memberships."
(Quoted in Stearns, 212)
For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for
money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.
- Paul, advising Timothy, in 1 Timothy 6:10
***
A few reviews of Stearns's book:
"With passionate urging and earnestness, Rich Stearns challenges
Christians to embrace the whole Gospel of Jesus Christ by embracing the
neediest and most vulnerable among us. After reading the moving stories, the
compelling facts and figures, and Stearns' excellent application of scripture
and his own experiences at World Vision, you will no doubt be asking yourself:
What should I do?" ----Chuck Colson, Founder, Prison Fellowship
"Read this compelling story and urgent call for change-Richard Stearns is
a contemporary Amos crying 'let justice roll down like waters….' Justice is a
serious gospel-prophetic mandate. Far too many American Christians for too long
a time have left the cause to 'others.' Read it as an altar call." --
--Eugene H. Peterson, translator of The Message, Professor Emeritus of
Spiritual Theology, Regent College, Vancouver, BC
"This book is a clarion call for the church to arise and answer the
question, Who is my neighbor? If you read this book, you will be inspired, but
if you do what this book is asking, you will be forever changed." --- T.D.
Jakes, pastor of the Potter's House of Dallas
***
I have read through the four Gospels many times. Their words are both familiar
and unfamiliar to me.
They are familiar.
I have read and heard and taught and preached the words of
Jesus many times.
They are unfamiliar. I
have many moments, indeed I often wonder if they are not increasing, where I am
stopped in heart and mind and think, "I've never really seen this or heard
this before." It happened to me several years ago when reading Matthew
chapter 25.
The fiery passion of Jesus is seen in Matthew 25:31-46 when he talks about
actively loving and caring for "the least of these." When I read
these words I have wondered, who are the real followers of the Real Jesus? If
you can, stop now before reading further and slow-read these
verses.
And tremble.
Behold Jesus, the "Familiar Stranger."
N. T. Wright says that Jesus “ate and drank with all sorts and conditions
of people, sometimes in an atmosphere of celebration. He ate with ‘sinners’,
and kept company with people normally on or beyond the borders of respectable
society… This caused regular offence to some of the pious.” (N.T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God, 149)
"Sheep" are actual Jesus-followers. They sacrifice their lives for
others who are "less" than they are. They are the
"righteous," and their destiny is "eternal life." The sheep
of the Shepherd are always moving downward into their surrounding culture.
There's a great, separating, spiritual-litmus-test going on here, a
Christ-defining either-or. The level of seriousness is intense. Jesus
came for the least and the lost. Not to actively do the
same is to be a goatish unbeliever. Because someone who doesn't actually follow
after Jesus is an unbeliever, right? True belief always leads to active
following; theoretical-religious belief is dead because it lacks deeds.
I am the judge of none of this. But I can read.
“For I was hungry, while you had all you needed. I was thirsty, but you
drank bottled water. I was a stranger, and you wanted me deported. I needed
clothes, but you needed more clothes. I was sick, and you pointed out the
behaviors that led to my sickness. I was in prison, and you said I was getting
what I deserved.”
- Matthew 25, paraphrased by Richard Stearns, in The Hole in our Gospel, 59.
For it isn't to the palace that the Christ child
comes
But to shepherds and street people, hookers and
bums
***
When I was growing up,
my parents did not allow a deck of playing cards in the house. Card-playing was
wrong, it was sin, and therefore made us spiritually impure. I didn't
know why this was so. As a child I didn't question it or find it weird.
When I became a
Jesus-follower I began to wonder where this purity law came from. I found
out that, among the Finnish Lutherans of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan where
my family was from and where I was born, card-playing was associated with
drinking and gambling. Someone who was a Christian didn't drink, gamble, or
play cards. We were to be "set apart" from such things because they
were impure and brought stain to our souls. Put biblically, we were to be
"holy" (Greek hagios, 'set apart'). God would be pleased
if we kept the cards out of our house.
This is called a "holiness code." Every culture has one, with
accompanying purity laws. Purity laws are lists of religious 'Dos' and
'Don'ts'. For example, during Jesus's time, one could not touch a dead body lest
it make you ritually impure. Or eat certain foods.
"Impurity" is
a sort of invisible dirt that people pick up through contact with various
things. In ancient Judaism one contracted impurity through contact with
things like corpses, sexual fluids, other genital discharges, skin diseases,
and, in the case of women, through childbirth.
New Testament scholar Richard Bauckham writes:
"Originally, in
Judaism, purity and impurity only really mattered when one visited the
Temple. God’s presence in the Temple made it a kind of pure space that
would be defiled by someone in a state of impurity. But by the 1st
century AD, there was a tendency to think that, since purity was a good thing,
one should aim at being pure as much as possible.
All over Palestine, archaeologists have found ritual baths [mikvah], which indicate that it was not
just groups such as the Pharisees who cared about purity. Many ordinary
people evidently took care to remove impurity when they contracted it. It was
part of the desire to be the holy people of the holy
God." (Bauckham, Jesus: A Very Short Introduction, p. 23)
Jesus violated many of the existing purity laws. In doing this he clashed with
the religious leaders of his time. Larry Hurtado and Chris Keith write:
"Jesus’s healing and teaching caused turmoil for Jewish leaders because
it created a point of access— Jesus himself— to forgiveness and purity outside
the sacrificial system and the temple. It also therefore
created alternative definitions for who is in God’s community, who is out, and
who decides. Jesus placed himself at the center of God’s restoration of Israel,
a place that Jewish tradition reserved for God. These symbolic claims from
Jesus, among other aspects of his ministry, are what infuriated the Jewish
leadership in the Gospels." (Hurtado, Larry; Keith, Chris, Jesus among Friends and Enemies: A Historical and
Literary Introduction to Jesus in the Gospels, Kindle Locations
992-996; emphasis mine)
Jesus redefined purity, giving us a new way of attaining it before God. Many
impure people, hearing of this, sought out Jesus. Jesus was now the
road, the door, the Way, the point of access, into the family and presence
of a holy God.
The hemorrhaging woman was impure according to Leviticus 15: 25; the ten lepers
were impure according to Leviticus 13– 14; the woman who washes Jesus’s feet,
if a prostitute, was impure according to Leviticus 15: 17– 18;
and Zacchaeus was likely considered impure because he consistently came in
contact with impure gentiles and handled their money. Jesus’s healing
of the bleeding woman, lepers, and sinful woman restored their purity, just
as dining with Zacchaeus as a legitimate “son of Abraham” symbolically
restores Zacchaeus to Israel. (From Hurtado and Keith, K986-991; emphasis mine)
Bauckham says the key question for Jews during this time was how to maintain
purity and be God's holy people in the situation of the hyper-impure Roman
occupation. Facing this situation, the Pharisees "greatly extended the
purity rules in the Torah and made purity a major concern of daily life"
(Bauckham, 25)
In doing this he
shattered and subverted ritual law. Jesus disregarded the existing
purity taboos and approached both women and Gentiles, thereby
demonstrating his contempt for the prejudices of purity.
Jesus moved outside the
prevailing religious system of atoning sacrifices, and independently - in
himself and by his authority - proclaimed the forgiveness of sin and thus
restored purity and holiness to people.
2 A man with leprosy came and knelt before
him
and said, “Lord, if you are willing,
The Real Jesus came to make people clean, holy and acceptable to God.
***
The following story
is not true.
On July 4, 2018, as America was celebrating Independence Day, John Piippo drove
into Washington, D.C. in a rusty, beat-up car. A million people had gathered in
the National Mall. A breathtaking display of fireworks was coming to a close as
the military band led the people in the singing of the National Anthem.
Piippo walked through
the crowd and made his way to the top of the Lincoln Memorial. As the singing
ended he grabbed the microphone and cried out, "You who have ears to
hear, listen! I am the way to freedom! All who want Independence, follow
me!"
From that day on our
government leaders made plans to put Piippo to death.
False. How absurd to view oneself as the fulfillment of over 200 years
celebrating America's greatest holiday!
But... consider Jesus. "The Festival of Dedication then took place
in Jerusalem. It was winter, and Jesus was walking in the temple in Solomon's
portico."
-John 10:22-23
Uh-oh. It was Hanukkah. What is Jesus doing? Two things. He is attending the
Festival as an observant Jew. And, he will interpret the Festival, indeed
every Jewish Festival, in terms of himself. Craig Keener writes:
John's "Gospel connects Jesus' mission with features of each of the
festivals: Jesus is portrayed, for example, as a (probably) Passover lamb.
Likewise, he appears as the foundation stone from which living water would
flow, a hope specifically celebrated at the festival of Tabernacles. John's
Hanukkah passage might also make a similar point. Some scholars suggest that
this passage depicts Jesus as consecrated or dedicated to God the way this
festival celebrated the altar's rededication (cf. 10:36; elsewhere this Gospel
connects Jesus with the temple)." (Keener, Jesus and Hanukkah: John 10:22-23)
Jesus takes Israel's
"Fourth of July" and sees himself as its real meaning, as that
which it has always been pointing to. N. T. Wright
writes: “Understand the Exodus, and you understand a good deal about
Judaism. And about Jesus. Jesus chose Passover, the great national festival
celebrating the Exodus, to make his crucial move.” (Simply Jesus, 33)
As the cries of Passover lambs are heard in Jerusalem, Jesus hangs on a cross
atoning for the sins of humanity. Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the
sin of the world! And before that, recall how Jesus ate that last Passover meal
with his disciples, and radically reinterpreted the wine and the bread in terms
of his own life and death.
Jesus is the "new Moses" who is leading his people in a
"new Exodus" to freedom.
***
I was born in the first
half of the last century. In 1949. Some things were very different then. Like
the Sabbath laws.
I grew up in Rockford, Illinois, in the 1950s. Then, no one shopped on Sundays.
Restaurants and grocery stores were closed. Gas stations took Sundays off.
Every restaurant was "Chick Fil 'A." Only
a little over fifty years ago, that was one way we "remembered
the Sabbath to keep it holy."
Sabbath. Shabbat! (Hebrew) Which means: Cease! Remember
the Sabbath Day by setting it apart. (Exodus 20:8)
In your weekly planner
set aside one day a week especially dedicated to God. Which meant, for
observant Christians and Jews, do no work on this day. Which raises the
question: How does one define 'work'?
Linda and I were in Jerusalem on a Sabbath Day. It was here that I learned
something about the meaning of work. We stayed in a beautiful hotel, on the
25th floor. What a view of the city we had! The hotel had six elevators.
One day I rode an
elevator non-stop to the first floor, got some food, and then boarded a
different elevator to ascend. A Hasidic Jewish man got on with me. The elevator
stopped on floor one, but no one was there to get on. The door closed. Up we
went, only to stop on floor two. Again, no one got on. I peeked outside the
elevator to see if someone had pushed the button. No one was there.
This elevator stopped on
every floor. The Jewish man got off on floor 22. I had three more stops on my
way to the 25th floor. I had boarded a special "Sabbath
elevator." The reason it stopped on every floor was because pushing an
elevator button was seen as "work," and Jews are to do no
work on the Sabbath. Think of this as you read the following.
Uh-oh. You don’t make mud on the Sabbath, because that’s doing work!
This irritates the religious leaders. How does the man feel about the
fact that he can now see? Answer: very, very good.
Welcome to what scholars call the "Sabbath Controversies." Jesus was
controversial.
The former blind man has
to tell the story a second time, now speaking to a new audience, and adding the
dramatic note that it was the Sabbath. The crowd, understandably curious,
wanted to know how the healing had happened.
The Pharisees ask the same question but with different intent. They want to
determine whether any Sabbath laws have been broken. The man recounts his
healing with great brevity (v. 15).
Many scholars see in
this an exasperation with having to retell his story. Perhaps the now-seeing
man senses their displeasure and sticks to the bare facts, as peasants have a
tendency to do when interrogated by the junta--not an inappropriate image for
this story, as we will see.
But others asked, "How
can a sinner do such miraculous signs?" So they were divided.
Jesus is seen as a "sinner," He's off the mark. Why? Because he works
on the Sabbath. The Pharisees only show interest in the Sabbath
violation. This is wild… because A BLIND BEGGAR JUST GOT HEALED!!!! Here
is an example of how rules and structures – while they can be good and
even necessary – lock people out of what God may be doing.
The controversy gets white-hot in Mark 2, when Jesus makes a shocking self-referential
claim. We read:
25 He answered, “Have you never read what
David did
27 Then he said to them,
New Testament scholar Michael Wilkins writes that we have here, coming from
Jesus, "a remarkable clarification of his identity and authority."
(Wilkins, The NIV Application Commentary: Matthew, 441)
Jesus is Lord of all.
Jesus is Lord of the Sabbath.
***
One Sunday morning this past summer I saw a person I did not
recognize at Redeemer. I went to her and asked her name. "Is this your
first time with us?"
"I've been here before, but it's hard to get here since I have to
walk."
That morning was cold, rainy, and very windy. "Where did you walk
from?"
"LaSalle," she said. "When I am in this building I sense the
presence of God."
This woman walked 5 miles in the cold, wind, and rain to be in the presence of
God!
For ancient Israel the place to be, when it came to experiencing God, was the
Temple. Observant, God-seeking Jews and Gentiles would travel, sometimes
for hundreds of miles, to the great festivals held in Jerusalem that were
centered around the activity of the Temple. Richard Bauckham writes:
"The Temple was the symbolic center of Jewish faith and it was also the
place where God was accessible to his people in a special way. It was God’s
holy presence in the Temple that made Jerusalem the holy city and Palestine the
holy land. It was God’s presence in the Temple that made it the only place
where sacrifice could be offered." (Bauckham, Jesus: A Very Short Introduction, p. 21).
New Testament scholar Michael McClymond adds:
“The overriding importance of the Temple in first-century Judaism becomes
apparent in the persistence of the Jewish people in rebuilding and maintaining
the Temple and in the large place given to it in ancient literature. Bruce
Chilton notes that the Jewish Temple was renowned throughout the world and was
perhaps “the largest religious structure in the world at that
time.”” (McClymond, Familiar Stranger, 53)
In Jesus's final weeks on earth we see him in Jerusalem, walking daily up the
mountain to teach and stir the religious pot in the Temple
courtyards. Jesus intimately referred to the Temple as "my Father's
house." It was part of his family estate.
The Temple was the House of God, the spatial locale where God
especially manifested his presence. It was always intended to be a House of
Prayer, where the dialogue happened between God and the people of God. It
was a most holy, set-apart place. But, sadly, no longer.
As Jesus the Light of the World stood in the courtyard,
the Temple had become a place of spiritual darkness. Nothing
more devastating could be said than Jesus's words in Matthew 23:13:
“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees,
you hypocrites! You shut the door of the kingdom of heaven in people’s
faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying
to."
Because of this, Jesus
said the Temple is going down. People won't worship God on this mountain
anymore. Not one brick of this magnificent structure will be left standing. It
is hard to grasp the enormity of what Jesus was saying. Imagine someone walking
in the outer courts of the White House in Washington, D.C., openly proclaiming
its impending ruin.
This Temple will soon be gone. It happened in 70 A.D. But the Temple
will remain. Because Jesus has already said, with jaw-dropping self-referential
clarity:
And:
But the temple he had spoken of was his body.-
John 2:21
Jesus reinterprets the
Temple in terms of his own self. Jesus hosts the presence of God. As we abide
in Jesus, corporately and individually, the followers of Jesus become portable
sanctuaries that host God's manifest presence.
***
One little sentence can say a lot. Here's a sentence that
says much about the Real Jesus.
Ἀρχὴ τοῦ εὐαγγελίου Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ [υἱοῦθεοῦ].
New Testament scholar Chris Keith writes:
"Seemingly insignificant, this short sentence is packed with
important information concerning Jesus. It identifies Jesus as the long-awaited
Christ (christos, “Messiah”) and Son of God. With both these titles,
Mark taps into Jewish expectations of a kingly deliverer who would rid Jews of
foreign domination and reestablish Israel by reestablishing God’s reign in
Jerusalem." (Chris Keith, "Jesus Inside and Outside the New
Testament," in Hurtado and Keith, Jesus among Friends and Enemies: A Historical and
Literary Introduction to Jesus in the Gospels, Kindle
Locations 835-842; see Keith's The
Jesus Blog, highly recommended by Ben Witherington)
The word "Christ" (Χριστοῦ) means, literally,
"anointed one." From this we get an English word that's not
so much used anymore, "to christen," which can mean:
chris·ten
Jesus of Nazareth was "christened" by the Father at his
baptism when heaven opened, the Spirit of God descended on him like a
dove, and a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, whom I
love; with him I am well pleased.” (Matthew 3:17)
Jesus is like a ship constructed for the purpose of sailing stormy seas to
save people who have made shipwrecks of their own lives. At Jesus'
baptism the Father launched the Christ into the dark waters of corrupted human
existence.
Jesus is Messiah, "the Christ."
***
NOTE:
The book if Isaiah has been referred to as "the fifth Gospel" because
of its Messianic expectations that fit the historical Jesus. Here's an
excellent book to enter into this discussion -The Gospel According to Isaiah 53: Encountering the
Suffering Servant in Jewish and Christian Theology, eds. Darrell
Bock and Mitch Glaser. Some very good scholars contribute essays, to
include Bock, Michael Brown, Craig Evans, and Walter Kaiser. See the book
reviewed here.
***
Jesus died on a cross. He died as he lived; viz., below the bottom
rung of the honor-shame ladder.
Jesus, the Supreme Somebody, was viewed as a nobody, and crucified
as a nothing.
"Jesus was executed in the manner regularly reserved for
insurrectionists."
The crucified Jesus, wrote philosopher Marilyn McCord Adams, is
the horror-bearer. (Adams, Horrendous Evils and the Goodness of God)
God identified with the abandoned and godforsaken because Jesus the Son was
executed in a manner regularly reserved for such people. The Word became
expendable flesh and died as one of us. Tim Keller writes:
"Christianity alone among the world religions claims that God
became uniquely and fully human in Jesus Christ and therefore knows firsthand
despair, rejection, loneliness, poverty, bereavement, torture, and
imprisonment. On the cross, he went beyond even the worst human suffering and
experienced cosmic rejection and pain that exceeds ours as infinitely as his
knowledge and power exceeds ours. In his death, God suffers in love,
identifying with the abandoned and godforsaken." (Keller, The
Reason for God, 29-30)
Life without God is, as many atheistic existentialist philosophers
have acknowledged, absurd and meaningless. Enter Jesus.
"As the Christian sees things, God does not stand idly by,
cooly observing the suffering of His creatures. He enters into and shares our
suffering. He endures the anguish of seeing his son, the second person of the
Trinity, consigned to the bitterly cruel and shameful death of the cross. Some
theologians claim that God cannot suffer. I believe they are wrong. God’s
capacity for suffering, I believe, is proportional to his greatness; it exceeds
our capacity for suffering in the same measure as his capacity for knowledge
exceeds ours. Christ was prepared to endure the agonies of hell itself; and
God, the Lord of the universe, was prepared to endure the suffering consequent
upon his son’s humiliation and death. He was prepared to accept this suffering
in order to overcome sin, and death, and the evils that afflict our world, and
to confer on us a life more glorious than we can imagine." (Alvin
Plantinga, "Self-Profile," in Alvin Plantinga, ed. James E. Tomberlin and
Peter Van Inwagen, Profiles, vol. 5, 36)
He bore our scandal. Jesus wore our horror. And, by his
wounds we are healed.
***
Christians didn't celebrate Christmas for the first few hundred
years. But they did celebrate the cross and the resurrection.
There is no mention of birth celebrations in the writings of early
Christian writers such as Irenaeus (c. 130–200) or Tertullian (c.
160–225).
Origen of Alexandria (c. 165–264) goes so far as to mock Roman celebrations of
birth anniversaries, dismissing them as “pagan” practices—a strong indication
that Jesus’ birth was not marked with similar festivities at that place and
time. As far as we can tell, Christmas was not celebrated at all at this
point.
Finally, in about 200 C.E., a Christian teacher in Egypt makes reference to the
date Jesus was born. The earliest mention of December 25 as Jesus’ birthday
comes from a mid-fourth-century Roman almanac that lists the death dates of
various Christian bishops and martyrs. The first date listed, December 25, is
marked: natus Christus in Betleem Judeae: “Christ was born in
Bethlehem of Judea.”
In about 400 A.D., Augustine of Hippo mentions a local dissident Christian
group, the Donatists, who apparently kept Christmas festivals on December 25,
but refused to celebrate the Epiphany on January 6, regarding it as an
innovation." (For more see "How December 25 Became Christmas." And
note: the popular idea that December 25 is rooted in paganism is itself a myth
- see the cited essay for this, too.)
However, early Jesus-followers did celebrate Easter. The
cross and the resurrection of Christ were the primary realities of the
Jesus-life.
I believe in the birth of Christ. I have not invested as much study time in
Jesus's birth as I have in his resurrection. The Cross and Resurrection are THE
BIG ONES.
I have spent the better part of my lifetime studying these
realities. As Paul himself wrote, "If Christ is not been
raised, then our preaching is useless and so is your faith." Faith rises
and falls on the matter of the historical resurrection.
Rewind forty-seven years. I am 21, and a brand new Jesus-follower. One of
my pastors, and one of my two theistic philosophical mentors (William Lane Craig
and John Peterson) presented me with a historical argument for the resurrection
of Christ. I present it to you below.
One more thing: I am not, nor ever have been, a philosophical
naturalist/materialist/physicalist. I am convinced of the poverty of philosophical
physicalism. I believe - more now than forty-seven years ago - in a God who is
all-powerful and can resurrect dead people.
So, I believe...
1. There is a God.
2. God raised Christ from the dead.
3. All who are "in Him" shall rise with Him.
*****
(Adapted from William Lane Craig, debate with Richard Carrier;
Question 103 at reasonablefaith.org; “Contemporary
Scholarship and the Historical Evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus Christ,”
at reasonablefaith.org)
· Focus on the historical case for the
resurrection of Jesus.
o Argue NOT from the Bible as God’s Word,
but argue HISTORICALLY using the ancient texts as historical records,
historical documents.
· All historical truths are probableistic
(inductive). The historian asks, re. historical facts – what is the best, most
probable explanation for the facts? This is called abductive reasoning, or
inference to the best explanation.
· Presuppose the existence of God.
o An atheist will not share this presupposition.
o The atheist will assume, therefore, that
supernatural events are impossible.
Defend two major contentions.
#1 – There are 4 historical facts that must be explained by any
historical hypothesis.
· Jesus’ burial (Jesus was buried by Joseph
of Arimathea in a tomb)
· The discovery of his empty tomb
· Jesus’ post-mortem appearances
· The origin of his disciples’ belief in
the resurrection
#2 – The best explanation of those facts is that God raised Jesus
from the dead.
#1 – the following 4 facts are accepted by the majority of New Testament
scholars. (NOTE: If a person wants to study the historicity of the New
Testament documents, read the works of New Testament scholars. But aren’t they
biased? And, if they are biased, can we trust them?
Fact 1 – after the crucifixion Jesus was buried by Joseph of Arimathea in a
tomb.
Evidence: Jesus’ burial is multiply-attested in various independent
sources.
This does NOT mean the burial stories are in the four Gospels. It means that
the source material Mark used is different from the source
material of Matthew and Luke, and they are all different from John, and these
are all different from Paul’s sources.
The burial account is part of Mark's source material for the story of Jesus'
Passion.
This is a very early source which is probably
based on eyewitness testimony and dates to within several
years of Jesus' crucifixion. (See Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses.
Moreover, Paul in his first letter to the church
of Corinth also cites an extremely early source for Jesus' burial, which most
scholars date to within a few years or even months of the crucifixion.
Independent testimony to Jesus' burial by Joseph
is also found in the special sources used by Matthew and Luke and in the Gospel
of John. Historians consider themselves to have hit historical pay dirt when
they have two independent accounts of the same event. But we
have the remarkable number of at least five independent sources for Jesus'
burial, some of which are extraordinarily early.
Mark's Passion source didn't end with Jesus'
burial, but with the story of the empty tomb, which is tied to the burial
account verbally and grammatically.
Moreover, Matthew and John rely on independent
sources about the empty tomb. Jesus' empty tomb is also mentioned in the early
sermons independently preserved in the Acts of the Apostles (2.29; 13.36), and
it's implied by the very old tradition handed on by Paul in his first letter to
the Corinthian church (I Cor. 15.4). Thus, we have multiple, early attestation
of the fact of the empty tomb in at least four independent sources. (See
reasonablefaith.org, Question 103)
Craig writes:
Notice the focus is on the early,
independent sources used by the New Testament authors.
First and foremost is the Passion source which
Mark used in writing his Gospel. Whereas most of Mark's Gospel consists of
short anecdotal stories strung like pearls on a string, when we get to the
final week of Jesus' life we encounter a continuous narrative of events from
the Jewish plot during the Feast of Unleavened Bread through Jesus' burial and
empty tomb.
The events of the Last Supper, arrest,
execution, burial, and empty tomb were central to the identity of early
Christian communities. According to James D. G. Dunn, "The most obvious
explanation of this feature is that the framework was early on fixed within the
tradition process and remained so throughout the transition to written
Gospels. This suggests in turn a tradition rooted in the memory of the
participants and put into that framework by them" (J. D. G. Dunn,Jesus
Remembered, 2003, pp. 765-6.)
The dominant view among NT scholars is therefore
that the Passion narratives are early and based on eyewitness
testimony (Mark Allen Powell, JAAR 68 [2000]: 171).
Indeed, according to Richard Bauckham, many scholars date Mark's
Passion narrative no later than the 40s (recall that Jesus died in
A.D. 30) (Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, 2006, p.
243). So we're dealing here with an extraordinarily early source.
Matthew and Luke, re. the burial story, draw on
resources different from Mark. Craig writes:
Now Matthew and Luke probably knew Mark's
Gospel, as you note, and used it as one of their sources. But the
differences between Mark and the other Synoptics point to other independent
sources behind Matthew and Luke. These differences are not plausibly
explained as due to editorial changes introduced by Matthew and Luke because of
(i) their sporadic and uneven nature (e.g., Mark: "tomb which had
been hewn out of rock"; Matthew: "tomb which he hewed in the
rock"; (ii) the inexplicable omission of events like Pilate's
interrogating the centurion; and (iii) Matthew and Luke's agreeing in their wording
in contrast to Mark (e.g., Matt. 27.58 = Lk. 23.52 "This man went
in to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus." Also the phrase translated
"wrapped it in linen" is identical in Matthew and Luke. How
could Matthew and Luke have independently chosen exactly the
same wording in contrast to Mark? They both probably had another source. Indeed,
as we'll see when we get to the empty tomb account, differences between
Matthew and Luke emerge that suggest multiple sources.
What about the Gospel of John? Craig writes:
John is generally believed to be independent of
the Synoptic Gospels. As Paul Barnett points out, "Careful comparison of
the texts of Mark and John indicate that neither of these Gospels is dependent
on the other. Yet they have a number of incidents in common: For example, . . .
the burial of Jesus in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea" (Jesus and the
Logic of History, 1997, pp. 104-5).
Paul:
Finally, the old tradition handed on by Paul to
the Corinthian church, which is among the earliest traditions identifiable in
the NT, refers to Jesus' burial in the second line of the tradition. That this
is the same event as the burial described in the Gospels becomes evident by
comparing Paul's tradition with the Passion narratives on the one hand and the
sermons in the Acts of the Apostles on the other. The four-line tradition
handed on by Paul is a summary of the central events of Jesus' crucifixion,
burial by Joseph of Arimathea, the discovery of his empty tomb, and his
appearances to the disciples.
As a member of the Jewish Sanhedrin that was
against Jesus, Joseph of Arimathea is unlikely to be a Christian invention.
NT scholar Raymond Brown says burial by Joseph
of Arimathea is very probable. Why? Because: It is almost inexplicable why
Christians would make up a story about a member of the Jewish Sanhedrin who
does what is right by Jesus.
So most NT scholars say it is highly likely that
Jesus’ body was placed in a tomb by Joseph of Arimathea.
Fact #2 – on the Sunday after the crucifixion the tomb of Jesus was found
empty by a group of His women followers.
Most NT scholars also agree with the fact of the empty tomb.
Some who argue against this claim that the story of the empty tomb was a
fictional, literary creation of Mark.
1 – The historical reliability of the burial account supports the empty
tomb.
If the account of Jesus’ burial is accurate,
then the site of Jesus’ tomb was known to Jew and Christian alike.
In that case it’s a very short inference to the
historicity of the empty tomb.
Because in that case, the tomb must have been
empty when the disciples began to preach that Jesus was risen.
Why? Because the disciples could not have
believed in Jesus’ resurrection if his corpse still was lying in the tomb.
As long as the corpse of Jesus lay in the tomb,
a Christian movement in Jerusalem, founded on the resurrection of Jesus, would
never have arisen.
If the disciples went around preaching “Jesus is
risen from the dead,” but his body lay in the tomb, hardly anyone would have
believed them. Remember that early Christian belief in the resurrection
flourished in Jerusalem, the very city where Jesus had been publicly crucified.
More than this, even if a lot of people believed
this while the body of Jesus was still in the tomb, the Jewish authorities
could have exposed the whole thing by pointing to Jesus’ tomb, even perhaps
exhuming Jesus’ dead body.
2 – the empty tomb is multiply attested in
independent early sources.
The account of Jesus' burial in a tomb by Joseph
of Arimathea is part of Mark's source material for the passion story. This is a
very early source which is probably based on eyewitness testimony.
(Craig, Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics, Kindle
Locations 6492-6493).
The empty tomb tradition is independently preserved in the early sermons in the
book of Acts.
And, it’s implied in the very old tradition
cited by Paul.in his first letter to the Corinthian church.
Thus we have multiple early attestation of the
fact of the empty tomb, in at least 4 independent sources.
So, the story of the empty tomb can’t be a literary creation of Mark.
Craig writes:
What about the empty tomb account? First, it was
also part of the pre-Markan Passion narrative. The empty tomb story is
syntactically tied to the burial story; indeed, they are just one story. E.g.,
the antecedent of "him" (Jesus) in Mk. 16:1 is in the burial account
(15:43); the women's discussion of the stone presupposes the stone's being
rolled over the tomb's entrance; their visiting the tomb presupposes their
noting its location in 15.47; the words of the angel "see the place where
they laid him" refer back to Joseph's laying body in the tomb.
As for the other Gospels, that Matthew has an independent tradition of the
empty tomb is evident not only from the non-Matthean vocabulary (e.g.,
the words translated "on the next day," "the preparation
day," "deceiver," "guard [of soldiers]," "to make
secure," "to seal"; the expression "on the third day"
is also non-Matthean, for he everywhere else uses "after three days;"
the expression "chief priests and Pharisees" never appears in Mark or
Luke and is also unusual for Matthew), but also from Matt. 28.15: "this
story has been spread among Jews till this day," indicative of a tradition
history of disputes with Jewish non-Christians. Luke and John have the
non-Markan story of Peter and another disciple inspecting the tomb, which,
given John's independence of Luke, indicates a separate tradition behind the
story. Moreover, we have already seen that John's independence of Mark shows
that he has a separate source for the empty tomb.
The early sermons in Acts are likely not created
by Luke out of whole cloth but represent early apostolic preaching. We find the
empty tomb implied in the contrast between David's tomb and Jesus': "David
died and was buried and his tomb is with us to this day." But "this
Jesus God has raised up" (2:29-32; cf. 13.36-7).
Finally, the third line of the tradition handed
on by Paul summarizes, as I have said, the empty tomb story. The German NT
critic Klaus Berger concludes: "Without a doubt the grave of Jesus was
found to be empty, and, moreover, the texts about it are not in general
dependent upon Mark" (ZKT, 1993, p. 436).
Thus, the burial and empty tomb of Jesus enjoy
multiple, early, independent attestation. While some of these traditions could
be variations on a common tradition (such as Luke and John's tradition of the
disciples' inspection of the empty tomb in response to the women's report),
they cannot all be so regarded because they narrate different events. Even in
the case of variations on a common tradition, we are pushed back so early, as
Dunn emphasizes, that we must now ask what events occurred to leave such an
early impression on the tradition, and the obvious explanation is the burial of
Jesus in the tomb and the discovery of the empty tomb. While multiple,
independent attestation alone would not render the burial and empty tomb
"virtually certain," keep in mind that this is but one line of
evidence among many, so that the cumulative case for these facts is very
powerful, indeed.
In patriarchal Jewish society the testimony of
women was not highly regarded.
In fact, the ancient Jewish historian Josephus says that, on account of their
boldness and levity, women should not even be allowed to serve as witnesses in
a Jewish court of law.
In light of this fact how remarkable it is that
it is women who were the discoverers of Jesus’ empty tomb.
Any later legendary account would surely have
made male disciples find the empty tomb.
The fact that it is women rather than men who
are the chief witnesses to the empty tomb is best explained by the fact that
they were the discoverers of the empty tomb.
The Gospel writers faithfully record what for
them was an awkward and embarrassing fact.
4 – the story of the empty tomb is simple and
lacks theological embellishment.
Mark’s story of the empty tomb is uncolored by
the theological and apologetical motifs that would be present if the story was
a Christian creation.
For example, it’s remarkable that in Mark’s
account the resurrection of Jesus is not actually described at all.
Contrast later, forged “gospels,” in which Jesus
is seen emerging from the tomb in glory to multitudes of crowds.
In Mark we have little or no embellishment. At
most, the critical historian might want to call the angel a later
embellishment.
But Mark’s account of the resurrection is stark.
Simple.
Mark’s story has all the earmarks of a very
primitive tradition which is free from theological and apologetical reflection.
This is powerful evidence against those critics
who argue that Mark’s account of the empty tomb is a literary creation.
5 – The early church polemic presupposes the
empty tomb.
In Matthew 28 we find a Christian attempt to
refute a Jewish polemic against the resurrection.
Disciples of Jesus were in Jerusalem proclaiming
“Jesus is risen from the dead!”
How did Jews respond to this?
By saying Jesus’ body is still in the tomb?
By say the disciples are crazy?
No – what they did say was this: “The disciples
stole away the body.”
Think about that for a moment.
The earliest Jewish response to the situation
was itself an attempt to explain the fact that the tomb was empty.
Fact #3 – Jesus’ post-mortem appearances.
On different occasions and under various
circumstances individuals and groups of people experienced appearances of Jesus
now alive from the dead.
This is a fact that’s acknowledged by virtually
all NT scholars, for the following reasons.
1 – Paul’s list of resurrection appearances
guarantees that such appearances occurred.
· Paul tells us that Jesus appeared to his
chief disciple, Peter.
· Paul tells us that Jesus appeared to the
12.
· Paul tells us that Jesus appeared to 500
at once.
· Paul tells us that Jesus ten appeared to
his younger brother James, who apparently at that time was not a believer.
· Paul then tells us that Jesus appeared to
all the apostles.
· Finally, Paul adds, “Jesus appeared also
to me.” And Paul was at that time still an unbeliever.
Craig writes:
Undoubtedly the major impetus for the
reassessment of the appearance tradition was the demonstration by Joachim
Jeremias that in 1 Corinthians 15: 3-5 Paul is quoting an old Christian formula
which he received and in turn passed on to his converts According to Galatians
1:18 Paul was in Jerusalem three years after his conversion on a fact-finding
mission, during which he conferred with Peter and James over a two week period,
and he probably received the formula at this time, if not before. Since Paul
was converted in AD 33, this means that the list of witnesses goes back to
within the first five years after Jesus' death. Thus, it is idle to dismiss
these appearances as legendary. We can try to explain them away as
hallucinations if we wish, but we cannot deny they occurred. Paul's information
makes it certain that on separate occasions various individuals and groups saw
Jesus alive from the dead. According to Norman Perrin, the late NT critic of
the University of Chicago: "The more we study the tradition with regard to
the appearances, the firmer the rock begins to appear upon which they are
based." This conclusion is virtually indisputable.
Given the early date of Paul’s writing this,
plus Paul’s personal acquaintance with the persons involved, these appearances
cannot be dismissed as unhistorical.
NOTE: the early date ensures that the appearance stories cannot be “legendary.”
Legends take many years to develop. Craig writes: “For in order for these
stories to be in the main legendary, a very considerable length of time must be
available for the evolution and development of the traditions until the
historical elements have been supplanted by unhistorical.”
2 – The appearance narratives in the Gospels
provide multiple independent attestation of the appearances.
The appearance narratives span such a breadth of
independent sources that it cannot be reasonably denied that the original
disciples had such appearances.
Even the skeptical scholar Gerd Ludemann says it
cannot be denied that these early followers of Jesus did have such experiences.
N.T. Wright, in The Resurrection of the Son of God, gives a 7-step argument in
support of these two claims.
- When
early Christians are asked why they believed in the resurrection of
Christ, “their answers hone in on two things”:
- Stories
about Jesus’ tomb being empty.
- Stories
about Jesus appearing to people, alive again.
- These
stories were formulated within the context and worldview of Second-Temple
Judaism. “No second-Temple Jews came up with anything remotely like
them.” (688)
Neither the empty tomb by
itself, nor the appearances by themselves, would have generated early Christian
belief in the resurrection.
- The
empty tomb, by itself, would be a puzzle and a tragedy.
i. Perhaps, e.g., the grace had been robbed? “Tombs were
often robbed in the ancient world, adding to grief both insult and injury.”
(688)
ii. “Nobody in the pagan world would have interpreted an empty tomb as
implying resurrection; everyone knew such a thing was out of the question.”
(688-689)
iii. “Certainly… the disciples were not expecting any such thing to happen
to Jesus.” (689)
- The
appearances, by themselves, would have been classified as visions or
hallucinations, which were well known in the ancient world.
- Individually,
the empty tomb and the appearances are insufficient to explain the belief
in the resurrection of Jesus.
- “However,
an empty tomb and appearances of a living Jesus, taken together, would
have presented a powerful reason for the emergence of the belief.” (Ib.)
- Together, the empty tomb and
the appearances provide a sufficient reason for early Christian belief in
Jesus’ resurrection.
- “From
Think of the situation these followers of Jesus faced after his crucifixion.
1 – Their leader was dead. Jewish Messianic expectations had no idea of a
Messiah who would triumph over his enemies by being humiliated and executed by
them as a criminal.
But the early disciples felt so strongly that God had raised the individual man
Jesus from the dead that they were willing to die for the truth of that belief.
N.T. Wright says – “That is why, as an
historian, that I cannot explain the arising of Christianity unless Jesus rose
again, leaving an empty tomb behind.”
SUMMING UP
The following 4 facts are agreed upon by the
majority of New Testament scholars.
1. Jesus’ burial
2. Jesus’ empty tomb
3. Jesus’ post-mortem appearances
4. The origin of the disciples’ belief
This brings us to the second major contention, which is: the best explanation
for these facts is that God raised Jesus from the dead.
6 Tests Historians Use to Discover What Is the Best Explanation For a Given
Historical Fact (from historian C.B McCullough)
The hypothesis “God raised Jesus from the dead” passes all of these tests.
2. It has great explanatory power – it
explains each fact well
3. It is plausible – give the historical
context of Jesus’ own life and claims, the resurrection occurs as divine
confirmation of those claims.
4. It is not ad hoc or contrived – it
requires only 1 additional hypothesis; viz., that God exists.
5. It is in accord with accepted beliefs –
the hypothesis God raised Jesus from the dead does not conflict with the
accepted belief that people don’t rise naturally from the
dead.
6. It far outstrips any rival theories in
meeting conditions 1-5. No natural hypothesis does as good a job at explaining
the 4 facts.
I think the best explanation for the historical facts is that God raised Jesus
from the dead.
*****
ADDITION - N.T. Wright on the Resurrection of Jesus, from his The Resurrection of the Son of God.
1. The emptiness of the tomb
2. The meetings with the risen Jesus
“These two phenomena are firmly warranted.”
(686)
Wright gives a 7-step argument in support of
these two claims.
1. When early Christians are asked why they
believed in the resurrection of Christ, “their answers hone in on two things”:
a. Stories about Jesus’ tomb being empty.
b. Stories about Jesus appearing to people,
alive again.
c. These stories were formulated within the
context and worldview of Second-Temple Judaism. “No second-Temple Jews came up
with anything remotely like them.” (688)
2. Neither the empty tomb by itself, nor
the appearances by themselves, would have generated early Christian belief in
the resurrection.
a. The empty tomb, by itself, would be a
puzzle and a tragedy.
i. Perhaps, e.g., the grace had been
robbed? “Tombs were often robbed in the ancient world, adding to grief both
insult and injury.” (688)
ii. “Nobody in the pagan world would have interpreted an empty tomb as
implying resurrection; everyone knew such a thing was out of the question.”
(688-689)
b. The appearances, by themselves, would
have been classified as visions or hallucinations, which were well known in the
ancient world.
c. Individually, the empty tomb and the
appearances are insufficient to explain the belief in the resurrection of
Jesus.
3. “However, an empty tomb and appearances
of a living Jesus, taken together, would have presented a powerful reason for
the emergence of the belief.” (Ib.)
a. Together, the empty tomb and the
appearances provide a sufficient reason for early Christian belief in Jesus’
resurrection.
4. “The meaning of resurrection within Second-Temple Judaism makes it
impossible to conceive of this reshaped resurrection belief emerging without it
being known that a body had disappeared, and that the person had been
discovered to be thoroughly alive again.” (Ib.)
6. “It is therefore historically highly
probable that Jesus’ tomb was indeed empty on the third day after his
execution, and that the disciples did indeed encounter him giving every
appearance of being well and truly alive.” (687)
7. The past and most important question is:
What explanation can be given for these two phenomena?
***
As a new Jesus-follower way, way back in the early 1970s, I was taken by a book
called The Late, Great Planet Earth, by Hal Lindsey. Lindsey talked about a
"rapturing" of Jesus-followers who would be taken away to heaven when
Jesus comes again. Some, unfortunately, will be "left behind." Now,
44 years later, I no longer believe in "the rapture" (because it's
not biblical). But I do believe Christ is coming again to restore
these heavens and this earth. Scripture affirms this. The Jewish hope was for
THIS created world to be reclaimed. Genesis 1 – God created…and saw
that it was good.
Isaiah 65:17
20 “Never again will there be in it
an infant who lives but
a few days,
When Jesus comes again there will be a new
heaven and a new earth. Scripture supports this.
a. Eph. 1:8-10 - "In him we
have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with
the riches of God’s grace that he lavished on us. With all wisdom and
understanding, he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his
good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, to be put into effect when the
times reach their fulfillment— to bring unity to all things in heaven
and on earth under Christ."
b. Col. 1:19-20 - "For God was pleased
to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to
himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making
peace through his blood, shed on the cross."
c. 2 Peter 3:11-13 -"Since everything
will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be? You ought
to live holy and godly lives as you look forward to the day of God and speed
its coming. That day will bring about the destruction of the heavens by fire,
and the elements will melt in the heat. But in keeping with his promise we
are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, where righteousness
dwells."
d. Rom. 8:18-21 - I consider that our
present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed
in us. For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to
be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own
choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the
creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into
the freedom and glory of the children of God."
e. On Rev. 21-22 N.T. Wright says: – “When
we come to the picture of the actual end in Revelation 21-22, we find not
ransomed souls making their way to a disembodied heaven but rather the new
Jerusalem coming down from heaven, to earth, uniting the two in a lasting
embrace." (N.T. Wright)
i. Rev. 21:1-4 - Then I saw “a new
heaven and a new earth,” for the first heaven and the first earth had passed
away, and there was no longer any sea. 2 I saw the Holy
City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a
bride beautifully dressed for her husband. 3And I heard a loud
voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the
people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself
will be with them and be their God. 4 ‘He will wipe every
tear from their eyes. There will be no more death] or mourning
or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”
But what about 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17?
“For the Lord himself will descend from
heaven
Wright writes: “When Paul speaks of
"meeting" the Lord "in the air," the point is precisely
not—as in the popular rapture theology—that the saved believers would then stay
up in the air somewhere, away from earth. The point is that, having gone out to
meet their returning Lord, they will escort him royally into his domain, that is,
back to the place they have come from. (p. 133)
This
is Jewish wedding language. We will go to meet the coming Bridegroom, and
escort him onto the new earth to be with his Bride.
Ben Witherington says that, in ancient Roman culture, when a royal person
arrived to their city, a greeting committee would go out and escort him back
into the city. In Jewish culture, when the bridegroom approached towards where
the bride was, a welcoming group went out with their lamps and escorted the
groom into the wedding place. “The classic texts thought to refer to the
rapture, especially 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17, say nothing about saints being
taken suddenly into heaven. Rather, they go forth to meet Christ in the sky
when he is returning, and then they return with him to the earth to reign.”
(BW, Revelation, 261)
Paul’s image of the people “meeting the Lord in the air” should be read with
the assumption that the people will immediately turn around and lead the Lord
back to the newly remade world. (NTW)
Further, we read in Matthew 24:
That is how it will be at the coming of the Son
of Man.40
Rapture theory assumes being “taken away”
is a good thing. It is not. (Being "taken" is
not necessarily a good thing, right?)
So, God made heaven and earth; at the last he will remake both and join
them together forever. We, the Bride of Christ, will go forth to meet him
when he appears, and lead the celebratory parade of the Bridegroom to his
transformed earth.
A few years ago, at our summer conference
in Green Lake, Wisconsin, YWAM's Dean Sherman was preaching about these
things. Speaking of life after this life he said, "I don't want
heaven to have streets of gold. I want heaven to look like Green
Lake."
Me too.
Paul said, "the creation waits in eager
expectation for the children of God to be revealed." (Romans 8:19) As
beautiful as Green Lake, Wisconsin, is, how much more shall it be when Christ
returns and the kingdom of heaven is established in all its fullness!
***
Ben Witherington quotes from: Revelation.
***
A dying man's last words are said to be
important.
I was in India, riding in the back seat of a car on a 5-hour ride from
Hyderabad to Kurnool along one of India's major highways. I could not sleep,
even though I was jet-lag tired. India, by their own admission, leads the world in road deaths.
I thought I was gong to die a hundred times or
more on that trip. My driver was a crazed man in a land of psycho-drivers. He
would routinely pass cars while going up a hill, or driving around a curve.
Occasionally he played "chicken" with an ongoing car, and
sometimes with an oncoming truck. The game was to see who would "chicken
out" first and swerve aside. This is beyond ridiculous, I thought, as my
Indian friend and host slept soundly next to me through it all.
One time we passed a car going round a curve and came face to face
with a truck. My driver swerved at the last moment. When I saw the truck coming
at us I said the following profound, almost-last-words-of-a-dead-man: "Oh
no!" Had I died, whoever would do my funeral would have to say, "John
the theologian's last words were, "Oh no!""
Jesus's Final Words, aka his "Final Discourse," were profound
and continue to guide my life to this moment. We hear them in John chapters
14-16. The disciples are wondering what they will do when Jesus is gone. Jesus
instructs them, and us.
He does not say "form some committees and think of strategies to keep this
thing going." He tells them: "Abide in me." Jesus
says:
Because I live, you also will live.
Call this "reciprocal abiding." God comes to make his home in the heart of every
Jesus-follower. Every Jesus-follower is to tend this inner fire by making his
home in Jesus like a branch connects to a Vine.
As we abide in Christ we...
Jesus's last teaching was, simply:
Connect.
Dwell.
Remain.
Abide.
To Him.
In Him.
The result is that He lives, in and through you.
A few years ago some film students at the University of Michigan were making a
movie about Southeast Michigan. They interviewed me as part of their
project. I remember two of their questions.
They asked: "What is the #1 problem you see in Southeast Michigan?"
I answered: "Me."
I answered: "The #1 thing I need to do for my people is to stay attached
to Jesus, to continually abide in Christ." Because what my people need is
Jesus, not me. Jesus is all they need. Jesus is all any church needs.
Let us sing these words together.
MERRY CHRISTMAS!
Christmas is about God coming to us, in the form of his Son. This is called the "Incarnation." (Which means: "in flesh.") At Christmas God descended the honor/shame hierarchy and took on a human body.
We see this in the first chapter of the Gospel of John. It reads:
Who was "the Word?" We find out in John 1:14:
The Word, the one and only Son, came to us from the Father and took on human flesh. This is the language of God as a Trinity of persons. God is a "triune" being: Father, Son, and Spirit.
Godis a three-personed being. Imagine a 3-headed person: 3 heads, 3 distinct personalities, sharing the same body.
The idea of God as a Trinity makes conceptual sense of the idea that God is love. This is because love requires relationship. In the very being of God there is, and everlastingly has been, loving relationship. God, in his being, is relational. I love this way of thinking about God! It is so rich and wide and deep and long and high.
Early Christians came up with a word to express the 3-personed being of God: perichoresis. The prefix "peri" means "around." Like the peri-meter of a circle. "Choresis" is the word we get "choral" from, which can mean to sing, but also to dance, as in a "chorus line." "Perichoresis" is to dance in a circle. With this word our 3-Personed God is described as Father, Son, and Spirit engaged in an everlasting circle dance. I like to refer to this as the Big Dance, into which we are invited (John 14,15, and 16).
God the Son has existed everlastingly in the Big Dance that is the being of God. Then, in the infant Jesus, God brought the Dance to us by becoming one of us.
To understand the the Real Jesus we must begin with the Incarnation of God the Son, in whom there is neither beginning nor end. Jesus is the pre-existent God the Son, who has existed everlastingly.
***
This view of God as Trinity has been called "social trinitarianism"; viz., that in the being of God there is a "society" of three persons. See here, for academic ideas on this. But not, of course, for Islam, which vehemently denies the Christian idea of God as a Trinity of 3 Persons. Islam misunderstands this, as Judeo-Christianity has never claimed there are three Gods.
I also love the book The Shack as a way of figuratively expressing Trinitarian theism - i.e., God as a 3-Personed Being.
Jesus of Nazareth is the incarnation of God the Son. God became one of us.
If you were an architect observing ants build an anthill and wanted to share your architectural knowledge with them, what would be a good way to do this? It would be to become an ant, live in the ant world, and communicate in ant language to them. You would take on "ant flesh."
By analogy, this is what God has done for us. God, in his Son, took on human flesh and lived among us.
I am still captivated by the brilliance and beauty of this divine strategy. What makes this story so stunning is what God the Son gave up to come to us. The One through whom all things were created took on our flesh-and-bone, ever-so-limited humanity.
The everlasting supremacy and majesty of the Son is seen in John 1:3, where we are told that through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. God the Son is the agent of creation! New Testament scholar writes that John 1:3 "describes Jesus as the agent of creation, and action that Genesis attributes to god alone. Thus, the Johannine narrator starts his story by claiming that Jesus does what the one God does, is eternal as the one God is eternal, and, as the Word, 'was God'." (Larry Hurtado and Chris Keith, Jesus Among Friends and Enemies: A Historical and Literary Introduction to Jesus in the Gospels, Kindle Locations 1037-1039).
During this Christmas season, orient your heart and mind towards Christ, who is God the Son come to earth in the form of a person. Think of his supremacy and majesty.
Think of his creational agency.
Father Stephen Rooney, a local priest in the Monroe area, graciously invited me to speak at the Roman Catholic Unity Service in January 2001. I will never forget that event for two reasons.
First, that was the evening my father died. He was suffering and dying as I was speaking. My friend Stephen knew about this, and was praying for me as I spoke.
Second, St Michael's was packed out as I spoke on the Jesus-unity Father Rooney and I have. I used the "Stations of the Cross" that encompassed the sanctuary to illustrate this. I affirmed the truth of every "station" except for the "Veronica" story (the woman who, according to legend, wiped Jesus' bloody face with her cloak). One of my affirmations was, of course, the virgin birth of Christ.
The Pope at that time was Benedict. He had just published a book that defended, among other things, the virgin birth. Benedict reasons like this. (From The Infancy Narratives.)
1. Christian teaching affirms that "Jesus was the son of God and was not conceived through sexual intercourse but by the power of the Holy Spirit, one part of the divine trinity."
2. The story of the virgin birth is not just a reworking of earlier Greek or Egyptian legends and archetypal concepts but something totally new in history. (Contra the intellectually embarrassing "Zeitgeist" mini-phenomenon.)
3. God is a Creator. God creates. God invents. This is part of the nature of God.
4. God is omnipotent.
5. Therefore, God's creative word is able to bring about something completely new. (See my post God's Commands are Authoritative Words that Have Illocutionary Force.)
Benedict's reasoning is grounded in the understanding of the power of God. An all-powerful being is, by logical extension, able to bring about any logically possible state of affairs. "If God does not also have power over matter, then he simply is not God," Benedict writes. "But he does have this power, and through the conception and resurrection of Jesus Christ he has ushered in a new creation."
Could the story of Jesus' virgin birth been invented by early Christians to spice up the Jesus story? New Testament scholar Ben Witherington writes:
"I would argue that it is highly unlikely Christians would make up a story about a virginal conception, precisely because it would lead to the charge of Jesus' illegitimacy by opponents of the Christian movement. There must have been some historical substance to this tradition for both Matthew and Luke to refer to the matter, independently of each other and in differing ways." (See Witherington, "Misconceptions About the Virginal Conception: Our lack of access to narratives about Jesus' birth shouldn't led us to assume the miracle of his conception didn't happen.")
Jesus was born of a virgin. This is an unequivocal truth of Christian faith.
This act of downward mobility is called the "kenosis," after a word in Philippians 2:7. Phil. 2:5-11 expresses the entire idea.
did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;7 rather, he made himself nothing (Greek kenosis; ἐκένωσεν ]
by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.
8 And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
by becoming obedient to death—
even death on a cross!
New Testament scholar Wayne Grudem writes:
"The best understanding of this passage is that it talks about Jesus giving up the status and privilege that were his in heaven. He did not "cling to his own advantage" but "emptied himself" or "humbled himself" for our sake, and came to live as a man." (Wayne Grudem, Bible Doctrine: Essential Teachings of the Christian Faith, 240)
In John 17:5 Jesus spoke of the "glory" he had with the Father "before the world was made." In the kenosis he gave up that glory (status, privilege), but would regain it upon his return to heaven.
Today think of the glorious status Christ gave up, for you, when he humbled himself and took on the form of humanity.
Think of Jesus descending into greatness.
***
Notes
The issue of what Christ emptied himself of has been a by the preexistent divine Son, whereby in "becoming human" he took the "form" of a slave - one who expressed his humanity in lowly service to others." (Grudem, 384)
See also Gordon Fee's article in Exploring Kenotic Christology: The Self-Emptying of God, ed. Stephen Evans. Fee writes:
"An orthodox biblical Christology almost certainly must embrace some form of a 'kenotic' [emptying] understanding of the Incarnation, that the One who was truly God, also in his Incarnation lived a truly human life, a life in which he grew both in stature and in wisdom and in understanding (Luke 2:52), learned obedience through what he suffered (Heb. 5:8), and who as Son of the Father did not know the day or the hour (Mark 13:32). (Grudem, p. 43)
I suggested to her that she bring me into the class to present the case for the existence of Jesus. I wrote a letter to the teacher. When I learned his name I realized he was, at that time, a student in my MCCC Philosophy of Religion class!
When the time came for me to speak on the existence of Jesus at Monroe High School so many students had heard about this that it was decided to hold the event in the school auditorium. 175 students filled the auditorium as I spoke for 90 minutes, making the historical case for Jesus' existence.
Perhaps you have heard, or read on the Internet, the claim that Jesus never really existed, and that the figure of Jesus in the Bible is all made up. That claim is false. As small a point as it seems to be, Jesus actually existed. No reputable New Testament scholar believes otherwise (actually, maybe one does, but he is in the extreme minority). Even the skeptical Bart Ehrman believes Jesus existed.
If you want to read some more check out:
"Jesus Existed," by Craig Keener
See my "Jesus Existed (but of course...)"
Then we traveled south along the Jordan river. We stayed for 2 days on the Dead Sea, from where we saw Qumran (famous for the Dead Sea Scrolls) and the incredible fortress at Masada.
We ended up with four more days in Jerusalem and the surrounding area, to include Bethlehem.
One of the many highlights for us was a visit to Nazareth, which is west of Tiberias in the area of Galilee. We were walking on the very ground Jesus walked on. Amazing! And insightful. To understand the Real Jesus we must know about the land he lived in.
The strong probability is that Jesus worked with Joseph in the family business, which was the building trade.
***
Note: two excellent books on Jesus are Wright's Simply Jesus and Bauckham's Jesus: A Very Short Introduction.
Robert Wilken writes:
"Among the ancient Jewish prophets Isaiah was the most beloved, the most esteemed, and the most quoted by early Christians. His book contained all the mysteries of the Lord, his birth from a virgin, his miracles, his suffering, death, and resurrection, as well as prophecies from the Church's mission to the nations. Augustine said that Isaiah contains more prophecies of Christ and of the Church than all the other prophets. Over time Isaiah's soaring language and unforgettable imagery were woven into the tapestry of Christian worship, life, and thinking." (Wilken, Isaiah: Interpreted by Early Christian Medieval Commentators, xx)
Isaiah has been referred to as the "Fifth Gospel" because the Messianic prophecies point so clearly to the description of Jesus in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. See, e.g., The Gospel According to Isaiah 53: Encountering the Suffering Servant in Jewish and Christian Theology (eds. Darrell Bock and Mitch Glaser). If this interests you then see the entire article from this book by the great Messianic Jewish scholar Michael Brown - "Jewish Interpretations of Isaiah 53."
In Isaiah 7:14 the birth of the promised Messiah is prophesied, whose name shall be "Immanuel." J. Alec Motyer says that "the title Immanuel is peculiar to Isaiah but the thought is part of the Davidic-Messianic fabric." (Motyer, The Prophecy of Isaiah, 85)
I like how Motyer then explains this amazing verse. He writes:
"It is impossible to separate this Immanuel from the Davidic king whose birth delivers his people (Isaiah 9:4-7) and whose complex name indicates the designation Mighty God (Isa. 9:6). Following these pointers, we have a sign that lives up to its promise. Heaven and earth will be truly moved. Isaiah foresaw the birth of the divine son of David and also laid the foundation for the understanding of the unique nature of his birth." (Ib.)
"Immanuel," as we see in Matthew 1:22, means "God with us." Michael Brown says that the term "Immanuel" is unique to Isaiah - it is "a name found nowhere else in the Bible or the Ancient Near East." (Michal Brown, Answering Jewish Objections to Jesus: Messianic Prophecy Objections, 25)
Brown continues: "We ask again, who was this Immanuel? He was a king promised to the line of David - with an important, symbolic name - whose birth would serve as a divine sign." (Ib., 26)
Today think about God who loved us so much that he came to us, tabernacled among us ("pitched his tent with ours," "dwelt with us"), and is with you.
***
Notes
For an explanation of the meaning of the Hebrew word alma ("virgin") in Isa. 7:14, see J. Alec Motyer, The Prophecy of Isaiah, 84-85. Motyer writes: "Isaiah thus used the word which, among those available to him, came nearest to expressing 'virgin birth' and which, without linguistic impropriety, opens the door to such a meaning." (85)
For a lengthy, detailed study of alma, see Michael Brown's Answering Jewish Objections to Jesus: Messianic Prophecy Objections. Section 4:3.
I grew up in a Lutheran Church (ELCA), and on Sunday mornings we recited The Nicene Creed. The word "creed" is from the Latin word credo, which means "I believe." The Nicene Creed begins with "We believe..."
As I read this today, I see that I still believe it, now more than ever. In Jesus, true God was made man. Here's a brief look at this.
Jesus is True God
In the four Gospels we see many places where Jesus acts like he is God and even claims to be God. This is recognized by the religious leaders, who accuse him of claiming to be God. They pick up stones to throw at him, viewing his claim as blasphemous.
For example, Jesus claims to forgive sins. From the ancient Jewish point of view, only God can do this. This still holds today.
N.T. Wright explains this God-thing about forgiving sins in his excellent book Simply Jesus. Wright writes:
"How does God normally forgive sins within Israel? Why, through the Temple and the sacrifices that take place there. Jesus seems to be claiming that God is doing, up close and personal through him, something that you’d normally expect to happen at the Temple. And the Temple— the successor to the tabernacle in the desert— was, as we saw, the place where heaven and earth met. It was the place where God lived. Or, more precisely, the place on earth where God’s presence intersected with human, this-worldly reality." (Wright, N. T., Simply Jesus: A New Vision of Who He Was, What He Did, and Why He Matters, pp. 79-80)
There are many examples in Scripture where Jesus acts like he is God. He claims such an intimate relationship with the Father that it causes the religious leaders to accuse him of making himself equal with God. (For example, Jesus said, "I and the Father are one.") Their accusations were on target. In Jesus, God's very presence intersected with earth in the form of humanity.
Jesus is Human - The Humanity of Jesus
Jesus is fully and completely human. He was conceived in a human womb. Jesus had a physical, human body, like we have. Jesus got tired (John 4:6), hungry (Matt. 4:2), and thirsty (John 19:28).
Jesus went through a learning process, as we do. We read:
Jesus felt a variety of different emotions, as we do. He marveled (Matt. 8:10), he wept (Jon 11:35), and he was inwardly troubled (Matt. 26:38; John 12:27).
Jesus was like us in every way except one. Jesus was without sin (1 Peter 2:22).
OK. Jesus was fully God. But why did he have to be also fully human? Wayne Grudem writes: "Jesus had to be fully human to serve as our perfectly obedient representative... If Jesus wasn't fully human, his obedience in our place would be meaningless. Just as Jesus had to be human to live in our place, he had to be human to die in our place."
I have always loved and held closely to Hebrews 4:15:
In Jesus full God-ness and full human-ness converge. The everlasting, world-creating Word became flesh and dwelt among us.
Christmas is coming, and I believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, true God from true God, who came down from heaven and was made man.
When you visit Israel you walk the very land that Jesus walked. Why did Jesus walk there? Was he a tourist who flew in from some other country, only to visit? No. Jesus was Jewish. In order to understand the Real Jesus we must understand this.
A few years ago I read Vanderbilt University professor Amy-Jill Levine's The Misunderstood Jew: The Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus. Of this book Ben Witherington writes: "The Misunderstood Jew is simply the best book ever written about the Jewishness of Jesus and his earliest followers. This book is such a seminal work that it makes us all reexamine what it really means to be a Jew or a Christian." (From the back cover.)
"Jesus had to have made sense in his own context, and his context is that of Galilee and Judea. Jesus cannot be understood fully unless he is understood through first-century Jewish eyes and heard through first-century Jewish ears." (Levine, 20)
For example, Jesus spoke, at times, using parables. "Parables" are from first-century Jewish culture, not 21st-century North American culture.
The Gospels are more relevant and powerful when we uncover their meaning as it was understood and apprehended within their first-century Jewish worldview. I like how Levine expresses this. She writes: "When Jesus was located within the world of Judaism, the ethical implications of his teachings take on a renewed and heightened meaning; their power is restored and their challenge sharpened." (21)
Here is another example. Jesus dressed like a Jew (but of course, right?). He wore tzitzit, or "fringes." The book of Numbers instructs all Israelite men to wear fringes, and today many Orthodox Jewish men still wear them. They can be seen on the prayer shawls Jewish men wear in the synagogue during worship. Numbers 15:37-40 reads:
These tassels (tzitzit) were the WWJD bracelets of the time. Levine writes: "Just as the bracelets remind their Christian wearers to ask, "What would Jesus Do?" so the fringes remind Jewish wearers of all 613 "commandments," or mitzvot. The Gospels do not shy away from the fact that Jesus wore these fringes." (24)
Those were the fringes the woman with the twelve-year bleeding touched in hopes of a healing (Matthew 9:20). Wherever Jesus went, people begged to simply touch the fringe of Jesus' cloak (Mark 6:56). And Jesus, in Matthew 23:5, accuses the Pharisees and scribes of making their fringes long, which suggests that Jesus' fringes were shorter. Levine concludes: "Jesus thus does not dismiss the Torah; in the modern idiom, he "wears it on his sleeve."" (Levine, 24; emphasis mine)
Jesus dressed like a Jew, ate like a Jew (see Levine pp. 24 ff.), and spoke like a Jew. In Jesus, God came to us and took on, specifically, Jewish flesh.
Rejoice, rejoice
Immanuel
Shall come to thee
O Israel
For all of us this was a great day. Baptism is an identification rite. I had cast off the old clothing of my life in the kingdom of blindness and put of the new garment of Christ. (Colossians 3:12-15) This was a joyful and serious thing, and its effect continues in me today.
Baptism is serious and joyful business. I found this out when I was teaching at an Assemblies of God Bible college in Singapore. One of my Chinese students was named Kek (pronounced 'cake'). I asked Kek a question: "What was the hardest thing for you when you left primitive Chinese religion and becamae a follower of Jesus?"
Immediately Kek said: "It was when I was baptized. Then my parents knew I was serious. They knew I would not be a son who bowed before their graves. They knew I would not be a son who kept a family offer and offered sacrifices and prayers to them after they died."
This is baptism as revolutionary activity.
Jesus got baptized. To understand the Real Jesus we must understand his baptism, in the River Jordan, by John the Baptist. New Testament scholar Michael McClymond writes:
“The story of Jesus’ adult life begins with John the Baptist… [T]he beginning of Jesus’ ministry and the beginning of the gospel message lie in John and his preaching. John the Baptist is part of Jesus’ identity... John is important for understanding Jesus because the gospel accounts consistently portray Jesus’ baptism as a major transition… Once he had been baptized by John, Jesus began to announce that “the kingdom of God has come near” (Mark 1:15).” (McClymond, Familiar Stranger, 66)
Jesus, in allowing himself to be baptized by John, identified with John's cause. So... who was John the Baptist, and what was his mission? McClymond nicely summarizes for us.
“John was the leader of a sectarian baptizing movement centered in the wilderness of Judea – a place with eschatological as well as ascetic associations. Like earlier prophetic and apocalyptic figures, John announced the imminent end of the world and the time of divine judgment. John also spoke of a “Coming One” who would carry out the judgment. He summoned people to repentance because the remaining time was short, and the end was drawing near… " (McClymond, 62)
John's baptism was a baptism of repentance. To repent is to turn and go in the other direction. Jesus, in submitting to John's baptism, identified with the idea that our world is a freight train rushing headlong towards destruction.
Eventually, John was imprisoned. Jesus left Nazareth, withdrew to Galilee, and lived in Capernaum. "From that time on Jesus began to preach, 'Repent......'" (Matthew 4:17)
Today think about Jesus as your Rescuer, who turned your soul away from death, and called you to run in the other direction towards life.
The parables of Jesus were all about this kingdom. Many begin with Jesus saying, "The kingdom of heaven is like..." (Note: "kingdom of God" and "kingdom of heaven" mean the same thing. Observant Jews of the time would prefer "kingdom of heaven" so as not to say the sacred name of God [YHWH].) In the Lord's Prayer Jesus tells us to pray for God's kingdom to come on earth, as it is in heaven. After Jesus was baptized and tempted in the wilderness he began to preach "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near." (Matthew 4:17))
What, to Jesus and his hearers, did "kingdom of God" mean? It did not mean a place, or a location. It meant, and means today, the rule or reign of God. Because Jesus said, “If you see me cast out demons by the finger of God then the kingdom of God has come to you.” (Matthew 12:28) By this Jesus does not mean a place. Further, Jesus said his kingdom “is not of this world.” (John 18:36)
Few things have impacted me as deeply as coming to understand the kingdom of God. New Testament scholar Michael McClymond writes that this term “is meant to conjure up the dynamic notion of God powerfully ruling over his creation, over his people, and over the history of both… the kingdom of God means God ruling as king. Hence his action upon and his dynamic relationship to those ruled, rather than any delimited territory, is what is primary.” (McClymond, Familiar Stranger, 74)
N.T. Wright asks: What would it "look like if we really believed that the living God was king on earth as in heaven? That, after all, is the story all four gospels tell." (Wright, N. T., How God Became King: The Forgotten Story of the Gospels, K62) What would it look like in your life, in your church family, in your community if, in the midst of it all, the reign of God was established?
When I understood more about the kingdom of God I began to pray The Lord's Prayer in a different way. Now I pray like this, because I believe this is how the early Jesus-followers understood it.
God, let your kingdom come...,
not only in the future,
but here
and now.
God, reign over my heart and mind
NOW.
As I am typing this sentence
As I take my next breath
As I walk into whatever this day has for me
Let things be here
in my home
in my church family
in my community
and beyond,
on this earth,
as things are in heaven.
Truly!
This verse is about Jesus feeding the 5,000. To understand what's going on here we need to realize that this is a highly politicized situation. It’s volatile in Galilee under Roman rule. Imagine a country under the rule of a foreign government. The people are oppressed. Four Jewish political groups are offering their various suggestions. There’s an undercurrent of Zealot sympathies.
Their immediate ruler is Herod Antipas. He calls himself "king," but he’s not actually a king. Yet, he really wants to be king and have that power. Antipas is an adulterer, a child pornographer, a drunken party-guy who mostly sits in his palace far to the south of the sea of Galilee where he spends part of his time cutting off the heads of prophets.
Jesus instructs the disciples to organize the crowds into groups, to get ready for the meal. They were eating in prasia – literally, “garden plots,” or “flower beds.” New Testament scholar R.T. France says this is “a remarkably visual impression of the scene, with men lined up in groups like plots of vegetables on the green grass... The vivid description suggests the eyewitness account of someone who was present at this extraordinary picnic.” (France, Gospel of Mark, 267)
Jesus has the people sit down in ranks, in groups of 50s and 100s. He formally organizes them. They look like military troops. N. T. Wright says, “Anybody watching this might be asking, “Who does this man think he is?”"
This explains John 6:14-15:
R.T. France sums this up: a strong case can be made for a political, and indeed military, character to the outcome.
Verse by verse, bit by bit, brick by brick, we have been laying a foundation for our people, building a Jesus-literate house to live and move in.
Whenever I preach I expect God to do something. It wasn't always this way for me. I wasn't taught this. Now I expect the proclamation of God's Word to be accompanied by demonstrations of his love and power.
New Testament scholar Richard Bauckham writes:
George Ladd writes:
Pick up your Bible and read. Expect Jesus to demonstrate his love and power in your life today.
***
See also Gordon Fee, Pauline Christology: An Exegetical-Theological Study.
Anyone remember the game "Trivial Pursuit?" Christians came out with their own version, called "Bible Trivia." I played both these games. I was not good at either. For at least two reasons.
Secondly, I am not very good at remembering and memorizing Bible facts. Like:
Q: "Which of the two dreamers in prison with Joseph was executed?"
A: The "chief baker." (Gen. 40:22)
Fortunately, my status as a child of God does not depend on answering these kind of questions.
I've had difficulties naming Jesus' 12 disciples. I never took the time to memorize them. I do know that Jesus called twelve to follow him, told them to leave everything for the sake of his kingdom mission, and that none of them had graduate degrees.
I also know - and this is what really interests me - that Jesus "discipled" them, mentored them, to do the things he was doing. This is more important to understand than what their names were. New Testament scholar Richard Bauckham explains:
"By accompanying Jesus at all times, they were to learn from him how to continue his own mission: to heal and to exorcize, to bring the good news of the kingdom to the destitute and the outcasts." (Bauckham, Jesus: A Very Short Introduction, p. 51)
(Pastors - instead of trying to attract people and grow a big church, mentor some disciples. Twelve would be enough.)
These twelve no-name Jesus-followers began to do what Jesus did. Jesus equipped them and gave them authority. He taught them to testify, proclaim, and demonstrate. He taught them to tell and show, show and tell.
I may not remember the names of "the Twelve." I do remember what Jesus mentored them to do. This so impressed me that at Redeemer we changed our mission statement to read:
Jesus and his followers came to proclaim the good news, drive out demons, and heal people everywhere.
I have witnessed miracles. Here's one that happened with us at Redeemer, which Craig Keener records in his book Miracles, and Lee Strobel share in The Case for Miracles.
"In March 2006, after a spiritual retreat in Branson, Missouri, Carl [Cocherell] was checking the oil in his car when he stepped down and felt a sharp crack. Although he was a Vietnam veteran, he says that he had never felt such pain, and he fainted. X-rays in the emergency room in the Branson hospital revealed such a serious break of the ankle that after setting the break the orthopedist ordered him to stay overnight. During that night, though, Carl recounts that he experienced a voice from the Lord assuring him that his foot was not broken. After putting Carl's foot in a cast and warning that he would need months of therapy, the doctor referred him to his family physician.
Carl's wife drove them back to Michigan, and the next day his family doctor sent him to the hospital for some more X-rays. After receiving the X-rays, his doctor called him into the office and explained that there were no breaks, or even tissue indicating where the break had been. "You never had a broken ankle," the doctor explained.
Carl pointed out the X-rays from Missouri. "That is a broken ankle," the doctor admitted. But now there was no sign that he had even had one, so the doctor removed the cast right away.
Apart from the ankle being blue for a couple of days, Carl had no problem with it. At church that Sunday, where he used no crutches or other support, he testified how God healed him. Carl provided me with the radiology reports from before and after the healing supporting his claim."
- Keener, Miracles, 440
I'll add that Carl is especially sensitive to his feet, since he is a long-distance runner who has run the Boston Marathon. And, I have the radiology reports sitting next to me in my office at home.
Jesus performed miracles. "Scholars often note that miracles characterized Jesus's historical activity no less than his teaching and prophetic activities did. So central are miracle reports to the Gospels that one could remove them only if one regarded the Gospels as preserving barely any genuine information about Jesus. Indeed, it is estimated that more than 31 percent of the verses in Mark's Gospel involve miracles in some way, or some 40 percent of his narrative! Very few critics would deny the presence of any miracles in the earliest material about Jesus." (Ib., 23-24)
Western culture, influenced by David Hume's arguments and the Enlightenment, dismisses the possibility of miracles. Thomas Jefferson, architect of the "American Jesus," insisted that miracles "were an affront to the demands of reason and the laws of nature, and Jesus had performed not a one." (Stephen Prothero, American Jesus, p. 23).
Today, remember that all things are possible with God, as you connect with Christ.
I was working as Youth Leader at Tabor Lutheran Church in my hometown of Rockford, Illinois. One day the pastor invited me to a meeting. A few of our long-attending members had been exposed to the charismatic movement and were now speaking in tongues. They wanted to talk with church leadership about this. I was unfamiliar with charismatic phenomena, and brand new to the study of Scripture, so I just listened to the conversation.
The people shared their newfound spiritual experiences. Our leaders listened and responded. After a lot of dialogue, questions, and interaction we prayed. This is when it happened.
I can't remember who prayed out loud. I do remember that, as we were praying, I felt like my soul and body were being assaulted by something evil. I had never felt anything like this before. I didn't know how to interpret it. I do remember silently calling out, crying out, "Jesus! Help!"
After the meeting I called Linda. I was dating her at the time. As I shared what had just happened to me I was crying. "I am really weirding out on her," I thought. I did not know how to interpret this. Experientially, it was real. Something did just happen, something I had never experienced before. I told her words I had never spoken in my life: "I think I was attacked by a demon."
Jesus believed in demons. New Testament scholar Richard Bauckham writes:
From the beginning of the Gospels to their very end, Jesus lived with a warfare worldview. The real battle for him, as the apostle Paul knew, was not against flesh and blood, but against spiritual principalities and powers. (Ephesians 6:12)
After my encounter with a demon I began to consider their actual existence. Now, many years later, I reason this way.
1. Textually, I find the stories of Jesus's demonic encounters to be historical.
2. Jesus-followers in non-Westernized cultures affirm the reality of satan and demons, and angels as well. I've been in these countries, and am friends with Asian and African scholars (including some Fulbright scholars) who embrace the reality of a supra-natural realm. (= beyond what is natural) Belief or disbelief in satan and demons (and angels) is a matter of worldview, not intelligence.
3. The worldview of Christian theism sees reality as more than merely physical. I embrace that worldview. I am not under the Enlightenment spell of metaphysical naturalism. I am not an anti-supernaturalist who denies the reality of miracles and non-physical realities.
4. In the Gospels Jesus encountered and cast out demons. Why wouldn't we do the same?
And defeat them, as Jesus did, in Jesus' name.
FOR FURTHER READING
Greg Boyd, God at War: The Bible and Spiritual Conflict; and Satan & the Problem of Evil: Constructing a Trinitarian Warfare Theodicy.
Charles Kraft, Defeating Dark Angels: Breaking Demonic Oppressions in the Believer's Life. Note: See Kraft's Christianity with Power: Your Worldview and Experience of the Supernatural. Kraft is an anthropologist (formerly at Michigan State University) and missiologist at Fuller Theological Seminary. When I read Clark Pinnock's introduction to this book I knew I needed to read it. See esp. the chapter "Jesus Had a Worldview." It's scholarly and readable.
M. Scott Peck, People of the Lie. For me it was chilling to read this book, written by Peck the psychiatrist as he tells clinical stories of demon possession.
Does Satan Exist? Greg Boyd's "S.I.N. Hypothesis"
John Calvin on Demons
Richard Beck, Reviving Old Scratch: Demons and the Devil for Doubters and the Disenchanted.
I am not a philosophical naturalist or physicalist. Therefore, I do not believe reality is only physical. Once one admits there are non-physical elements of reality the door is open to logically believe in spiritual beings, such as angels and demons. To examine problems with philosophical naturalism see, e.g., texts such as: Naturalism, by Stewart Goetz and Charles Taliaferro; The Waning of Materialism, by Robert Koons (ed.) and George Bealer (ed.); and The Recalcitrant Imago Dei: Human Persons and the Failure of Naturalism, by J.P. Moreland.
While he was sharing I couldn't help thinking how different Christianity is from Islam, and how very different Jesus is from Muhammed. Jesus didn't come to articulate some rules for living, he came to change the human heart. If a person's heart could be changed, then rules wouldn't be needed. If a person loved God, and understood prayer as conversation with the God they adore, they wouldn't need to be commanded to communicate with him. Out of heart-desire, they would pray.
Dallas Willard expresses this when he writes:
"The Revolution of Jesus is in the first place and continuously a revolution of the human heart or spirit. It did not and does not proceed by means of the formation of social institutions and laws, the outer forms of our existence, intending that these would then impose a good order of life upon people who come under their power. Rather, his is a revolution of character, which proceeds by changing people from the inside through ongoing personal relationship to God in Christ and to one another." (Willard, Renovation of the Heart: Putting on the Character of Christ)
This, says Willard, is the "Revolution of Jesus."
There are so many examples of this in the Gospels that it's hard to choose among them. For example, Jesus said, "Where your treasure is, there will be your heart also." (Matthew 6:21) Commenting on this New Testament scholar Craig Evans writes: "The type of treasure that one accumulates is a reliable indicator of what one values." (Evans, Matthew, 154)
The mouth speaks what the heart is full of. (Matthew 12:34) Jesus came to fill our hearts with himself.
Willard writes: "He saves us by realistic restoration of our heart to God and then by dwelling there with his Father through the distinctively divine Spirit. The heart thus renovated and inhabited is the only real hope of humanity on earth."
In Kara's book the poorest of the poor are bought and sold as sex slaves to satisfy the desires of the rich. In Stearns's book we see rich Christians watching flat-screen TVs and viewing the world's poor suffer.
Something is wrong with this picture.
Enter Jesus.
Jesus...
Scott Rodin writes, in his book Stewards in the Kingdom:
"We must never for single moment lose sight of the stark realization that whenever we deal with money, we are dealing with dynamite. That is the one day that which we control, the next day becomes the controller. Such dynamite must be defused, and the greatest defuser that we as Christians have at our disposal is the opportunity to take that which seeks to dominate us and simply give it away. Think about it. There is not greater expression of money's total lack of dominance over us or of its low priority in our lives than when we can with joy and peace, give it away for the Lord's work. You cannot worship the God of mammon and be a free and cheerful giver. Likewise, you cannot serve the living God and be a hoarder of his resources. Giving, both how we give and how much we give, is the clearest outward expression of who our God really is. Our check stubs speak more honestly of our priorities than our church memberships." (Quoted in Stearns, 212)
For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.
- Paul, advising Timothy, in 1 Timothy 6:10
***
A few reviews of Stearns's book:
"With passionate urging and earnestness, Rich Stearns challenges Christians to embrace the whole Gospel of Jesus Christ by embracing the neediest and most vulnerable among us. After reading the moving stories, the compelling facts and figures, and Stearns' excellent application of scripture and his own experiences at World Vision, you will no doubt be asking yourself: What should I do?" ----Chuck Colson, Founder, Prison Fellowship
"Read this compelling story and urgent call for change-Richard Stearns is a contemporary Amos crying 'let justice roll down like waters….' Justice is a serious gospel-prophetic mandate. Far too many American Christians for too long a time have left the cause to 'others.' Read it as an altar call." -- --Eugene H. Peterson, translator of The Message, Professor Emeritus of Spiritual Theology, Regent College, Vancouver, BC
"This book is a clarion call for the church to arise and answer the question, Who is my neighbor? If you read this book, you will be inspired, but if you do what this book is asking, you will be forever changed." --- T.D. Jakes, pastor of the Potter's House of Dallas
I have read through the four Gospels many times. Their words are both familiar and unfamiliar to me.
The fiery passion of Jesus is seen in Matthew 25:31-46 when he talks about actively loving and caring for "the least of these." When I read these words I have wondered, who are the real followers of the Real Jesus? If you can, stop now before reading further and slow-read these verses.
N. T. Wright says that Jesus “ate and drank with all sorts and conditions of people, sometimes in an atmosphere of celebration. He ate with ‘sinners’, and kept company with people normally on or beyond the borders of respectable society… This caused regular offence to some of the pious.” (N.T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God, 149)
"Sheep" are actual Jesus-followers. They sacrifice their lives for others who are "less" than they are. They are the "righteous," and their destiny is "eternal life." The sheep of the Shepherd are always moving downward into their surrounding culture.
There's a great, separating, spiritual-litmus-test going on here, a Christ-defining either-or. The level of seriousness is intense. Jesus came for the least and the lost. Not to actively do the same is to be a goatish unbeliever. Because someone who doesn't actually follow after Jesus is an unbeliever, right? True belief always leads to active following; theoretical-religious belief is dead because it lacks deeds.
I am the judge of none of this. But I can read.
“For I was hungry, while you had all you needed. I was thirsty, but you drank bottled water. I was a stranger, and you wanted me deported. I needed clothes, but you needed more clothes. I was sick, and you pointed out the behaviors that led to my sickness. I was in prison, and you said I was getting what I deserved.”
- Matthew 25, paraphrased by Richard Stearns, in The Hole in our Gospel, 59.
This is called a "holiness code." Every culture has one, with accompanying purity laws. Purity laws are lists of religious 'Dos' and 'Don'ts'. For example, during Jesus's time, one could not touch a dead body lest it make you ritually impure. Or eat certain foods.
New Testament scholar Richard Bauckham writes:
All over Palestine, archaeologists have found ritual baths [mikvah], which indicate that it was not just groups such as the Pharisees who cared about purity. Many ordinary people evidently took care to remove impurity when they contracted it. It was part of the desire to be the holy people of the holy God." (Bauckham, Jesus: A Very Short Introduction, p. 23)
Jesus violated many of the existing purity laws. In doing this he clashed with the religious leaders of his time. Larry Hurtado and Chris Keith write:
"Jesus’s healing and teaching caused turmoil for Jewish leaders because it created a point of access— Jesus himself— to forgiveness and purity outside the sacrificial system and the temple. It also therefore created alternative definitions for who is in God’s community, who is out, and who decides. Jesus placed himself at the center of God’s restoration of Israel, a place that Jewish tradition reserved for God. These symbolic claims from Jesus, among other aspects of his ministry, are what infuriated the Jewish leadership in the Gospels." (Hurtado, Larry; Keith, Chris, Jesus among Friends and Enemies: A Historical and Literary Introduction to Jesus in the Gospels, Kindle Locations 992-996; emphasis mine)
Jesus redefined purity, giving us a new way of attaining it before God. Many impure people, hearing of this, sought out Jesus. Jesus was now the road, the door, the Way, the point of access, into the family and presence of a holy God.
The hemorrhaging woman was impure according to Leviticus 15: 25; the ten lepers were impure according to Leviticus 13– 14; the woman who washes Jesus’s feet, if a prostitute, was impure according to Leviticus 15: 17– 18; and Zacchaeus was likely considered impure because he consistently came in contact with impure gentiles and handled their money. Jesus’s healing of the bleeding woman, lepers, and sinful woman restored their purity, just as dining with Zacchaeus as a legitimate “son of Abraham” symbolically restores Zacchaeus to Israel. (From Hurtado and Keith, K986-991; emphasis mine)
Bauckham says the key question for Jews during this time was how to maintain purity and be God's holy people in the situation of the hyper-impure Roman occupation. Facing this situation, the Pharisees "greatly extended the purity rules in the Torah and made purity a major concern of daily life" (Bauckham, 25)
The Real Jesus came to make people clean, holy and acceptable to God.
On July 4, 2018, as America was celebrating Independence Day, John Piippo drove into Washington, D.C. in a rusty, beat-up car. A million people had gathered in the National Mall. A breathtaking display of fireworks was coming to a close as the military band led the people in the singing of the National Anthem.
False. How absurd to view oneself as the fulfillment of over 200 years celebrating America's greatest holiday!
But... consider Jesus. "The Festival of Dedication then took place in Jerusalem. It was winter, and Jesus was walking in the temple in Solomon's portico."
-John 10:22-23
Uh-oh. It was Hanukkah. What is Jesus doing? Two things. He is attending the Festival as an observant Jew. And, he will interpret the Festival, indeed every Jewish Festival, in terms of himself. Craig Keener writes:
John's "Gospel connects Jesus' mission with features of each of the festivals: Jesus is portrayed, for example, as a (probably) Passover lamb. Likewise, he appears as the foundation stone from which living water would flow, a hope specifically celebrated at the festival of Tabernacles. John's Hanukkah passage might also make a similar point. Some scholars suggest that this passage depicts Jesus as consecrated or dedicated to God the way this festival celebrated the altar's rededication (cf. 10:36; elsewhere this Gospel connects Jesus with the temple)." (Keener, Jesus and Hanukkah: John 10:22-23)
As the cries of Passover lambs are heard in Jerusalem, Jesus hangs on a cross atoning for the sins of humanity. Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! And before that, recall how Jesus ate that last Passover meal with his disciples, and radically reinterpreted the wine and the bread in terms of his own life and death.
Jesus is the "new Moses" who is leading his people in a "new Exodus" to freedom.
I grew up in Rockford, Illinois, in the 1950s. Then, no one shopped on Sundays. Restaurants and grocery stores were closed. Gas stations took Sundays off. Every restaurant was "Chick Fil 'A." Only a little over fifty years ago, that was one way we "remembered the Sabbath to keep it holy."
Sabbath. Shabbat! (Hebrew) Which means: Cease! Remember the Sabbath Day by setting it apart. (Exodus 20:8)
Linda and I were in Jerusalem on a Sabbath Day. It was here that I learned something about the meaning of work. We stayed in a beautiful hotel, on the 25th floor. What a view of the city we had! The hotel had six elevators.
Uh-oh. You don’t make mud on the Sabbath, because that’s doing work! This irritates the religious leaders. How does the man feel about the fact that he can now see? Answer: very, very good.
Welcome to what scholars call the "Sabbath Controversies." Jesus was controversial.
The Pharisees ask the same question but with different intent. They want to determine whether any Sabbath laws have been broken. The man recounts his healing with great brevity (v. 15).
Jesus is seen as a "sinner," He's off the mark. Why? Because he works on the Sabbath. The Pharisees only show interest in the Sabbath violation. This is wild… because A BLIND BEGGAR JUST GOT HEALED!!!! Here is an example of how rules and structures – while they can be good and even necessary – lock people out of what God may be doing.
The controversy gets white-hot in Mark 2, when Jesus makes a shocking self-referential claim. We read:
New Testament scholar Michael Wilkins writes that we have here, coming from Jesus, "a remarkable clarification of his identity and authority." (Wilkins, The NIV Application Commentary: Matthew, 441)
Jesus is Lord of all.
Jesus is Lord of the Sabbath.
"I've been here before, but it's hard to get here since I have to walk."
That morning was cold, rainy, and very windy. "Where did you walk from?"
"LaSalle," she said. "When I am in this building I sense the presence of God."
This woman walked 5 miles in the cold, wind, and rain to be in the presence of God!
For ancient Israel the place to be, when it came to experiencing God, was the Temple. Observant, God-seeking Jews and Gentiles would travel, sometimes for hundreds of miles, to the great festivals held in Jerusalem that were centered around the activity of the Temple. Richard Bauckham writes:
"The Temple was the symbolic center of Jewish faith and it was also the place where God was accessible to his people in a special way. It was God’s holy presence in the Temple that made Jerusalem the holy city and Palestine the holy land. It was God’s presence in the Temple that made it the only place where sacrifice could be offered." (Bauckham, Jesus: A Very Short Introduction, p. 21).
New Testament scholar Michael McClymond adds:
“The overriding importance of the Temple in first-century Judaism becomes apparent in the persistence of the Jewish people in rebuilding and maintaining the Temple and in the large place given to it in ancient literature. Bruce Chilton notes that the Jewish Temple was renowned throughout the world and was perhaps “the largest religious structure in the world at that time.”” (McClymond, Familiar Stranger, 53)
In Jesus's final weeks on earth we see him in Jerusalem, walking daily up the mountain to teach and stir the religious pot in the Temple courtyards. Jesus intimately referred to the Temple as "my Father's house." It was part of his family estate.
As Jesus the Light of the World stood in the courtyard, the Temple had become a place of spiritual darkness. Nothing more devastating could be said than Jesus's words in Matthew 23:13:
Because of this, Jesus said the Temple is going down. People won't worship God on this mountain anymore. Not one brick of this magnificent structure will be left standing. It is hard to grasp the enormity of what Jesus was saying. Imagine someone walking in the outer courts of the White House in Washington, D.C., openly proclaiming its impending ruin.
This Temple will soon be gone. It happened in 70 A.D. But the Temple will remain. Because Jesus has already said, with jaw-dropping self-referential clarity:
And:
Jesus reinterprets the Temple in terms of his own self. Jesus hosts the presence of God. As we abide in Jesus, corporately and individually, the followers of Jesus become portable sanctuaries that host God's manifest presence.
Jesus of Nazareth was "christened" by the Father at his baptism when heaven opened, the Spirit of God descended on him like a dove, and a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.” (Matthew 3:17)
Jesus is like a ship constructed for the purpose of sailing stormy seas to save people who have made shipwrecks of their own lives. At Jesus' baptism the Father launched the Christ into the dark waters of corrupted human existence.
Jesus is Messiah, "the Christ."
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NOTE:
The book if Isaiah has been referred to as "the fifth Gospel" because of its Messianic expectations that fit the historical Jesus. Here's an excellent book to enter into this discussion -The Gospel According to Isaiah 53: Encountering the Suffering Servant in Jewish and Christian Theology, eds. Darrell Bock and Mitch Glaser. Some very good scholars contribute essays, to include Bock, Michael Brown, Craig Evans, and Walter Kaiser. See the book reviewed here.
Jesus died on a cross. He died as he lived; viz., below the bottom rung of the honor-shame ladder.
God identified with the abandoned and godforsaken because Jesus the Son was executed in a manner regularly reserved for such people. The Word became expendable flesh and died as one of us. Tim Keller writes:
Origen of Alexandria (c. 165–264) goes so far as to mock Roman celebrations of birth anniversaries, dismissing them as “pagan” practices—a strong indication that Jesus’ birth was not marked with similar festivities at that place and time. As far as we can tell, Christmas was not celebrated at all at this point.
Finally, in about 200 C.E., a Christian teacher in Egypt makes reference to the date Jesus was born. The earliest mention of December 25 as Jesus’ birthday comes from a mid-fourth-century Roman almanac that lists the death dates of various Christian bishops and martyrs. The first date listed, December 25, is marked: natus Christus in Betleem Judeae: “Christ was born in Bethlehem of Judea.”
In about 400 A.D., Augustine of Hippo mentions a local dissident Christian group, the Donatists, who apparently kept Christmas festivals on December 25, but refused to celebrate the Epiphany on January 6, regarding it as an innovation." (For more see "How December 25 Became Christmas." And note: the popular idea that December 25 is rooted in paganism is itself a myth - see the cited essay for this, too.)
However, early Jesus-followers did celebrate Easter. The cross and the resurrection of Christ were the primary realities of the Jesus-life.
I believe in the birth of Christ. I have not invested as much study time in Jesus's birth as I have in his resurrection. The Cross and Resurrection are THE BIG ONES.
Rewind forty-seven years. I am 21, and a brand new Jesus-follower. One of my pastors, and one of my two theistic philosophical mentors (William Lane Craig and John Peterson) presented me with a historical argument for the resurrection of Christ. I present it to you below.
So, I believe...
2. God raised Christ from the dead.
3. All who are "in Him" shall rise with Him.
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#2 – The best explanation of those facts is that God raised Jesus from the dead.
#1 – the following 4 facts are accepted by the majority of New Testament scholars. (NOTE: If a person wants to study the historicity of the New Testament documents, read the works of New Testament scholars. But aren’t they biased? And, if they are biased, can we trust them?
Fact 1 – after the crucifixion Jesus was buried by Joseph of Arimathea in a tomb.
Evidence: Jesus’ burial is multiply-attested in various independent sources.
This does NOT mean the burial stories are in the four Gospels. It means that the source material Mark used is different from the source material of Matthew and Luke, and they are all different from John, and these are all different from Paul’s sources.
The burial account is part of Mark's source material for the story of Jesus' Passion.
Fact #2 – on the Sunday after the crucifixion the tomb of Jesus was found empty by a group of His women followers.
Most NT scholars also agree with the fact of the empty tomb.
Some who argue against this claim that the story of the empty tomb was a fictional, literary creation of Mark.
1 – The historical reliability of the burial account supports the empty tomb.
The empty tomb tradition is independently preserved in the early sermons in the book of Acts.
So, the story of the empty tomb can’t be a literary creation of Mark.
Craig writes:
As for the other Gospels, that Matthew has an independent tradition of the empty tomb is evident not only from the non-Matthean vocabulary (e.g., the words translated "on the next day," "the preparation day," "deceiver," "guard [of soldiers]," "to make secure," "to seal"; the expression "on the third day" is also non-Matthean, for he everywhere else uses "after three days;" the expression "chief priests and Pharisees" never appears in Mark or Luke and is also unusual for Matthew), but also from Matt. 28.15: "this story has been spread among Jews till this day," indicative of a tradition history of disputes with Jewish non-Christians. Luke and John have the non-Markan story of Peter and another disciple inspecting the tomb, which, given John's independence of Luke, indicates a separate tradition behind the story. Moreover, we have already seen that John's independence of Mark shows that he has a separate source for the empty tomb.
In fact, the ancient Jewish historian Josephus says that, on account of their boldness and levity, women should not even be allowed to serve as witnesses in a Jewish court of law.
NOTE: the early date ensures that the appearance stories cannot be “legendary.” Legends take many years to develop. Craig writes: “For in order for these stories to be in the main legendary, a very considerable length of time must be available for the evolution and development of the traditions until the historical elements have been supplanted by unhistorical.”
N.T. Wright, in The Resurrection of the Son of God, gives a 7-step argument in support of these two claims.
- Stories
about Jesus’ tomb being empty.
- Stories
about Jesus appearing to people, alive again.
- These
stories were formulated within the context and worldview of Second-Temple
Judaism. “No second-Temple Jews came up with anything remotely like
them.” (688)
ii. “Nobody in the pagan world would have interpreted an empty tomb as implying resurrection; everyone knew such a thing was out of the question.” (688-689)
iii. “Certainly… the disciples were not expecting any such thing to happen to Jesus.” (689)
- The
appearances, by themselves, would have been classified as visions or
hallucinations, which were well known in the ancient world.
- Individually,
the empty tomb and the appearances are insufficient to explain the belief
in the resurrection of Jesus.
- Together, the empty tomb and
the appearances provide a sufficient reason for early Christian belief in
Jesus’ resurrection.
- “From
Think of the situation these followers of Jesus faced after his crucifixion.
1 – Their leader was dead. Jewish Messianic expectations had no idea of a Messiah who would triumph over his enemies by being humiliated and executed by them as a criminal.
But the early disciples felt so strongly that God had raised the individual man Jesus from the dead that they were willing to die for the truth of that belief.
SUMMING UP
This brings us to the second major contention, which is: the best explanation for these facts is that God raised Jesus from the dead.
6 Tests Historians Use to Discover What Is the Best Explanation For a Given Historical Fact (from historian C.B McCullough)
The hypothesis “God raised Jesus from the dead” passes all of these tests.
I think the best explanation for the historical facts is that God raised Jesus from the dead.
*****
ADDITION - N.T. Wright on the Resurrection of Jesus, from his The Resurrection of the Son of God.
ii. “Nobody in the pagan world would have interpreted an empty tomb as implying resurrection; everyone knew such a thing was out of the question.” (688-689)
4. “The meaning of resurrection within Second-Temple Judaism makes it impossible to conceive of this reshaped resurrection belief emerging without it being known that a body had disappeared, and that the person had been discovered to be thoroughly alive again.” (Ib.)
Isaiah 65:17
But what about 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17?
This is Jewish wedding language. We will go to meet the coming Bridegroom, and escort him onto the new earth to be with his Bride.
Ben Witherington says that, in ancient Roman culture, when a royal person arrived to their city, a greeting committee would go out and escort him back into the city. In Jewish culture, when the bridegroom approached towards where the bride was, a welcoming group went out with their lamps and escorted the groom into the wedding place. “The classic texts thought to refer to the rapture, especially 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17, say nothing about saints being taken suddenly into heaven. Rather, they go forth to meet Christ in the sky when he is returning, and then they return with him to the earth to reign.” (BW, Revelation, 261)
Paul’s image of the people “meeting the Lord in the air” should be read with the assumption that the people will immediately turn around and lead the Lord back to the newly remade world. (NTW)
Further, we read in Matthew 24:
So, God made heaven and earth; at the last he will remake both and join them together forever. We, the Bride of Christ, will go forth to meet him when he appears, and lead the celebratory parade of the Bridegroom to his transformed earth.
I was in India, riding in the back seat of a car on a 5-hour ride from Hyderabad to Kurnool along one of India's major highways. I could not sleep, even though I was jet-lag tired. India, by their own admission, leads the world in road deaths.
One time we passed a car going round a curve and came face to face with a truck. My driver swerved at the last moment. When I saw the truck coming at us I said the following profound, almost-last-words-of-a-dead-man: "Oh no!" Had I died, whoever would do my funeral would have to say, "John the theologian's last words were, "Oh no!""
Jesus's Final Words, aka his "Final Discourse," were profound and continue to guide my life to this moment. We hear them in John chapters 14-16. The disciples are wondering what they will do when Jesus is gone. Jesus instructs them, and us.
He does not say "form some committees and think of strategies to keep this thing going." He tells them: "Abide in me." Jesus says:
Call this "reciprocal abiding." God comes to make his home in the heart of every Jesus-follower. Every Jesus-follower is to tend this inner fire by making his home in Jesus like a branch connects to a Vine.
As we abide in Christ we...
Connect.
Dwell.
Remain.
Abide.
To Him.
In Him.
The result is that He lives, in and through you.
A few years ago some film students at the University of Michigan were making a movie about Southeast Michigan. They interviewed me as part of their project. I remember two of their questions.
They asked: "What is the #1 problem you see in Southeast Michigan?"
I answered: "Me."
I answered: "The #1 thing I need to do for my people is to stay attached to Jesus, to continually abide in Christ." Because what my people need is Jesus, not me. Jesus is all they need. Jesus is all any church needs.
Let us sing these words together.
