Category Archives: New Testament

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How can there be three persons in one Trinity?

How can we speak of more than one “person” within the Trinity? And what implications does this idea have for our lives?

Here I’m not summarizing biblical evidence for the Trinity; this is easily done but it is frequently provided elsewhere. Instead I’m trying to offer one window into what we may mean when we speak of more than one person in the Trinity.

Not always speaking precisely

Greek and Latin theologians developed precise terminology in their languages, but no language that I know of always communicates precisely without explanation. For this reason, it may be that many who do not use others’ precise language may mean something very much the same, whereas some others who do use the language do not understand what they are supposed to mean by it.

I was surprised, for example, to discover that even some who speak of “modes” (using technically Sabellian language) mean something similar to what most Trinitarians mean by “persons.” Neither term (whether in English or Greek) is precisely biblical, but certainly the New Testament regularly distinguishes the Son from the Father. Granted, Jesus and the Father are one (John 10:30), but Jesus also prays that believers may be one even as Jesus and the Father are one (17:22). Jesus is divine, yet he is “with” the Father, in intimate relationship with him (1:1-2, 18). Jesus models intimacy with God for us, doing only what he sees the Father do (5:19), reciprocally knowing (10:15; 15:15; 17:25) and loving (3:35; 5:20; 10:17; 14:31; 15:9; 17:24) the Father. Yet, distinctively, the Father sent the Son (5:23, 36-37; 6:44, 57; 8:16, 18, 42; 10:36; 12:49; 14:24; 17:21, 25; 20:21) and the Son expressed his perfect unity with the Father at least partly in perfect submission to him (10:18; 12:49-50; 14:28).

My agenda in this post is not to challenge Sabellian language, despite my disagreement with it; my point is simply to observe that not everyone uses their language precisely. In fact, most of us cannot match the precision of those theologians who, devoting their lives to the study of the Trinity, have developed very precise ways to articulate relations within the Trinity.

The supremely personal God

But coming back to the question: how can there be distinct persons, or distinguishable entities or actors, within one God? Although we as humanity are made in God’s image (Gen 1:26-27), analogies made from finite persons to an infinite Person, however valuable because of our desire to understand on some level, remain limited. Even the creation of male and female together as God’s image, which might be thought to reflect a sort of complementarity within unity and thus may provide an analogy, may not fully demonstrate or communicate the point. (If pressed far enough, the analogy of water, ice and steam that is sometimes used comes closer to illustrating modalism.)

The problem here, however, is more a problem of language and analogy than of God’s being. God’s personhood is on a higher dimension than ours; he is infinitely more personal than we are. Even with what we know from the world around us, we should be able to recognize that at higher levels of understanding apparent problems at lower levels can be resolved. This happens in theoretical mathematics, physics, and biochemistry. We perceive it ourselves when we distinguish different levels of causation (à la Aristotle): writing can be caused on one level by ink on paper, at another level by human muscles and nerves, on another by a human mind, and on yet another by the social and linguistic conventions that person uses to communicate, or by which that person is shaped. (Christian thinkers often apply this sort of analogy to levels of causation in creation.)

If God is infinite, God can be more personal than we are, and can be revealed in three persons, each of whom could also be no less personal than we are, while remaining one God. (As Richard Bauckham has argued, God’s oneness distinguishes him from all other reality, which is created. It does not prevent us from acknowledging distinctions within God where God has revealed those to us.)

{This one paragraph is a 2018 addition to the original Jan. 2015 post: One human analogy might be identical triplets, who share exactly the same DNA yet are distinct persons. This is a far better analogy than water, ice and steam! But ultimately the unity of the persons within the Trinity goes further than even this. To see the Son is to see the Father (John 14:7); he is the Father’s image (Col 1:15). By itself, “image” could be used even in Arian terms, but in Trinitarian terms it reinforces Jesus’s deity. If from our vantage point we see a line directly from the front, we see only a point. From a three-dimensional standpoint, however, we would see a line. If God is not limited to our dimensions, to see or experience any member of the Trinity is to see or experience God; our finite experience, however, does not limit God’s identity beyond our finite experience. We can trust God’s self-revelation that transcends our limited dimensions of experience.}

Some trinitarian theologians have emphasized other-centeredness as a necessary attribute of God as love. They have thus contended for the necessity of more than one person within God. I am not sure that we would have thought of that connection had we not already believed in the Trinity, but the point nevertheless is well-taken. The deep love shared between the Father and Son, so emphasized in John’s Gospel, seems inseparable from their divine unity.

Implications for us

Because the Son, eternal in being, is worth more than all the cosmos, the love that God demonstrated in sacrificing Him for our sins is more vast than the non-human universe. One time in prayer I felt that God was saying, “The sea is vast; but it is not vast enough to begin to contain my boundless love for my children, nor to contain all the wisdom of my purposes. My giving love to you is greater than all the sands of the seashore, more vast than the seas, higher than the mountains, more awesome than the skies.”

How can one be confident that God’s love is so deep? The Father surely loved the Son, who shared his glory before the world began, more deeply than all creation. If he gave Jesus’s blood to restore us to himself, then surely he loves humans more than the rest of the universe. (So far as we currently know, in terms of information content we are the pinnacle of complexity within God’s creation.)

God’s love for us in Christ is beyond measurement, other than the precious blood of Christ. To be loved by an infinitely personal God is an incomparable and unending blessing, merited not by us but by Jesus, and initiated in the heart of God’s love.

“… so the world may know that you sent me, and have loved them, in the same way that you have loved me”—John 17:23b

“For this is the way that God loved the world: he gave his only Son”—John 3:16a

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Rewards and grace, part II: What we’re rewarded for

The first installment of this blog post (at http://www.craigkeener.org/how-can-we-be-saved-by-grace-yet-rewarded-for-works/) asked whether rewards are compatible with grace (an issue revisited at points also in the later installments). The present installment, somewhat longer than the first, examines what we’re rewarded for. The third installment (http://www.craigkeener.org/rewards-part-iii-what-the-reward-is/) will extrapolate from some biblical teaching to try to understand what the reward is.

What we’re rewarded for

So what does the New Testament say about reward? Jesus promises that we will be rewarded if we suffer for him (Matt 5:12; Luke 6:23) and if we go beyond what is easy (Matt 5:46). We will be rewarded if we count on our heavenly reward so fully that we don’t seek one on earth. We should do our deeds for God to see and bless us someday, not to impress others (Matt 6:1-2, 5, 16). The more we willingly sacrifice to do God’s will—whether loving our enemies (Luke 6:35) or offering our lives to proclaim Christ (Revelation 11:18; cf. 16:6; 18:20, 24)—the greater our reward. Present sufferings cannot even be compared with the future promise of glory (Rom 8:18), all the more when we suffer for Christ (2 Cor 4:17).

Paul speaks of each worker for the Lord being rewarded according to their own labor (1 Cor 3:8, 14). Some who are saved yet don’t labor rightly can lose their reward (3:15)—that is, they will have eternal fellowship with God but not much to show for their labors.

To offer an example: What if a pastor draws large crowds that enjoy the church services but can’t mature enough to withstand suffering? If these crowds fall away from following Christ when hard times come, what has been accomplished in light of eternity? Of course, it’s great if a pastor reaches lots of people and helps them mature in faith. And some Christians have the gift of evangelism whereas others are better equipped as teachers, so they can work together. But the ultimate fruit matters, and in light of eternity this bears at least some relation to the devotion of God’s agents, whether or not they always live to see it.

Paul revisits this issue of reward later in the same letter. He has to preach the gospel either way—it is God’s demand on his life—but Paul says his reward (or “wages,” as the term can also mean is this context) the privilege of offering this good news free of charge (1 Cor 9:17-18). Here Paul does not simply fulfill the minimum demands of his call. Loving God and loving the people to whom God sends him, Paul lives in his calling and seeks to reach as many people as possible (9:19, 22-23; 10:33). Paul here agrees with the Lord Jesus’s teaching: Paul will be rewarded for how he sacrifices for God and he depends on God alone for his reward.

By God’s grace, we will be rewarded for even the smallest contributions, if they are our best: whoever gives even a cup of cold water to a righteous person, a prophet or a disciple shares in the reward of the person they have helped (Matt 10:41-42; Mark 9:41). That’s why the Philippians were partners in Paul’s ministry (Phil 1:5); churches could support Paul in prayer (Rom 15:31; 2 Cor 1:11; Eph 6:19-20; Col 4:3-4; 1 Thess 5:25; 2 Thess 3:1-2) and/or, as in the Philippian church, finances (Phil 4:15-18; cf. Rom 15:24). (Similarly, those who knowingly bless agents of evil participate in their evildoing—2 John 11.) What’s important is that we do what we can.

That’s also why Jesus spoke of the reaper receiving reward and both sower and reaper rejoicing (probably also meaning, and sharing the reward) together (John 4:36). Think of the labors of Hudson Taylor and his China Inland Mission in the nineteenth century. Imperfect as the missionaries may have been, most lived sacrificially for the gospel. The same is true for many others, including Korean missionaries, who labored in China, and for Chinese Christians who suffered much, especially (in recent generations) during the Cultural Revolution. Today China’s church is massive, and most Christians there live sacrificially for the gospel, with many having a vision to carry it further. Similarly, many nineteenth-century missionaries to Africa carried their coffins with them, often dying from malaria within a year of their arrival; they did not live to see the flourishing African churches today, but sower and reaper will celebrate together. Right now many Asian, African, and Latin American Christians are sacrificing greatly to spread the gospel, with massive fruit now in many places, and undoubtedly even more fruit that we cannot yet recognize.

We sacrifice for the kingdom, and we participate in the long-term reward whether we see the short-term results or not. Likewise, when I do ministry, my friends who support me in prayer are as much as a part of that ministry as I am; I know that God rather than myself is the source of my gifts, and I simply have the privilege of those occasions for ministry. Far more often, I labor over my research in producing pastoral and scholarly commentaries, hopeful that these will serve pastors, scholars and others, trusting that somehow these labors will serve God’s long-term purposes even though I am far in the background. (In this task, moreover, I stand on the shoulders of others from whom I have learned and again I am sustained by others in prayer.)

Some today are winning thousands to the Lord on the front lines, and we should praise God for them. Some of us have to spend most of the day doing research, trusting that God will produce the long-term fruit; hopefully someone praises God for this! Some suffer for Christ silently in prisons, or must face poverty and hunger depending on God’s grace; certainly we should praise God for their example of fortitude. We are each given different ways to glorify God. The point is that we all have our role to play in God’s larger mission, and we must devote our lives wholly to that mission.

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How can we be saved by grace yet rewarded for works?

Because this question invites a longer-than-usual answer, this blog will be divided into three installments. Part of the point of blogs is that they’re not supposed to be too long!

Part I

The first installment asks whether rewards are compatible with grace (an issue revisited at points also in the later installments). Contrary to what we might think, rewards are not antithetical to grace. It also shows that the point of the language of reward is not about boasting. The second, more important and somewhat longer installment (http://www.craigkeener.org/rewards-part-ii-what-were-rewarded-for/) will address what we’re rewarded for. The third installment (http://www.craigkeener.org/rewards-part-iii-what-the-reward-is/) extrapolates from some biblical teaching to try to understand what the reward is.

Rewards versus grace?

Grace isn’t fair; happily, it’s more generous than fair, since by fairness we would all be punished for our offenses against an infinitely holy God. Not all are converted and thus enrolled in God’s service at the same time. Grace means that those paid (or “rewarded”) for one hour of work get the same pay (i.e., the kingdom) as those who worked all day (Matt 20:12-16). (The term for “wages” in 20:8 also means “reward.”) We can all be glad that grace isn’t fair, because God’s grace is better than fair. It means that we can be saved even though we don’t deserve it. Some passages in the Bible may speak of salvation as the “reward” of perseverance (see Heb 10:35-39).

But often the Bible speaks of other rewards. Grace isn’t fair, but God is also a God of justice, so people’s true works will also be exposed, whether good or bad (Rom 2:6-11; 2 Cor 5:10; Revelation 22:12). Those who depend solely on themselves and have not accepted God’s grace will be punished for their sins, though some will be more accountable than others (cf. Luke 12:46-48; Rom 2:12).

Those who embrace grace will not be condemned for their sins, but the day of judgment will publicly reveal reality without our current filters. In light of eternity, Paul says, our hearts will be laid bare, even our motives revealed (1 Cor 4:5). We may try to keep them hidden from others now, but they will all come to light someday. God knows what we really are, so we should seek to become what he wants us to be. The emptiness of life without God will be revealed and bring him glory, but he will get the greatest glory from those devoted to his honor.

Reward isn’t about boasting

Rewards themselves are a matter of grace, since it’s only God’s kindness toward us that makes us right with him to begin with. Rewards are just, but the greatest rewards are for the most perfect righteousness—which is the fruit of his own grace within us (Gal 5:22-23). Rewards are just, but God’s standard of justice is perfect because he alone knows each person’s heart and circumstances. Nobody else can predict these matters in advance.

In 1 Corinthians 3:4-23, Paul challenges the Corinthian predilection to revere Christian celebrities; some exalt Paul, whereas others prefer Apollos. Paul warns them that they are using immature, worldly standards (3:1-4). The day of judgment will reveal who is really building on the foundation of Christ, and we can’t really know that outcome until then (3:10-15, esp. 3:13). (Indeed, Paul says, he doesn’t even try to evaluate his own status that way—1 Cor 4:3.)

Even if we know the person well enough to trust their basic sincerity, we don’t know the depths of their hearts; only God does. We don’t know what a person has had to overcome to get to where they are. We don’t know how sincerely they are working for Christ. If we think of heavenly rewards in terms of worldly competition, we precisely miss Paul’s point in the context: the point is that we shouldn’t compete or seek our own (or our “heroes’”) honor (3:3-4). The purpose of Christian leaders is to serve God’s people as a whole, who should be the eternal organ of God’s glory (3:16-23).

Precisely because it is God who works through any of us (1 Cor 3:5-9), we shouldn’t boast in how God uses us. (Thanking God for what he’s doing is not boasting in ourselves; it’s all right for us to brag about God himself, so long as our motive is his honor and not ours.) “Gifts” are not something that we earn (4:7); indeed, Paul’s term that we often translate “gift”—charisma—in 1:7 and 12:4-31 (compare also 7:7), is something that comes by charis, that is, by grace, by God’s generous kindness. So God doesn’t evaluate us by how great our gifts are, but by what we do with them—by our motives of love. Rather than boasting in our gifts, we should use whatever they are for God’s glory, seeking with all our heart for him to be honored.

What God evaluates as great differs from human judgment (1 Sam 16:7). He’s near the broken and lowly, but far from the proud (Ps 138:6; Prov 3:34; James 4:6; 1 Pet 5:5). That’s why Hannah compares favorably to the chief priest Eli in 1 Samuel 1. That’s also why Mary, a lowly village teenager, is more highly favored than the priest Zechariah in Luke 1 (although Zechariah is godly and blessed also). To the eyes of contemporaries, Mary had no prominent or important role like a priest or prophet; but God favored her with raising the Messiah. God scattered the proud but exalted the humble (Luke 1:48, 51-53), showing that he is not impressed by human power, fame, education or wealth.

God will reward our labors for him, but God who alone knows the hearts knows best what our labors really entail. All is by grace, even the power for us to labor for him (Col 1:29).

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Preaching from Jesus’s genealogy

Appropriate for Christmas season: have you ever preached from Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus? Or heard someone preach from it? Matthew opens his Gospel with Jesus’s heritage, which leads right up to the story of Jesus’s birth. Here is a video of Craig explaining salient features of Matthew’s genealogy:

If you prefer a written version to video, see also: Jesus’s genealogy and Matthew’s genealogy

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Gospels as biographies–what are the implications?

This 13-minute video was the introductory part of a lecture that Craig gave regarding the Gospels at B. H. Carroll Institute in Texas in May 2014:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qya_IcKG7dE

Some of Craig’s other videos posted earlier address similar issues, e.g.:

http://www.craigkeener.org/can-we-trust-the-disciples-to-have-remembered-jesus-teachings-correctly/

http://www.craigkeener.org/gospels-as-ancient-biographies-part-1/

http://www.craigkeener.org/gospels-as-ancient-biographies-part-2/

 

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Jesus’s Mission—Luke 4:18-19

Jesus declares that one of several aspects of his mission is to preach good news to the poor. In so doing, he echoes Isaiah’s theme of good news about restoration and the deliverance of God’s people.

On the day of Pentecost, Peter applies Joel’s prophecy to the church’s mission: God’s Spirit empowers us to speak for God like the prophets of old (Acts 2:17-18). In the context of Jesus’ words in the previous chapter (Acts 1:8), the most important element of this mission involves testifying of Christ to all peoples.

But while evangelism is central to our mission, the parallel with an earlier scene in Luke’s work suggests that we should not neglect another prophetic theme that is also part of Spirit-empowered mission. As Joel’s prophecy provides the text for the church’s inaugural message in Acts, a prophecy of Isaiah provides the text for Jesus’ inaugural message in the Gospel of Luke.

Luke 4:16-30 recounts the opening scene of Jesus’ public ministry in Luke’s Gospel. The placement of this scene at this point in Luke highlights the important role that it fills in Luke’s Gospel. Luke elsewhere usually follows the same sequence as Mark, where Luke includes the same events that Mark does, even though no one expected ancient biographies to follow chronological sequence. On this occasion, however, Luke provides a scene not only more detailed than Mark’s parallel but earlier than in its place in Mark. Luke’s scene prefigures some key elements in Jesus’ ministry.

Here Jesus applies the words of Isaiah 61 to his own ministry: the Spirit anointed him to bring liberation to those in need. First, his mission was to proclaim good news to the poor. Throughout Jesus’ ministry in the Gospel of Luke, he indeed emphasizes God’s care for the poor (Luke 6:20; 16:22) and the responsibility of others to care for them (12:33; 14:13; 18:22). (Sometimes he even miraculously provides food for hungry crowds.)

Jesus also came to free captives and liberate the oppressed; while Jesus did not literally break people out of prisons (perhaps to John the Baptist’s chagrin), Jesus certainly freed those who were oppressed by the devil (Luke 13:12-14; Acts 10:38). Likewise, in line with Isaiah’s prophecy, Jesus came to heal the blind, like the blind man by the Jericho road (Luke 18:35). Indeed, he later healed Saul of both physical and moral blindness (Acts 9:18; 26:18).

The announcing of good news in Isaiah 61, which Jesus quotes, harks back to a theme that appears earlier in Isaiah (see for example Isaiah 40:9; 41:27; 52:7). In these passages, God comforts suffering Israel with a promise of restoration. Israel will be taken captive, enslaved and impoverished, but God will liberate and bless his people. This is a good news about peace for God’s people, a message that God is ready to demonstrate his reign, or kingdom (Isaiah 52:7). By Jesus’s day, many Jewish people had settled again in their land, but they still longed for God to redeem, restore, and exalt Israel. Jesus, in his person, not only preaches that good news but embodies it, for he is the savior of the world.

When Jesus announces this part of his mission, his home town initially responds pleasantly (Luke 4:22). But then Jesus begins to apply Isaiah’s prophecy beyond the oppressed of Israel. Jesus warns that, like earlier prophets, he will face unbelief at home (Luke 4:24). Elijah, for example, had been sent to a widow in the land of Phoenicia—from the same region as the hated Jezebel (4:26). Elisha had not healed the lepers of Israel, but only the foreign general Naaman (4:27). (After 2 Kings 5 spoke of Naaman, 2 Kings 7 spoke of uncured lepers in Israel’s capital, Samaria. In Luke 17, Jesus heals a Samaritan leper along with Jewish ones, even though Samaritans in his own day were often hostile to his people.)

Once Jesus challenges his people’s nationalism, they are no longer pleased with his words, but in fact wish to kill him (Luke 4:28-29). They have suffered enough from the Gentiles, and do not want to hear about God’s concern for outsiders. This opening scene prefigures Jesus’ mission in the Gospel: to reach the outsiders, even at the expense of incurring the enmity of the “insiders.” This activity paves the way for the church’s (often reluctant) mission to non-Jews in the Book of Acts. Thus in Acts, for example, it is Jesus’s own followers who need to be reminded to welcome outsiders (Acts 11:1-3).

Jesus’s message in the Nazareth synagogue in Luke 4 offers a stark warning for us today. The Spirit has empowered us to cross cultural and other barriers with Jesus’s message, a message of concern for people, a message of justice, liberation, and salvation. To do so effectively, however, we must be ready to go beyond the assumptions of our own nation or culture, to side with whatever God declares in his word. Jesus wants to bring his followers into unity with one another, beyond all our ethnic, nationalistic or other prejudices. May we continue to carry on the mission of bringing the good news about God’s kingdom and caring for people’s needs.

For further details, see Craig’s IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, now in its second, revised edition (2014).

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Can any good thing come from Nazareth?–John 1:46

Nathanael’s question about Nazareth performs a special function in its context in John’s Gospel. The reader of John’s prologue knows that Jesus is not primarily from Nazareth, but from God. This is something that Nathanael, however, is about to learn, and Jesus will explain it partly in terms of Jacob’s ladder, the connection between heaven and earth.
For details, please click the following link:
http://www.bibleodyssey.org/places/related-articles/can-anything-good-come-out-of-nazareth.aspx

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Building on the Rock—Matthew 16:13-27

When Jesus knows that his disciples understand enough, he asks them about his identity. The setting is significant: Caesarea Philippi (Matt 16:13; also Mark 8:27) was a predominantly Gentile city known for its worship of the pagan deity Pan. Jesus chooses a Gentile region for the first confession of his identity, prefiguring a mission that will eventually extend to all peoples. It is no surprise that Matthew chooses to include this important information in his very Jewish Gospel, which emphasizes God’s concern also for Gentiles (Matt 1:3-5; 2:1-11; 4:13-15; 8:5-13; 10:14-15, 18; 11:21-24; 12:41-42; 15:21-28; 24:14; 27:54; 28:19).

Many people believed that Jesus was just a great prophet, but Simon Peter declared that he was the Messiah, God’s Son (Matt 16:16). Peter is not the first person in this Gospel to suggest that Jesus might be the promised Son of David—that is, the Messiah (9:27; 12:23; 15:22; later 20:30-31; 21:9, 15). But he is the first to do among those who are Jesus’s disciples, his close followers.

Although Jesus must qualify Peter’s understanding, he first praises it. Only God could reveal Jesus’s identity truly (11:27), and he had done this for Peter (16:17). God had revealed the truth not to the highly educated scribes, but to the comparatively unlearned Peter (compare 11:25).

Jesus promised to build his community of followers “on this rock,” on Peter’s affirmation of (or role as affirmer of) Jesus’s identity (16:18). (Scripture already spoke of God “building” his people, e.g., Jer 24:6; 31:4; 33:7.) Jesus plays on Peter’s nickname here (“Simon” was such a common name it required an additional name to specify which Simon it was). In Greek, petros (“Peter”) means “rock,” and on this petra (“rock”) Jesus would build his church. As Paul says, the church is built on the foundation of apostles and prophets, with Jesus being the cornerstone (Eph 2:20; cf. Jesus in Matt 7:24-25). But why apostles and prophets? And why Peter, and especially now? Jesus praises Peter here because Peter has just confessed Jesus as the Messiah. Peter plays a foundational role by declaring Jesus as Messiah.

The “gates of Hades” will not prevail against Jesus’s church (Matt 16:18). “Gates of Hades” was a common ancient expression for the realm of the dead. Death itself would not prevail against Jesus’s church; martyrdom—about which Jesus will soon have more to say (16:21, 24-25)—will not stop his work. The holder of palace keys was a major official (cf. Isa 22:22); by confessing Jesus as Christ, Peter would exercise great kingdom authority. Whereas the wrong-headed teachers of God’s people were shutting people out of the kingdom (Matt 23:13; Luke 11:52), Peter’s confession of Jesus was a key to let people in.

After praising Peter’s confession that Jesus is the promised king, Jesus goes on to define his kingship in a way that none of his contemporaries anticipated—in light of the cross (Matt 27:37). Jesus’s Messiahship must remain a secret at that stage in his ministry (16:20), since no one was prepared to understand it. As Christ, Jesus was going to be rejected by the religious and political leaders of his people, killed, and would then rise again (16:21).

Having boldly confessed Jesus’s Messiahship by divine revelation, Peter now denies Jesus’s true messianic mission (16:22)—by satanic revelation (16:23). The good “rock” of 16:18 now becomes a bad rock, “a stumbling block” to Jesus (16:23). A disciple’s role was to “follow” after his teacher (16:24), but Jesus has to command Peter to “get behind” him (16:23; intended figuratively, since Jesus turns to him).

Granted that Peter misunderstands Jesus’s mission, is this offense serious enough to call him “Satan”? Sadly, yes. The devil’s climactic temptation to Jesus in Matt 4:8-9 was to offer Jesus kingship over all the world—if Jesus would bow down to the devil. In contrast to the Father’s will, the devil’s way for Jesus to be “God’s Son” (4:3, 6) was the kingdom without the cross. Jesus responded, “Begone, Satan!” (4:10), and Jesus responds to Peter in the same way, because Peter now echoes Satan’s temptation.

Nor will Peter be the last one in this Gospel to echo Satan. As the devil urged Jesus to prove by some dramatic act that he was God’s Son (4:3, 6), so do Jesus’s mockers at the cross: “If you’re really God’s Son, come down from the cross!” (27:40; cf. 27:43). The scribes and elders mock, “He supposedly saved others; now he can’t save himself. He is supposed to be Israel’s king; let him come down from the cross and then we’ll believe in him” (27:42). In other words, Jesus could get everyone to “follow” him if he offered a more popular way. But it was not the Father’s way, and everyone would still die in sin. Jesus could not save himself if he wished to save others; God’s Son would obey his Father.

This was not the sort of Messiah whom people wanted to follow. The popular idea of the Messiah was a king who would lead his people to victory; that was what Peter wanted. But if Jesus’s messianic mission was the cross, that was also to be the mission of his followers. If we follow, we must follow to the cross: “If anyone wants to come after me, let them deny themselves, and take up their cross, and follow me” (16:24).

Condemned criminals normally had to carry their own cross to the site of their execution. Later Jesus’s disciples literally failed to take up the cross and follow him; the Romans had to draft a bystander to do it for Jesus (27:32). Happily, Jesus’s resurrection changed them, and eventually they were prepared to follow him to the death. Jesus is forgiving and he patiently forms us into the people he has called us to be. But as much as he desires to lavish his gifts, such as healing and deliverance, on people, he also cares enough to make us realistic about this world. If we follow the Father’s way instead of the devil’s, we will face suffering. The kingdom without the cross is still a temptation, and it is still a satanic message.

But the promise of God’s reward far exceeds the suffering. It is those who recognize that eternity is longer than the present, who are willing to give even our lives for our Lord if that need arises who will have life forever (16:25-27). We were worth everything to Jesus, and he is worth everything to us.

–Craig Keener is professor of New Testament at Asbury Theological Seminary and author of The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament.

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True Purification—Matthew 15:1-31

Mere religious tradition can blind us to what really matters to God. Those whose honor derives from their religious or social status can resent those who speak truth. But Jesus transcends all boundaries and reaches out to all people. He shows true power to transform that mere religious rituals cannot.

Jerusalem was the dominant city in the region of Judea and Galilee. Jerusalem therefore had the largest concentration of scribes, or teachers of the law, and Pharisees, known for their meticulous concern with biblical laws and Pharisaic traditions. Some of these scribes and Pharisees noticed that Jesus’s disciples did not ceremonially wash their hands before a meal. Because teachers were considered responsible for their disciples’ behavior, these religious leaders challenge Jesus concerning why he allowed this breach of traditional purity (Matt 15:1-2). Their concern was not one of hygiene (which is a valuable thing) but one of ritual purity. (Unlike Mark, who writes mainly for Gentiles, Matthew does not need to explain this custom, which was common among Jews even far away in the Greek world.)

Jesus responds, however, by highlighting the inconsistent values in their religious traditions. Customs are not necessarily evil, and sometimes they can be helpful in avoiding needless offense (cf. 17:24-27); but they must never be allowed to take priority in our lives over biblical principles. Scripture demanded honoring parents (see especially Exod 20:12), which naturally included providing for aged parents (Matt 15:4). Pharisees would have agreed with Jesus on this point. Yet Jesus explains that they value secondary rules in the name of religion so highly that they could ignore someone using religion as an excuse to dishonor parents (15:5-6). They were inconsistent to value human traditions to this extent, because in so doing they valued them above what Scripture, God’s own Word, said (15:3, 6). Thus they were hypocrites, just like those whom the biblical prophets condemned (15:8-9).

The real issue here, Jesus points out, is not hand washing, but condemning others based on merely human rules, while ignoring what God has already explained matters most to him. Scripture reveals God’s heart; it shows God more concerned about love and justice for others (cf. 22:35-40; 23:23) than about mere rituals, especially rituals not even mentioned in the Bible! Because Jesus honors Scripture highly, as “God’s word” (15:6), we should do the same, evaluating our rules by its standards. Scripture’s central ethical concerns have to do not with rituals but with how we treat others. (See the sample prohibitions in 15:19, four or five of the six from Exod 20:13-16, the same passage as Exod 20:12 used above; compare also four of the issues in Matt 5:21-48.)

Jesus’s public reproof of the religious leaders worries the disciples; it seems imprudent to offend society’s powerful (15:12)! Jesus, however, has simply responded to the religious leaders’ criticisms of others; Jesus has been defending his disciples. He explains that the future does not lie with these apparently powerful people; God’s kingdom is about what God establishes, not about what people accomplish by their own religious ideas (15:13-14). The truly wise are not those who come up with their own ideas about God; indeed, even the disciples Jesus had chosen were not always the most intellectually proficient (15:15-16). True wisdom means recognizing that God is by far the wisest of all, and therefore we should accept God’s Word. Divine truth is what God has revealed about himself rather than human guesses about him (cf. 16:17).

Far more offensive than the impurity of unwashed hands, however, was the supposed impurity of the sorts of people that Jewish people deemed impure—Gentiles (15:21-28). Jesus takes his disciples into a Gentile region, and a woman there begs him to deliver her daughter from a demon (15:21-22). In Mark 7:26, Mark calls the woman a Syrophoenician Greek; this means that she belonged to the ruling class of Greeks who now controlled the Gentile cities to the north of Galilee. Many of the common people of this region, however, were descended from the Canaanites displaced by Israel’s earlier conquest. Matthew thus calls her a “Canaanite” (Matt 15:22; cf. two Canaanite women in 1:3, 5)—whom his Jewish contemporaries might view as the most impure among the impure Gentiles! Jesus’s disciples, who like some believers today shared the values of their culture, certainly did not want her around (15:23).

Because Jesus’s initial mission was only to Israel (15:24), Jesus initially puts this woman off in 15:26. Her class might have considered such behavior shocking. This woman belonged to the urban ruling class that heavily taxed the countryside, so that many poor people’s children went hungry at times. Now Jesus was putting “the children’s bread” first, and she, a member of the ruling class, was the outsider! “It is not good to take the children’s bread and throw it to dogs,” he warned. Jewish people considered dogs unclean, Gentiles used “Dog!” as an insult, and even a mere comparison with dogs (as is the case here) could be offensive if someone chose to take it that way.

This woman, however, does not try to maintain her dignity or rank; nor does she maintain ethnic prejudice against the Jewish descendants of the Canaanites’ ancient enemies. Instead, she desperately refuses to give up her daughter’s cause, and humbles herself. She, a Gentile, had already recognized Jesus as Son of David—the rightful king of Israel (15:22). (This is before Peter confesses Jesus as the Christ in 16:16!) Now she is ready to accept her subordinate position beneath him and his people. “Even the dogs eat the crumbs dropped from their lord’s table!” she pleads (15:27). In her Greek culture, dogs could also be household pets; they could eat scraps from the table. In other words, she does not need a big expression of his power; even a little bit is enough to deliver her daughter. Like the Gentile centurion speaking on behalf of his servant, she recognizes that he has more than enough power that even a little will be sufficient (8:8)!

Even though it was not yet time for the mission to the Gentiles (though it soon will be, 28:19), Jesus grants the woman’s request and delivers her daughter (15:28). As he did with the centurion (8:10), so here he commends this Gentile’s faith (15:28). She has expressed faith by recognizing that Jesus is her only hope, and by accepting whatever conditions he might place on her as a sign of his rulership. Jesus responds by setting aside a rule not yet universally abolished so he could respond to her heart. Now it becomes clear, even in advance of the Gentile mission in 28:19, that Gentiles can be delivered by faith, and the impure can be made pure. The greatest purity is not the purity of ritual, but the purity of the heart in Christ (15:11, 17-20). Ultimately, Christ transcends all ethnic and class barriers for those who trust in him, for us who recognize that he alone is our hope.

Jesus goes on to heal the broken (15:30-31) and feed the hungry (15:32-38). He does not depend on the approval of the powerful or the favor of the influential (cf. 15:7, 12), nice as those may have been. Instead he reaches out to the powerless. Ultimately this course will lead to the displeasure of the powerful people (such as some of the aristocratic priests) who exploited the powerless, and would lead Jesus to the cross. The gospel is realistic, warning us that there is a price for meeting desperate needs more than seeking worldly power. Yet Jesus, like the woman in this story, had faith: he depended on the Father alone, and gave his life knowing that the Father would raise him up.

–Craig Keener is professor of New Testament at Asbury Theological Seminary and author of The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament (revised edition, InterVarsity, 2014).