Category Archives: New Testament

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Jesus was a Refugee—Matthew 2:13-15

Among some, the claim that Jesus was a refugee has become politically divisive these days, so I should point out that the title used in this analogy predates the controversy; it was my own observation, published in my IVP Matthew commentary in 1997 (pp. 69-70). How that should apply to details of contemporary political debates may be a legitimate question. Whether Christians should care about refugees and try to help them is not. Whether Jesus and his family actually had to leave their country because of political oppression is a debate only among those who question the historical authenticity of Matthew’s report. Having prefaced my comments with these remarks, I turn now to the pre-controversy Bible study I wrote back in the early 1990s and have only slightly updated.

Persian Magi were known for using stars and dreams to predict the future, and it appears that on this one occasion in history, God spoke to the Magi where they were looking. Although Scripture forbade divination, in this period many people believed that stars could predict the future, and rulers anxious about such predictions sometimes executed others to protect their own situation. (One ruler, for example, is said to have executed some nobles to make sure that they, rather than he, fulfilled a prediction about some leaders’ demise!)

So large was the Magi’s caravan in Matthew 2 that they could not escape notice; Matthew says that all Jerusalem was stirred by their arrival. The Magi had every reason to assume that a newborn king would be born in the royal palace in Jerusalem; but despite Herod’s many wives, he had sired no children recently. Herod’s own wise men sent these Gentile wise men off to Bethlehem, just six miles from Jerusalem and in full view of Herod’s fortress called the Herodium. They later fled Bethlehem by night, but the disappearance of such a large caravan would not go unnoticed for very long.

Herod acts in this narrative just like history shows us Herod was: he was so paranoid and jealous that he had executed two of his sons on the (false) charge of plotting against him, as well as his favorite wife on the (false) charge of infidelity. On his deathbed, he would execute another son, and leave orders (happily unfulfilled) to execute nobles (so there would be some mourning when he died; cf. Prov 11:10). A probably apocryphal report attributes to the Roman emperor the opinion that it was safer to be one of Herod’s pigs than one of his sons.

Contrasting the different characters in this account reveals striking ironies. Fitting a theme in Matthew’s Jewish Gospel, these Gentiles come to worship Jesus. By contrast, Herod, king of the Judeans, acts like a pagan king: like Pharaoh of old (and another pagan king more recently), he orders the killing of male children. Most astonishing to us, though, should be Herod’s advisors, the chief religious leaders and Bible teachers of the day: they knew where the Messiah would be born, but unlike these Gentiles they did not seek him out. Merely knowing the Bible is no guarantee that we will obey its message. (We should note, however, that the Sanhedrin, whom Herod uses here as advisors, was not very independent in this period; he had executed his opponents and replaced them with his political lackeys.) As in the parable of the sower, we ought to sow on all kinds of soil; sometimes God has plans for the people we least expect.

But notice also the other characters. The narrative repeatedly emphasizes “the child and his mother” as the objects of Herod’s hostility. Though this powerful king will soon be dead, he feels threatened by those who were at the time politically harmless. Undoubtedly able to use the resources provided by the Magi, however, Joseph’s family found refuge in Egypt, like an earlier biblical Joseph. Probably they settled in the massive city of Alexandria, where according to some estimates nearly a third of the city was Jewish.

Years ago, when I wrote my first commentary on Matthew, I wrote at this point that Jesus was a refugee: a baby in a family forced to flee a corrupt dictator, just like so many political refugees in different parts of the world today.

As I wrote it, I grieved for my dear friend Médine, whose country, Congo-Brazzaville, was at war. Later I learned that her town had been burned down, and did not know for eighteen months if she was alive or dead; if she was alive, however, she was undoubtedly a refugee, along with perhaps as much as a quarter of her nation. Still later I discovered that she had fled the town carrying a baby on her back and joining others in pushing her disabled father in a wheelbarrow.

When Médine read in my Matthew commentary that Jesus was a refugee, she found meaning in what she had experienced; Jesus had suffered what she had suffered. Médine is now my wife, and we have a happier life. But we cannot easily forget those who, like our Lord two millennia ago, face suffering because of others’ injustice.

The story of Craig and Médine together appears in Impossible Love: The True Story of an African Civil War, Miracles, and Love Against All Odds (Chosen Books, 2016). Craig S. Keener is author of a smaller commentary on Matthew with InterVarsity Press and a larger one with Eerdmans (The Gospel of Matthew: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary, 2009), as well as The Historical Jesus of the Gospels (Eerdmans, 2009) and Christobiography (Eerdmans, 2019).

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Watering Down the Gospel?—John’s water motif

In Greek, John’s Gospel includes many plays on words, and John often likes to play on the image of water. Jewish people and Samaritans used water for various ritual purposes, but John emphasizes that it is God’s Spirit, not ritual when done without the Spirit, that transforms.

Six waterpots were set aside for the ceremony of purification. Bypassing their consecrated purpose, Jesus turned the water into wine (2:6, 9). Jewish people immersed Gentile converts in water, sometimes associating this conversion process with the convert becoming like a new person. Yet Jesus insists that Nicodemus, a teacher of Israel, be born “from water and the Spirit” (3:5); the Greek construction here could also be rendered, “the water of the Spirit” (i.e., with Calvin, as a hendiadys with an epexegetical kai, for those who are interested). When the Samaritan woman meets Jesus at a well sacred to her people, she learns of living water greater than the water of Jacob’s well. She leaves behind her waterpot and becomes the first mass evangelist as she brings her people to Jesus (ch. 4).

Unable to find healing at a special healing pool for thirty-eight years, a man unable to walk is healed at once when Jesus speaks to him (5:7-9). In another case, Jesus daubs mud on a blind man’s eyes, then sends him to wash in the Pool of Siloam to be healed (9:6-7). This case shows us that the problem is not with water per se; the water of the Pool of Siloam was used for the Festival of Tabernacles, and so was being used for ritual purposes at the very time that this healing probably took place (it was the last day of the festival in 7:37, and most scholars do not believe that the earliest manuscripts include the day change in 7:53—8:2). The problem is not with ritual, but with depending on ritual when we should be depending on God himself. Because Jesus sends the man, he is healed through water from the pool this time. But both in John 5 and in John 9, it is Jesus that makes the difference.

Likewise, John the Baptist earlier contrasted his own baptism involving mere water with Jesus’s greater baptism involving the Holy Spirit (1:31, 33). John’s baptism was not bad; Jesus’s baptism, however, was greater, and the ultimate purpose to which John’s baptism pointed.

On the last day of the Festival of Tabernacles, Jesus invites the spiritually thirsty to drink from him. He announces the fulfilment of the Scripture about rivers of living water going forth from the belly (7:37-39). What Scripture did Jesus have in mind? The Scripture readings for the last day of the festival included Ezekiel 47 and Zechariah 14, which described rivers of water flowing from the temple or Jerusalem. Many Jewish people considered Jerusalem the belly or navel of the earth. This Scripture was being fulfilled that day in Jesus because Jesus is the foundation stone of God’s new temple: from him flows the water of life for the thirsty. The water of which Jesus speaks here, John tells us plainly, is the Spirit (7:39).

It is no coincidence that John is the only Gospel to make a point of narrating something that the beloved disciple witnessed at the cross. When Jesus’s side was pierced for us, not only blood but water came out (19:34). Medically, the water-like fluid may come from a broken sac around the heart, but John probably records it because it climaxes Jesus’s point: now that Jesus has been lifted up, the Spirit becomes available (7:39). John, who likes plays on words, as we have noted, also points out that when Jesus died he gave up his spirit—in words that could also be translated, “he gave the Spirit” (19:30). Once Jesus came to the disciples after the resurrection, he breathed on them (as God once breathed into Adam the breath of life) and imparted the Spirit in person (20:22).

Have we been cleansed with the spiritual water of new life? Have we drunk freely of the water of his Spirit? It is freely available; “Let the one who wills come and drink freely from the water of life” (Rev 22:17).

Craig Keener is professor of New Testament at Asbury Theological Seminary and author of a two-volume commentary on John’s Gospel published by Baker Academic.

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Gospels and ancient biographies (1/2 hour)

Part 2 of the interview with Scott Rae of Biola regarding Christobiography: https://www.biola.edu/blogs/think-biblically/2020/ancient-biography-historical-jesus-part-2

Scott’s summary: How should we assess the accuracy of the gospel record of the life of Jesus, since the conventions of history writing were somewhat different in the ancient world compared to today. In his massive study, Christobiography, NT scholar Craig Keener compares the gospel record to the way ancient biography was written. Keener insists that the gospels should be regarded as historically accurate biographies, not historical novels, as some critics have maintained. Join us for part two of this conversation on this critical topic.

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The children’s bread and dogs’ crumbs—Mark 7:24-30

Jesus had taken his disciples into Gentile territory to get away from the crowds (Mk 7:24). Even if Jesus temporarily escaped the paparazzi and the tabloids, however, he was too popular to fully evade notice; he could not even take his disciples on a private retreat without someone finding him. A woman had a desperate need, so desperate that she didn’t care that Jesus was on vacation; she needed deliverance for her daughter.

Aside from the fact that she was interrupting Jesus’s down time, she was, worst of all, a Gentile. And not just any Gentile: she was a Syrophoenician. Jesus was in the region of Tyre in Phoenicia; Jesus’s disciples would know Phoenicia as the region where wicked Jezebel was from—though also the region of a woman who had received the prophet Elijah. Mark identifies this region as Syrophoenicia, to distinguish it from the Phoenician colonies in north Africa (founded after the time of Jezebel).

Jesus had just been teaching his disciples that outward ritual purity is not what matters (7:1-23). That theme sheds some light on his interaction with the Gentile woman here.

Mark also tells us that the woman was a “Greek” (literally in Mark 7:26, though some translations more blandly proclaim her a “Gentile”). That is, she not only lived among descendants of the ancient Phoenicians, but she also belonged to what had been the ruling citizen class since the time of Alexander the Great. She belonged to the privileged class that often maintained its wealth by exploiting the poorer farmers in outlying areas, both Phoenician and Jewish.

Now, however, this elite woman is desperate. Another Gospel indicates that the disciples wanted Jesus to send her away (Matt 15:23), just as they tried to keep young children or others tried to keep a blind beggar from imposing on Jesus (Mark 10:13, 48), just as a disciple once tried to protect Elisha from interruptions (2 Kgs 4:27). But this woman remains persistent. Although we cannot read too much into verb tenses, it is possible that the Greek imperfect verb tense might indicate that she not only asked Jesus to deliver her daughter, but kept pestering him. Certainly, Matthew is clear that she refuses to be put off (Matt 15:22-25).

Jesus, however, puts her off, insisting that his mission is to the “children” first, i.e., to God’s people; the children’s bread should not be thrown to the dogs. This woman belonged to a social class that had been consuming other people’s bread, taking food from other children’s mouths, for a long time. Now desperation had forced this member of the elite to humble herself and plead for help from a Jewish teacher—and he humiliates her even more! Calling someone a dog back then, whether of the male or female variety, meant essentially what it means today. It was one of the most grievous insults of antiquity, and while Jesus does not directly call her a dog (he simply makes a comparison), she could have taken offense and left.

She, however, is too desperate to give up. She humbles herself yet further, and construes Jesus’s image the way it could be applied in her Gentile environment. In her Gentile setting, people sometimes had pet dogs, and of course messy children dropped crumbs. She doesn’t need to be treated as an Israelite; Jesus’s power is so great that even the leftover crumbs from the table will be enough to deliver her daughter (Mark 7:28). Jesus counts her persistence and humility as faith, and answers her request (7:29-30).

The way Jesus treats this woman fits many of Mark’s surrounding narratives. Desperate to get help from the only one who can heal their friend, four men tear up a roof to get their friend to Jesus. Jesus calls this insistence “faith” (Mark 2:5). A woman with a flow of blood can make ritually impure anyone she touches or anyone whose clothes she touches (Lev 15:25-27). Nevertheless, yet she has to get to Jesus. She presses her way through the crowds and touches Jesus’s garment, with an expression of scandalous faith (Mark 5:25-34). Jesus invites her to testify publicly of her healing, even though in the eyes of the crowd, her act had made Jesus impure for the rest of that day. Jesus is not ashamed to be identified with us in our brokenness, so that he might make us whole. People try to keep blind Bartimaeus from Jesus, but he will not let anything keep him from Jesus (Mark 10:47-48).

Do you see the pattern? Many of the people who needed help from Jesus faced one barrier or another. But when they faced the barriers or things went wrong, they did not give up. Like the Syrophoenician woman, they recognized that Jesus was the only answer to their need, and they would not let anything keep them from getting to Jesus. Like the farmer or merchant in Jesus’s parables of the treasure in the field or the pearl of great price (Matt 13:44-46), they recognized that Jesus was worth so much that they would give up everything else to have him and what he offers.

When things go wrong, do we simply shrug and give up, feeling like God is far away? Or do we persist in faith, trusting God no matter what? Even if his answer is delayed, or even if we do not get the particular blessing we seek, there is a blessing for those who hold firm in faith. Jesus is worth everything. Do not let any problem, anyone’s disapproval, or even what seems a divine rebuff itself, distract you from pressing in and seeking God with all your heart.

Craig S. Keener is professor at Asbury Theological Seminary and the author of many books, including Miracles: The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts (Baker Academic), and two commentaries on Matthew’s Gospel.

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What does it mean to be led by the Spirit?—Galatians 5:18

What does it mean to be led by the Spirit? In terms of particulars, that depends somewhat on which biblical passage one is examining.

Some of the context of the Spirit’s leading in Galatians 5:18 is moral. Instead of our lives being circumscribed by written laws, God writes his law in our hearts. Thus we “walk” by the Spirit (5:16), are “led” by the Spirit (5:18), and put our steps in the footsteps of the Spirit (5:25). We follow the ways that he directs for us. Those who do this aren’t “under the law,” because we fulfill the moral demands of the law anyway (5:18, 23). We have promptings or movings that go beyond conscience. (Since conscience can be misinformed [1 Tim 4:2], learning to distinguish them can be important; but the Spirit can reshape our conscience with grace and right desire [cf. the Spirit’s godly desire in Gal 5:16-17]). That we are “led by the Spirit” presumably means that, ideally, we are following the Spirit.

Yet putting our steps in the steps of the Spirit (5:25; for further explanation of this sense in 5:25, see either of my Galatians commentaries) can have broader application than this. As Jesus did whatever he saw his Father doing (John 5:19), so we learn to discern God’s heart in Christ by the Spirit and follow along. This doesn’t mean that we always hear everything perfectly (cf. 2 Kgs 4:27; 1 Cor 13:9), but we do know the pattern, the way Christ laid before us by the way of love (5:14; 6:2). Love is certainly a key fruit of the Spirit (5:22).

Similarly, in the context of Romans 8:14, being “led by the Spirit” contrasts with being ruled by fleshly passion (8:5-13). It also involves a personal experience with the Spirit, a relationship as God’s sons and daughters (8:15-16).

Paul’s primary focus in “led by the Spirit” in Gal 5 may be moral transformation, but those who understand the Spirit’s leading exclusively in these terms commit a fallacy of drawing conclusions that are too general from particular cases. The Spirit’s moral leading is a particular example belonging to a wider experience with the Spirit. Note the following:

Neh 9:19-20 (NASB): “… The pillar of cloud did not leave them by day, To guide them on their way, Nor the pillar of fire by night, to light for them the way in which they were to go. You gave Your good Spirit to instruct them  …”

Ps 139:7, 10 (NASB): “Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence? … Even there Your hand will lead me, And Your right hand will lay hold of me”

Ps 143:10 (NASB): “Teach me to do Your will, For You are my God; Let Your good Spirit lead me on level ground.”

Isa 63:13-14 (NIV): “who led them through the depths? Like a horse in open country, they did not stumble; like cattle that go down to the plain, they were given rest by the Spirit of the LORD. This is how you guided your people to make for yourself a glorious name.”

Matt 4:1: “Then Jesus was led up into the wilderness by the Spirit for the purpose of being tested by the devil.”

Luke 4:1 (ESV): “And Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness” (cf. 4:14 [NIV} afterward: “Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, and news about him spread through the whole countryside”)

John 16:13 (NRSV): “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come”

These passages depict a range of way that God’s Spirit leads us, probably including Spirit-directed wisdom, intuition, and even God ordering our steps beyond our own recognition. The psalmist needs protection from enemies and also (as in Paul) guidance in God’s will (Ps 143:10). God’s Spirit is everywhere and always working in the psalmist’s life (Ps 139:7-10). Some other passages (Neh 9:19-20; Isa 63:13-14) refer directly to the exodus event, where God led his people in the wilderness by the pillar of fire (e.g., Exod 13:18; Deut 8:2, 15; 29:5; Ps 78:52; 106:9; 136:16; Jer 2:6; Amos 2:10), giving them direction where to move next as needed (e.g., Neh 9:12; Ps 78:14). They had to depend completely on him.

The Spirit leading Jesus into the wilderness (Matt 4:1; Luke 4:1), and perhaps even Paul’s language of being led by the Spirit, evokes this same imagery of God’s past leading of his people in the wilderness. From Jesus’s example, we see that sometimes the Spirit even leads us into, as well as through, hardships. From John 16:13 we learn about our intimate relationship with God, the Spirit revealing to us Jesus’s heart just as Jesus came to reveal the Father’s heart (cf. 15:15). Moreover, although Acts uses different wording, there we see the Spirit guiding God’s servants in sharing Christ with others (e.g., Acts 8:29; 10:19; 16:6-7; 19:21).

What does it mean to be led by the Spirit? In terms of particulars, that depends somewhat on which biblical passage one is examining. But overall, it means depending on God’s guidance in our lives, so we walk in the paths he wants us to walk. We don’t always in every case know exactly what his leading us, but our trust is more in his ability to lead us than in our ability to hear him. We follow our best sense of his leading, and trust in him to order our steps.

As we grow in our sensitivity to the Spirit, however, there is one area where we can be sure that his presence in our life will lead us: what is truly the leading of the Spirit will guide us in ways pleasing to God, always opposed to inclinations that do not. That is, the Spirit will never contradict the moral point that God’s Spirit already revealed in Scripture; the Spirit will empower us to live according to God’s heart.

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Filled with the Spirit, Worship God in Spiritual Songs—Ephesians 5:18-20

In my times in Africa, I have often noticed women singing while they work. My wife, son and daughter, who are from Africa, tend to do the same. Well, I guess I have sometimes done the same, though normally when I think nobody is around. (They all sing a lot better than I do.)

But this need not be a characteristic limited to African life, as we shall see with respect to Eph 5:18-20.

In my work on Acts, I initially treated Eph 5:18 as a different expression of being filled with the Spirit than what we find in Acts. Luke’s emphasis about the Spirit in Acts is empowerment for mission (Acts 1:8), with filling by the Spirit usually expressed in Luke’s work by Spirit-inspired (prophetic-like) speech for God (2:17-18; cf. 4:8, 31; 13:9; 19:6; 28:25; Luke 1:15-17, 41-42, 67). In keeping with Acts’ emphasis on mission to the nations (Acts 1:8), this inspired speech is often expressed by worshiping God in other people’s languages (2:4; 10:46; 19:6).

I argued that Paul aproaches tongues (in 1 Corinthians) and being filled with the Spirit (in Ephesians) from a different, if complementary, perspective. In 1 Cor 14, Paul focuses on the role of tongues in private prayer, also viewing it in the context of gifts from the Spirit generally (1 Cor 12—14). Although Paul prays in tongues privately more than do all the Corinthians (14:18), Paul emphasizes that in corporate worship tongues should be interpreted so as to benefit all the hearers. He is correcting abuses in Corinth, but the believers there presumably learned the practice through him, perhaps some of them even in the sort of collective outpourings of the Spirit like those sometimes narrated in Acts. But the way Paul articulates his focus differs from that which Luke associates with corporate outpourings of the Spirit narrated in Acts (e.g., 4:31; 13:52), which sometimes mention tongues (2:4; 10:46; 19:6).

In Eph 5:18-20, I argued, Paul emphasizes a different expression of being filled with the Spirit, and he is probably urging a regular or continuous experience with God. He is not narrating collective experiences, often (as in Acts 2, 10, 13 and 19; not 4) inauguratory ones, as Luke is doing in Acts. (The Greek term for “filled” also differs from the usual term used by Luke, except in Acts 13:52, but that might be merely stylistic preference.)

In Eph 5:18, we are to be filled and ruled by the Spirit in contrast to being filled and controlled by wine (cf. Acts 2:13-15). A drunk (or otherwise stoned or high) person may utter or sing nonsense, but being filled with the Spirit in the sense of Eph 5:18 leads to better content in one’s speech. The command “be filled with the Spirit” is followed by a string of subordinate participial clauses that express what it looks like to be filled with the Spirit, especially in relation to one another (5:19-21):

  • Speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and Spirit-moved songs
  • Singing and praising [possibly even, “psalming”] the Lord with [all] your hearts (for the pairing of these same Greek terms for singing and praising, cf. LXX Ps 20:14 [ET 21:13]; 26:6 [27:6]; 32:3 [33:3]; 56:8 [57:7]; 67:5, 33 [68:4, 32]; 103:33 [104:33]; 104:2 [105:2]; 107:2 [108:1]; 143:9 [144:9])
  • Always giving thanks for everything to [our] God and Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ
  • Submitting to each other because you reverence Christ

Yet Eph 5:18 is not nearly as distant from Acts as I have sometimes thought. Here, too, being filled with the Spirit is expressed in Spirit-inspired speech. Here this Spirit-inspired speech is expressed in worship in 5:19; but the tongues passages in Acts probably also involve worship (note 2:11; 10:46, with kai connecting the tongues and magnifying God more closely than te … kai in 19:6, which probably distinguishes the tongues from other prophetic speech). Paul elsewhere treats tongues in terms of prayer (1 Cor 14:13-15) and blessing and thanking God (14:16-17), so if Acts describes the same experience (albeit from a different angle), tongues there probably involves especially worship as well.

The worship in Eph 5:18 is not surely limited to, yet surely includes, tongues. “Spiritual songs” likely means “songs from the Spirit”; since Paul elsewhere speaks of tongues as a gift of the Spirit (1 Cor 12:10), and speaks of its use in song (14:13-15), this would include singing in tongues. This conclusion might follow all the more if we construed “spiritual” as referring to the human spirit, since Paul elsewhere depicts singing in a tongue and interpreting it as singing with his spirit and with his mind, respectively (14:13-15).

Again, Paul’s understanding of worship in Eph 5:18 is not limited to tongues. Paul speaks of psalms and hymns, which undoubtedly include biblical psalms (as in the synagogue). As for hymns, some scholars identify what they believe are pre-Pauline hymns in Paul’s letters. I am more inclined to see these as exalted prose (grand rhetoric), since they do not fit the structure of Greek hymns, and I am inclined to attribute most of them to Paul. (Greeks used specially exalted language for the divine or sublime; Paul applies such exalted prose especially to Christ.) Nevertheless, Paul seems to take for granted that his audience accepts as common ground what he articulates in these praises of Christ. His affirmations in these passages therefore reflect wider Christian beliefs, and such beliefs were undoubtedly expressed in actual worship.

All of this suggests that a key New Testament expression of being filled with the Spirit, not only in Luke’s writings but also in Paul’s letters, is that even our lips yield to the Spirit’s leading. (The tongue is, after all, the most difficult organ to subdue—cf. Jms 3:2!) Moreover, we can often expect that when we experience the empowerment of the Spirit, this will be expressed in worship to God.

So far I have not commented on the final subordinate clause that flows from being filled with the Spirit (5:18): submitting to one another (5:21). Humbly submitting to and serving one another an overarching Christian principle (cf. Mark 10:43-45; John 13:14-15; Rom 12:10) that Paul applies to various relationships relevant to his audience (Eph 5:22—6:9). But in Acts, also, the Spirit produces loving devotion to and service for one another (Acts 2:44-45; 4:32-35).

People of the Spirit are people who, both when gathered together and as part of our normal lifestyle, joyfully praise God and care for others.