Jesus in Ancient Historians

On a popular level, some writers dismiss all evidence for Jesus as inconsequential and view him as a pure creation of his followers. Even apart from the dismissal of many lines of evidence, this skeptical approach, if followed consistently, would make much of history unknowable.[1] As in the case of other new movements, whether from disciples of Socrates, Muhammad, Buddha, or Joseph Smith, the life of the founder was initially of little interest beyond the circle of his own followers. The Dead Sea Scrolls revere the founder of their community, the Teacher of Righteousness, yet he appears nowhere outside their own literature.

Likewise, the first-century Jewish historian Josephus claims to have been a Pharisee, yet he nowhere mentions the Pharisaic sage Hillel, whom most subsequent Pharisaic traditions name as one of their central figures.[2] Meanwhile, the Judean king Agrippa I, whom Josephus depicts as prominent even in Rome, merits only the barest passing mention in a Roman historian covering the period.[3] Another major Roman historian devotes little space even to Herod the Great.[4]

By the same criterion of relevance, the earlier Greek historian Herodotus neglected not only Judea but Rome.[5] And Josephus himself, despite his prominent role in the Judean war and as an interpreter of Judea for the gentile Greco-Roman world, merits no interest in later rabbis (who in fact show greater interest in Jesus).

This is not to imply that non-Christian reports about Jesus are altogether absent. Most scholars today recognize that the first-century Judean writer Josephus, who wrote about John the Baptist and Jesus’s brother James, also wrote about Jesus himself.[6] Josephus treats Jesus as a sage and wonder-worker executed by the governor, probably with the complicity of some of Jerusalem’s elite.[7] Many scholars argue that an early Arabic version also confirms the key points about Jesus that scholars have reconstructed as original (before scribal tampering) in Josephus’s account.[8] Possibly as early as 45 years after Jesus’s crucifixion, a Syrian philosopher named Mara bar Sarapion speaks of Jews executing their wise king, bringing judgment on Judea. (He probably heard this report from Syrian Christians.)[9]

Titus Flavius Josephus

By the early second century, one historian includes a report, from just two decades after the crucifixion, about Jewish debates in Rome, apparently concerning the Christ.[10] Another, reporting the slaughter of vast numbers of Jesus followers in Rome roughly 34 years after the crucifixion, mentions that Jesus himself was earlier crucified under Pontius Pilate.[11] Rome itself had finally taken notice, because subsequent events had made Jesus’s movement a matter of local significance. In fact, the movement had become more significant in Rome than was the governor who executed Jesus. Although Jewish sources and an inscription mention Pilate,[12] this passage marks his only appearance in surviving Roman literature.

Most importantly and most early, we have considerable information about Jesus in Paul’s letters to his congregations, beginning perhaps eighteen to twenty years after Jesus’s execution. Paul was certainly a Christian, but by his own admission he began his involvement with the sect as one of its persecutors rather than as one of its friends. While focusing on Jesus’s crucifixion and resurrection, Paul also mentions other information about Jesus, including the Twelve, Jesus’s brothers, Jesus’s being mocked and abused, his burial, his teaching about divorce, his words at the last supper, and so forth. Paul also attests what seems to be a widespread early Christian consensus about Jesus’s role as Christ and exalted Lord. Nevertheless, Paul’s situation-occasioned letters do not supply anything like a biography of Jesus or even narrate any episodes from his life before the passion.

If you want to keep reading, consider purchasing my book, Christobiography.

This content is by Craig Keener, but edited and posted by Defenders Media, 501(c)(3).


[1] Against this approach, see e.g., Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist?. Detractors cannot complain FFF: (as those who wish to avoid ad hominem arguments should not, in any case) that Ehrman, an agnostic, is motivated in this argument by religious bias. FFF: See also Casey, Evidence (from a non-Christian perspective; although sometimes polarizing and attributing more than appropriate to individuals’ psychological backgrounds, he is probably right to observe that British academia tend to show a greater commitment to fairness than do some polarized U.S. contexts);  Elliott, “Pseudo-Scholarship” (focusing on T. Freke and P. Gandy, and on 10 noting “factual errors, misstatements, and methodological misunderstandings on nearly every page”).

[2] See the comments by Israeli historian Flusser, Sage, 1; Flusser, “Ancestry,” 154; Flusser, “Love,” 154, compares the case of the Jesus movement with the followers of Simon Kimbangu or Joseph Smith. The analogies are of course inexact: for example, unlike Smith, Jesus left no written record; and unlike Jesus, Kimbangu did not train disciples (in the ancient Mediterranean sense). But the examples are sufficient for Flusser’s point.for Socrates, see Kennedy, “Source Criticism,” 130; for the principle that it is those who care about a figure who preserve his or her memories, see Schwartz, “Smoke,” 11.

[3] Tacitus Ann. 12.23.

[4] Dio Cassius 49.22.6; 54.9.3.

[5] Josephus Apion 1.60-66, esp. 66.

[6] On Josephus’s genuine mention of Jesus, see Meier, “Jesus in Josephus”; idem, “Testimonium”; Whealey, “Josephus”; idem, “Testimonium”; Gramaglia, “Testimonium”; Paget, “Observations”; Vermes, Jesus the Jew, 79; Charlesworth, Jesus within Judaism, 90-98; idem, “Jesus, Literature, and Archaeology,” 189-92; Dubarle, “Témoignage”; Ehrman, Prophet, 59-62; Theissen and Merz, Guide, 64-74; Van Voorst, Jesus, 81-104; Niemand, “Testimonium.”

[7] Josephus Ant. 18.63-64.

[8] See Agapius in Charlesworth, Jesus within Judaism, 95-96; Hilarion, Beginning, 11-refs (noting Pines, Version, 16); but see Whealey, “Testimonium,” esp. 587-88.

[9] Theissen and Merz, Guide, 76-80.

[10] Suetonius Claud. 25.4; see Keener, Acts, 3:2697-2711, esp. 2708-11; Keener, “Edict.”

[11] Tacitus Ann. 15.44. FFF: Second-century authors also lampoon or criticize the Christian movement and its founder; see e.g., Lucian Peregrinus 11; cf. Celsus in Origen Cels.

[12] See e.g., Philo Embassy 299, 304; Josephus Ant. 18.35, 55-64, 87-89, 177; War 2.169-75.

Plagues and suffering individuals–further thoughts on COVID 19

Recently I heard that, because some Christians in a particular nation have died from COVID-19, their fellow believers there have worried that God is judging them. Although God in the Bible uses plagues and other natural disasters as wake-up calls, we should not suppose that every case represents this. In fact, Jesus, in whom we Christians behold the face of God, healed those oppressed by the devil (Acts 10:38; cf. Luke 13:16).

Although the Bible speaks of God sometimes using sickness as discipline (Rev 2:22), or some of God’s blessing for healing being withheld due to corporate disobedience (1 Cor 11:29-31), it is far from true that godly persons never suffer from sickness. Elisha died from sickness (1 Kgs 13:14), yet remained so full of God’s power that a corpse thrown on top his bones revived (13:21). Paul and his associates faced illnesses or physical weaknesses in the course of their ministry travels (Gal 4:14; Phil 2:26-27; 2 Tim 4:20)

Viruses might serve a natural purpose in controlling bacteria populations, and it is natural for viruses to mutate. But we might also envision a demonic purpose behind the form of this particular virus and its effects. The virus now ravaging the world, mutated into its present harmful forms, is evil. Also terrible is the plight of day-laborers in many countries who, because of the virus, currently lack access to food. It’s very important for us to pray for the front-line health care workers and for the scientists working on treatments and cures.

Plagues are terrible. Bubonic plague may have killed more than a third of Europe’s population centuries ago. AIDS has killed millions in recent decades.

In his Plague, Albert Camus may question whether it is logical for believers to seek to work against a plague that they envision as God’s judgment. Most monotheists (including myself) do affirm that God is also at work even above and beyond the level of evil in the world. The giver of life has the right to execute judgments and is compassionate to give us wake-up calls to turn us from greater judgments (for judgments as wakeup opportunities, see e.g., Amos 4:8-11; Rev 9:20-21).

But it’s important, when affirming such points, not to leave the wrong impression regarding what we should believe about those who suffer. Jesus’s ministry shows us God’s heart. Again, Jesus compassionately healed the sick, and his ministry shows us the importance of caring for those who are suffering and investing our resources in alleviating those sufferings.

In the application section on Revelation 6, which lists pestilence as among the judgments on humanity, I wrote this in my NIVAC Revelation (Zondervan) commentary some two decades ago:

“Such plagues are wakeup calls to humanity, but we must remember that they are judgments against societies [or the world], not usually against individuals.  Because innocent sufferers often hear our blanket statements about judgment as personal condemnations, we should always make clear what we already know, that not everyone who suffers is experiencing personal judgment. … We must hear in the world’s suffering not condemnation of suffering individuals but, on a larger scale, God calling for the world’s attention.”

We tend to think in very narrow terms: is the cause of what I am writing a computer? My hands? Muscles moving my hands? Neurons firing in my brain? My social context? Or all of the above and more? In the same way, the Bible sees multiple levels of causation. Some things can be evils that, for greater good for the world overall, God has not stopped from taking their course, and chooses to use for good. In Christ, however, God provides us an ideal model of working against these evils.

Just as rain falls on the just and unjust alike (a blessing for Jesus’s largely agrarian audience in Matt 5:45), so viruses are no respecter of persons, and it is wise to boost our immune responses with healthy living insofar as possible. Viruses, like sin and death, remain part of this fallen world, and remain part of what we who follow our Lord’s model must work against.

The Bible shows us that we can look to God for protection, for healing, and for God to give wisdom for cures, and we can trust God to answer. Let’s pray for all these things. But we dare not treat those who suffer as worse than those who do not; Jesus reached out especially to the hurting. Sometimes those who suffer or have suffered even have special credibility with the suffering.


Academic review supporting article on plausibility of spirits

Today’s post will be of interest mainly to academics who allow for the possibility of spirits. I try to address it from a somewhat neutral academic standpoint, though neither those who know my biblical convictions nor my African experience will be surprised at my conclusions.

http://www.craigkeener.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Crooked-Spirits-from-Journal-of-Mind-and-Behavior-39-4-2018-complete.pdf

What is Christobiography about?

Christobiography draws attention to an old and yet sometimes neglected insight for historical-Jesus research: in terms of recognizable ancient genres, the Gospels are like ancient biographies. That is, the type of literary work from the Gospels’ era that they most closely resemble is the bios, or “life,” of a subject–what we call (and this book regularly titles) ancient biography.

Although a majority of Gospels scholars today recognize that the Gospels are more like ancient biographies than like anything else, only a minority of Gospels scholars have actually examined other ancient biographies in order to understand what implications this shared basic genre might have for the Gospels.

In the book (available here, or in ebook format, here), I examine the implications especially for the historiographic character of the Gospels. It won the biblical studies book awards in Christianity Today and the Jesus Creed blog, as well as book of the year in the Biblical Foundations Book Awards and the Foundation for Pentecostal Scholarship Book Awards. Hopefully somebody else likes it, too 🙂

This content is by Craig Keener, but edited and posted by Defenders Media, 501(c)(3).

“In Christ”: united with Christ, immersed in Christ

I knew biblical passages about our solidarity with Christ—we are “in Christ,” we are the body of Christ, and so on. But I wasn’t sure how that connected with our personal spiritual experience of Christ. Was it related to Christ living in us (Gal 2:20)? Was it related to experiencing his resurrection life through the Spirit? After all, ancient Israelites were corporately related to Jacob without a personal experience of Jacob. Humanity is sinful without humans today having ever personally met a guy named Adam.

But of course, as I learned, the nature of the relationship is not exactly the same. We are reckoned in Adam in Rom 5:12-21 as Adam’s heirs, as descendants and fellow sinners. We become reckoned in Christ through baptism into Christ, not through genetic descent. “Adam” might dwell in us in some sense (in terms of solidarity as descendants and sinners), but the Spirit of Christ makes Christ present to us more dynamically (Rom 8:9).

Solidarity with Christ

Paul emphasizes that believers’ solidarity with Christ brings deliverance greater than the defeat effected by our solidarity with Adam (Rom 5:12-21). He then goes on to develop the theme of our union with Christ rather than with the “old person” (6:6) in Adam. Baptized into Christ (6:3-4), we share Christ’s death and resurrection (6:3-6a, 11). Paul can take for granted that being baptized into Christ entails baptism into his death because he understands that immersion into Christ includes sharing his experience. It is not merely theoretical.

Don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we were buried with him by this baptism into this death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the Father’s glory, we too might live a new life. For since we’ve been grafted together/united with/identified with him in the image of his death, still more certainly we shall be united/identified with him in the image of his resurrection. We know that our old self was crucified with him … So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus” (Rom 6:3-5a, 11, ESV)

This sense of solidarity with Christ is not limited to one passage. Not also Colossians 3: “For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God” (Col 3:3 NASB); “Christ who is your life” (3:4, NRSV); you “have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator” (3:10 NIV).

Paul finds partial analogies for this solidarity in shared experience in terms of sharers with Adam in sin (Rom 5:12-21) and Israel’s shared experience with Moses. In 1 Cor 10:2, by analogy with Christian experience of baptism and the Lord’s Supper, Israelites were “baptized into Moses” (though, Paul warns, they failed to persevere). We may think similarly how Jesus recapitulates elements of Israel’s experience in the early chapters of Matthew’s Gospel.

Being baptized into Christ means that we have clothed ourselves with Christ (Gal 3:27); we share in him a new identity. We have put on the new person, recreated in God’s image (Eph 4:22-24; Col 3:9-10), as humanity was created in God’s image in the beginning (Gen 1:26). Obviously this solidarity has a forensic dimension: that is, how God views us in Christ. Yet it also must impact reality on our side as well as God’s. We are called to be what we are in Christ. In Christ, we must put off the old person (what we were in Adam) and put on the new, recreated in God’s image (Eph 4:22-24; cf. Col 3:8). We must live according to the new identity God has conferred on us in Christ.

Paul says that as we bore Adam’s mortal image, we shall also bear the immortal image of Christ (1 Cor 15:49). Progressively (2 Cor 3:17) and ultimately (Rom 8:29) we are conformed to the image of Christ, who is God’s image (2 Cor 4:4; Col 1:15). We are conformed to this image by being shaped by the fruit of the Spirit within us (Gal 5:22-23), essentially by Christ living in us (Gal 2:20).

Immersed in Christ

How is this sharing of Christ effected in us? The Spirit of Christ (Rom 8:9) lives in us.

The Spirit baptizes us into Christ: “by/in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body” (1 Cor 12:13). Ancient Jewish baptisms were ritual immersions, so the picture here is of the Spirit immersing us in Christ. This picture suggests that being clothed with Christ is not limited only to the way God sees us.

Paul’s expressions would make sense to those already familiar with early Christian language inherited from John the Baptist: “he will baptize you in the Holy Spirit” (Matt 3:11; Mark 1:8; Luke 3:16; John 1:33; Acts 1:5; 11:16). (There is also a narrower sense of this phrase in the NT, but at this point I am using the phrase in the more general way.)

Not surprisingly, then, Luke, who speaks of the church being baptized in the Spirit, in his narratives parallels the ministries of the Jerusalem Jesus movement (led by Peter) and the Diaspora mission (led by Paul) with Jesus’s ministry. The same Lord worked in both Peter and Paul (Gal 2:7-8).

Because the Spirit of God is also the Spirit of Christ, being immersed in the Spirit entails being immersed in Christ. We read the Gospels as the story of our hero, but also our model, and the one the Spirit empowers us to follow. Thus in three successive paragraphs, Mark announces Jesus as the Spirit-baptizer (Mark 1:8), the pioneer of the Spirit-baptized life (1:9-11), and as the model of what this looks like as the Spirit thrusts him into conflict with the spiritual enemy (1:12-13). Jesus keeps warning disciples that they must share both his faith (9:19, 23, 29; 11:21-24) and his suffering (8:34; 13:13).

Walking in Christ

“As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, walk in him, rooted and constructed in him” (Col 2:6-7)

“This is how we know that we’re in him: whoever claims to dwell in him ought to walk just as he walked” (1 John 2:5-6)

Our solidarity with Adamic humanity comes by birth. In Adam, we share glorious DNA designed to reflect God’s image yet alienated from God’s presence and purpose by human sin.

Our solidarity with Christ comes by baptism, yes, in water, at the entrance into new life, but also in the Spirit. We share Christ’s life, death, burial and resurrection because we are immersed in him. Through the mind of the Spirit (Rom 8:5), the mind of Christ (1 Cor 2:16), we grow to think in his ways and act how Jesus would. The old adage, “What would Jesus do?” is more than a slogan; it invites us to think and act as Jesus thinks and acts, just as Jesus acted only as he saw the Father acting (John 5:19-20). The Spirit communicates Christ himself in the preaching of the gospel (see John 16:7-11; 1 Thess 2:13). Because Christ lives in us by the Spirit (John 14:17), we bear his fruit like branches on the vine (15:4-5), continuing many aspects of his mission (20:21-22). To walk in the Spirit (Gal 5:16) is also to walk in Christ (Col 2:6).

To the extent that we recognize that God has effected our solidarity with Christ, we can appropriate that identity as members of Christ (i.e., of his body; Rom 12:5; 1 Cor 6:15; Eph 4:25). We can remember that Christ lives in us and trust his character to live through us. The better we know what he is like, the more we can reflect that character by faith. Because we are each unique members of his body, we will individually reflect different aspects of his ministry. None of us is the entire body of Christ to himself.

It should be able to go without saying, but unfortunately often can’t go without saying, that we do not take the place of Jesus; the opposite must be the case: Jesus as Lord reigns in us so as to make his heart known. This comes through our direct relationship with the head, Jesus Christ, who is the source of our new life: Eph 4:15-16; Col 2:19; 3:4a).

We aren’t Jesus, but we are his agents. And when those agents work together, those around can see a fuller picture of Christ’s character through his body functioning together. As his body we together ideally reveal his character, his heart, his purposes, so that it is no longer we who live but Christ who lives in us (Gal 2:20). Immersed in Christ, clothed in Christ, we want our lives to reveal Christ in what we say and do and think. Together as the diverse members of Christ’s body, we are invited to show the world what Christ among them would do, proving God’s transforming power even to the heavenly rulers (Eph 3:10). Ideally, we as Christ’s body should mature into unity in trusting and knowing Christ (Eph 4:12-13). No one has seen God, but by loving one another we give the world a taste of God (1 John 4:12), and we know that we live in him and he in us because he has given us his Spirit (1 John 4:13).

Scholars debate today the meaning of “baptism in the Spirit.” More important than those debates about wording, however (which I deliberately sidestep in this post) is that we really embrace all that the Spirit wants to do in us. God desires to enable us to live like those immersed in his Spirit, and immersed in Christ. God wants people to continue to see what Jesus is like as the Spirit of Christ works in and through us.

Mary and Zechariah—Luke 1 (9.23 minutes)

Luke compares and contrasts many figures in his Gospel and Acts; this comparison begins already in Luke’s opening scenes, with Zechariah, John the Baptist’s father, and Mary, Jesus’s mother. Zechariah is positive, but Mary is even more positive. John is great, and Jesus is even greater.

Even the demons submit—and your name is written in heaven (Luke 10:17-20)

Jesus’s seventy or seventy-two disciples returned to him excited after Jesus sent them out on their mission. “Lord, even the demons are subjected to us by your name!” (10:17).

Jesus will redirect some of their excitement, but before turning to that, let me make a brief comment on the seventy or seventy-two. A majority of scholars believe that the number here should be seventy-two; some other manuscripts read seventy. It’s not surprising that early scribes who were copying the number considered both numbers significant. Jesus had already sent the twelve to expel demons and heal the sick (9:1). He no doubt chosen the number twelve to reflect his plan for the twelve tribes of Israel (Luke 22:30). Seventy, however, was the common Jewish reckoning of the number of gentile nations, based on the list of nations in Genesis 10. So this mission may prefigure the mission in Acts. Moses also appointed seventy elders over Israel (Num 11:16) in addition to heads of twelve tribes, and God empowered them to prophesy (11:25). But two other elders were not present, and God empowered them to prophesy also (11:26), bringing the number to seventy-two. In any case, Jesus is spreading the mission further, as Moses also would have liked (11:29).

Jesus sent them out to heal the sick and tell them while doing so, “God’s promised reign has come to you!” (Luke 10:9). That is, they were to preach that the expected kingdom of God was at hand, and people had to respond by either embracing this news or rejecting it. Jesus’s agents are heralds of God’s kingdom: “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of the messenger who announces peace, who brings good news, who announces salvation, who says to Zion, “Your God reigns” (Isa 52:7, NRSV; cf. http://www.craigkeener.org/good-news-about-jesus-christ-and-the-introduction-to-marks-gospel-mark-11/). As elsewhere in Jesus’s ministry, healing and deliverance demonstrated that the promised time had come (Luke 7:20-23; 11:20).

Now Jesus’s 36 pairs of disciples return with great news, reporting that not only were the “normally” sick healed, but that even demons had been subjected to them in Jesus’s name (10:17). They were subject “in Jesus’s name” because Jesus’s agents, who acted and spoke faithfully on his behalf, represented him—whoever accepted or rejected them, ultimately accepted or rejected him (10:16).

Jesus replies, “I was watching Satan fall from heaven like lightning!” (10:18). Is he changing the subject, only to return to it in the next verse (10:19)? We can take Jesus’s “watching” in one of two ways. One possibility is that Jesus refers to an earlier fall of Satan, noted in Jewish tradition (and probably reapplied in another way in Rev 12:9—but that is another story). (Contrary to popular thought, it is not reflected in Isaiah 14, or at least not directly; the context there refers only to the arrogant, self-deifying king of Babylon; see http://www.craigkeener.org/does-isaiah-1412-14-refer-to-lucifers-fall-from-heaven/.)

Thus he would be saying, “You don’t need to worry about Satan. He lost his place before God a long time ago!”

This makes sense, but the other possibility might make even better sense. Jesus could be saying, “As you were preaching God’s reign, I was watching Satan fall, being displaced from his authority in heavenly places. God’s kingdom was taking back ground that the devil had usurped.” In other words, Jesus was watching Satan’s kingdom retreat during his disciples’ mission. Jesus does in fact view his ministry of deliverance as an assault on Satan’s kingdom (Luke 11:18); he is liberating the strong oppressor’s possessions (11:22; 13:16; cf. Acts 10:38). Paul, too, understood his mission of proclaiming God’s kingdom as delivering people from Satan’s authority to serve God instead (Acts 26:18). Satan does claim authority over earthly kingdoms (Luke 4:6), though only under God’s permission and ultimately God can overrule him (Dan 4:32).

But how would this second possibility fit Satan falling “from heaven”? If we use NT cosmological imagery, Satan works on earth from a position above it (see e.g., Eph 2:2; 6:12). More importantly, even the immediate context applies this language figuratively for one who is exalted being cast down. Because Capernaum, privy to much revelation of Jesus’s identity, did not respond even more radically to his identity, Jesus declares, “And you, Capernaum: you won’t be lifted up to heaven, will you? No! You’ll be thrust down to the underworld!” (Luke 10:15). Scripture often uses such language figuratively; compare Lam 2:1: “He has cast from heaven to earth the glory of Israel” (NASB). It would seem even more appropriate for Satan, already fallen and now being displaced from authority through the advance of Jesus’s kingdom forces in Luke 10:17.

Indeed, Jesus was granting them authority over Satan’s ground forces: “I have given you authority to trample on snakes and scorpions and to overcome all the power of the enemy; nothing will harm you” (10:19, NIV). Here Jesus echoes the idea in Ps 91:13: “You will subdue a lion and a snake;you will trample underfoot a young lion and a serpent” (NET). (This is the same psalm the devil earlier tried to manipulate Jesus into abusing in Luke 4:10-11; Jesus, by contrast, does have authority to apply it the right way.) We see an example of this authority in a more literal sense in Acts 28:3-5, where Paul is unharmed by a viper. Traveling dirt footpaths throughout Galilee to proclaim him, Jesus’s agents would indeed value protection against snakes. But in this context, Jesus undoubtedly also implies protection against spiritual serpents such as the devil (cf. 2 Cor 11:3, 14; Rev 12:9; 20:2).

Jesus thus acknowledges their observation: indeed, demons are subject to them (Luke 10:17-19). But then he qualifies their celebration with another observation. There is far greater cause for celebration than the subjection of demons. They can rejoice that their names are written in heaven (10:20); salvation is the greatest reason to celebrate (15:7, 10, 32; Acts 13:48; 15:3), and rewards in heaven are causes for joy (Luke 6:23). Satan has been cast down from heaven (Luke 10:18), but they are established in heaven! This draws on the earlier biblical image of God’s record book (Exod 32:32; Ps 56:8; 69:28; 139:16; Mal 3:16), elaborated in Jewish tradition and noted elsewhere in the NT as a heavenly book of life (see esp. Phil 4:3; Rev 3:5; 13:8; 17:8; 20:12, 15; 21:27).

We celebrate many divine gifts, but the greatest of all is knowing that we can spend forever in the Lord’s presence, fulfilling the purpose for which we were designed. We may rejoice at exegetical insights, at opportunities to preach and see others turn to God, and even at discovering that as Jesus’s agents we can expel hostile spirits. But the ultimate cause of celebration is eternal life. It belongs to all who have come over to God’s side, who have embraced his kingdom, through Jesus. If you should happen to be reading this and not know whether you have that assurance, you have only to ask God for it in Jesus’s name. The God who gave his own Son to bring you to himself will certainly welcome you if you come.