This is a very brief introduction and overview for Philippians: https://youtu.be/O_qabQHr-nU
Thanks to my niece Kayla for helping me figure out how to mix power point and video!
Category Archives: New Testament
Follow God’s example of sacrificial love for each other—Ephesians 4:32—5:2
Fight-or-flight instincts serve a necessary purpose for cornered people or animals. When people misrepresent us or wrong us, our self-preservation instincts naturally prime us to lash back at them. But God gives us a higher example in his gospel: an example of self-sacrificial love and forgiveness.
When Paul calls us to imitate God, he refers especially to sacrificial love and forgiveness:
“Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you. Follow God’s example, therefore, as dearly loved children and walk in the way of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.” (Eph 4:32—5:2, NIV)
In the body of Christ, our fellow members are as human as we are, and some are emotionally dysfunctional. Simple misunderstandings can take on new dimensions for people who have been repeatedly hurt, and they may lash out and hurt others. But the conflict can stop with us. We need to speak truthfully, not slandering others by misrepresenting or caricaturing their intentions (4:31). We must speak truthfully to one another because we are fellow members of Christ’s body (4:25). Expressing anger in words that we can’t take back gives the devil a foothold (4:26-27). What we speak should be for the purpose of building each other up (4:29). That often means we have to swallow our pride, holding our natural instincts in check long enough to formulate a softer response that gives grace to the hearers. (A gentle answer often deescalates anger, whereas a harsh response escalates the conflict—Prov 15:1.)
Paul does not summon us to create unity in Christ’s body, but to preserve unity by being at peace (Eph 4:3). That is because Christ has already brought us together as his body (2:15-16; 4:4), at the cost of his own life (2:16). When we engender divisions in his body, we sin against Christ’s sacrifice. As we would suffer pain if our own body were torn apart, we cause Christ pain when we divide his body, by what we speak or how we act.
Paul applies this image both to ethnic divisions (2:11-13) and other relationships (4:25). Our goal, to which true ministry leads (cf. 4:11-12), is maturity in Christ: not a baby body, but an adult body (4:13-15). This is expressed in a body whose parts function together, in unity of faith in and knowing God’s Son (4:13), in speaking God’s truth in love (4:15), as each member of the body, joined directly to Christ, does its part in building up the whole body (4:16). We do need to guard the body against those who are out to advance themselves (4:14) rather than functioning as gifts given by Christ for his body (4:7-8, 11-13). Nevertheless, not only in local church relationships but even in online community, believers should deploy the truth in love, not in ways counterproductive to our unity in Christ.
The model of Christ’s divine love, so pivotal to Paul’s case in Ephesians 4:32—5:1, does not start there. The first part of Ephesians is lavish in its depiction of God’s love for us. For example,
God “chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses,according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us” (Eph 1:4-8, ESV).
Throughout the first part of his letter, Paul elaborates all sorts of blessings that God has given us in Christ. When, in the remainder of his letter, he summons us to love and serve one another, he calls us to give what we have received: grace. God gave us grace (1:6-7; 2:5-8), including by giving us some of his other servants to build us up (3:2, 7-8; 4:7). We also have opportunity to share grace with one another, including by how we speak (4:29).
We follow Christ’s example of sacrificial love—even for us his followers, who forsook him and fled when the time came to take up the cross and follow him (cf. Mark 14:50). We love because he showed us how. In the words of another apostolic author: “We love because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19).
Introduction to Romans (1-hour video lecture)
Several years ago, Ted Hildebrandt (Biblical E-Learning) videorecorded (in roughly 17 hours) a series of lectures I gave on Romans. This is the introductory lecture:
Welcoming each another—Romans 15:1-7
In Romans 14:1-23 Paul summons believers to respect one another despite their differences on issues secondary to the gospel that unites us. In light of Paul’s language there and the larger context of Romans, Paul is especially calling Jewish and Gentile believers to welcome one another (see esp. 15:7-12). This welcome transcends a barrier that God himself established in history, so it certainly summons us to surmount prejudices of merely human origin: prejudices against ethnic, cultural, and similar differences.
In 15:1-13 Paul further summons us not just to tolerate secondary differences but also to serve one another’s interests (to “please” one another, 15:1-3). Just as those who are physically strong would be expected to help weaker family members, Paul reminds those apt to criticize the “weak” that they should be helping them instead (15:1). Echoing the earlier context, the “weak” refer to those weak in faith hence abstaining from particular foods lest they injure their relationship with God (14:1-2).
Paul ranks himself among the “strong” here, and will soon offer himself as an example of serving the poor saints in Jerusalem (15:25-27). But the strong are called to serve the weak. “Build up” in 15:2 evokes 14:19-20, where believers should build up (by the fruit of the Spirit) rather than tear down one another over foods.
“Pleasing” others rather than oneself (15:1-3) refers not to entertaining others’ every whim (e.g., if they are bothered by your music style, e.g., Christian rap), but to being considerate of what might cause them to fall from the faith. Although Paul regarded circumcising Gentiles as too much to ask, for Gentiles to accommodate Jewish food tastes in mixed company was a minimal sacrifice for the objective of unity in Christ’s body.
Christ himself offered the example of this readiness to forgo pleasing himself; in 15:3, Paul cites Ps 69:9 from a psalm of a righteous sufferer, applied par excellence to Jesus (cf. Jn 2:17 for a different part of the same verse; Matt 27:34 for Ps 69:21). Here Jesus suffers on behalf of God, offering a model of laying down one’s desires to serve others.
As Jesus is the example for not seeking one’s own interests (15:3), he is also the example for seeking this unity: we should have the same mind “according to [the standard of] Christ Jesus” (15:5; cf. Phil 2:1-11, especially 2:2-5). Believers may with united voice glorify the Father (15:6) just as Jesus prayed to the Father in 15:3 (and establishes Gentiles’ praise in 15:9-12). Believers should again follow Jesus’ example by accepting one another as he accepted us (15:7). (Consider one of Jesus’s lines in an episode of Dallas Jenkins’ recent TV series, The Chosen. When Peter objects to Jesus calling a tax collector, Jesus points out that Peter made no such objection when Jesus called Peter. “That’s different!” Peter insists. “Get used to different,” Jesus replies.)
This expectation climaxes the section’s opening exhortation to accept one another (14:1) because of God’s acceptance (14:3). That Christ accepted believers to the Father’s “glory” (15:7) fits the exhortation to “glorify” God together (15:6), a model relevant for Gentile believers (15:9).
(This post is adapted from Craig S. Keener, Romans [New Covenant Commentary; Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2009], 170-72.)
The First Gentile Christian was from Africa—Acts 8:26-40
When we think of Christianity in Africa today, we often think of movements that began with the witness of Western missionaries. While this may be true for some parts of Africa, it is certainly not true about all of Africa. For example, Axum in East Africa was already a Christian kingdom from the fourth century. Nubia also was predominantly Christian for roughly a millennium until its conquest and subjugation from the north.
But Christianity in Africa starts even before Christianity in Europe. Showing this requires three points. First, the official was from Africa. Occasionally someone who is exceedingly misinformed will point to sources that refer to a different “Ethiopia”; but while some ancient sources speak of Ethiopians toward the east, the land of the dawn, the land whose queen was titled the Candace was always an African kingdom south of Egypt.
The First Gentile Christian
The other two points invite more detailed comment: was this man a Gentile, and was he a genuine historical figure?
There remains some dispute as to whether this official was a Gentile. This controversy is understandable. The African court official in Acts 8:26-40 was clearly devoted to Israel’s God. Indeed, he had to be to make pilgrimage to Jerusalem; the roundtrip journey from his kingdom would have taken months, and such an extensive leave of absence would have required his queen’s permission.
Nevertheless, while he is more committed to Israel’s God than is Cornelius in the next Gentile conversion narrative (Acts 10:1—11:18), he is not a full proselyte. Luke has already narrated a proselyte even in leadership in Jerusalem’s community of believers (Acts 6:5), so he has little reason to devote such a long section to another one.
Further, while Luke includes the man’s official title once, he underlines his status as a eunuch by repeating that title five times. Male servants of queens were often eunuchs. Although the OT sometimes may use an equivalent label simply for some officials, the Greek term here is clear and Luke’s hearers would assume that the man was a genuine eunuch—a castrated man. The Greek translation of the OT often uses it for clear eunuchs, especially when the person is foreign, and/or working in relation to royal women (as here), and especially in texts closest to Luke’s period (e.g., Sirach; Wisdom of Solomon). Royal eunuchs held high status as servants of the royal house, but ancient Mediterranean society often ridiculed them as merely “half-men” for their involuntary eunuch condition.
Most relevant here was the man’s status vis-à-vis Judaism. A eunuch could not become a proselyte, that is, a full member of Israel (Deut 23:1). That refers only to official status, of course, not to God’s perspective. In the OT, an African “eunuch” becomes one of Jeremiah’s few allies and saves his life (Jer 38:7-13). More importantly, God promised to welcome foreigners and eunuchs (Isa 56:3-5), of which this man becomes the first example. This official is Jewish in faith, but because he cannot officially convert to Judaism, he remains a non-Jew ethnically.
Minimizing this African convert?
Some complain that Luke actually plays down this official’s conversion by contrast with Cornelius, whose conversion story Luke repeats, in part or in full, some three times in Acts. But Cornelius is a step further in the direction of gentiles, and points toward the narrative’s climax in Rome (Acts 28:14-31). Luke’s audience, based in the Roman empire, will naturally have special interest in the good news about Christ reaching Rome. The Cornelius narrative is also important because it signals a shift in the thinking of the Jerusalem church, and was the gentile-conversion account widely known to them. But Luke, who spends time with Philip (21:8), apparently has a less detailed account from Philip himself of a gentile’s conversion before that of Cornelius.
“Ethiopia” was the Greek title for all of Africa south of Egypt, and Greek sources often describe it as the southern “ends of the earth.” The ends of the earth is where the gospel must go (Acts 1:8), so this narrative foreshadows a larger future for the gospel in Africa. The gospel, originating in what the Roman world considered Asia, goes not only west but south. Although this official is a single person, his conversion receives nearly as much space as the preceding Samaritan revival that converted an entire community: it is a major kingdom breakthrough.
A Real Gentile Christian?
The other consideration in establishing that this official is the first gentile Christian is the question that some have raised about whether it is a true story. Most scholars recognize that Luke is writing history, and most scholars who have actually read ancient historiography recognize that historians recounted stories that came to them, rather than inventing stories from whole cloth. Luke clearly believed this story, which presumably goes back to Philip himself.
But a few scholars have argued that this account sounds more like a novel than a true story. They sometimes argue this because they say that novels liked to celebrate what was foreign and “exotic,” and they so designate this narrative. But comparing Luke’s account with actual ancient novels should quickly dispel the idea that Luke writes novelistically here. The location is not in some distant or mythical land, like in some novels’ “exotic” descriptions, but in the Roman province of Syria, on a real road leading toward old Gaza.
Moreover, unlike mythical “Ethiopians” such as Memnon or Andromeda, the Kandake (in most English translations, Candace) figures in actual historical works. In view of her title, the kingdom in view is the actual ancient Nubian kingdom of Meroë, which was rediscovered in 1722 and identified archaeologically in the early twentieth century.
Nonfiction writers on Meroe sometimes speculated about the location. Some speculations, such as cotton trees, were undoubtedly misplaced (since cotton doesn’t grow on trees). Some assumed that the area was mostly desert, or that, like India, it had rains and crocodiles. A first-century expedition in Nero’s time, however, found more foliage around Meroe, and even elephant and rhinoceros tracks.
Naturally novelists (such as Heliodorus, in his later Ethiopica) had a free hand, inventing what suited them along with a small amount of known information.Others simply made up travel stories, which sometimes fooled even some factual writers who assumed their stories were true.
Thus some supposed that Ethiopians mined metal by pulling it up with magnets. The region hosted a lion’s body with a human face (useful for eating people) and horned, winged horses. Pliny the Elder, who thought he was reporting fact, reported flat-faced, noseless people and people whose king was a dog. While writers knew of forests and crocodiles elsewhere in Africa, they also wrote of people with mouths and eyes on their chests and leather-footed crawling people. Supposedly Ethiopians originated astrology and had to flee from India after murdering King Ganges (the river’s son. They could make trees salute.
Writers told unverifiable stories about other distant lands as well. Thus the Hyperboreans in the distant, frigid north lived so long that finally they tired of living and dove into the sea. Some reported that India hosted water monsters and griffins, and ants as large as foxes that mined gold. Happily the ants retreated underground during midday heat, inadvertently enabling the Indians to steal their gold. Others told stories about Amazons, though they do not appear in non-Greek sources and in recent centuries no one had found them.
Luke’s Plausible Narrative
By contrast, Luke’s details are all plausible, and none of them clearly contradict what we know historically. That means that Luke not only does better than novelists; he does better than many historians whose sources were distorted. Luke may not have many details available from Philip, but the details that he has make sense.
Greeks used the title Kandake for many queen-mothers, some of whom ruled Meroë by themselves. One of those in the first century, for example, possibly around this time, was Queen Nawidemak. (Queen Amanitore was also somewhere around this time.)
Presumably the African official was a person of means to be able to make such a long journey (probably multiple months), traveling by boat down the Nile and then presumably by carriage to Jerusalem. The queen presumably worshiped state deities of Meroe (such as Amun), but the polytheistic nation must have had tolerance for other faiths; a Roman temple also existed on the site.
Meroë’s famous wealth is attested archaeologically and is not surprising. Meroë was ideally positioned for trade between societies to the north and those to their south. Northerners procured much ebony and ivory through them; meanwhile, a bust of Caesar has been found as far south as Tanzania. As a court official of the Candace in charge of her treasure, this traveler undoubtedly had access to considerable means. Only the wealthiest had riding carriages as here in 8:28.
Meroe had its own language, but an educated government official dealing with finance probably was fluent in Greek, since this was the main trade language with the north. Despite continuing use of Egyptian, Greek was the main language of Alexandria, as well as Egypt’s government and trade in this period; Greek was used even in capitals of Egyptian agricultural districts. Luke would quote Isaiah in Greek in any case (since he writes in Greek), but probably the official’s Isaiah scroll in this narrative was in Greek. He could have acquired the scroll in Jerusalem or in Alexandria en route to Jerusalem; the common Greek versions of the Old Testament (notably the family of texts we call the Septuagint) were translated in Alexandria and copies were probably more plentiful there. Even in Jerusalem, many tomb inscriptions (especially of the elite) are in Greek. There is little reason to doubt that the Hellenist Philip, whose primary language was Greek, would have trouble communicating with this official.
Asia of course plays a key role in the Bible: by Greek definitions, the holy land was part of Asia, and right on the boundary of Africa. The first followers of Jesus therefore were from Western Asia, from the Middle East, more specifically from Galilee and Judea and then Samaria. But the first non-Jewish follower of Jesus (ethnically speaking) was from Africa. But the message going to the ends of the earth means that it is for all humanity, whatever continent or culture or language. From the beginning, God cared about all peoples.
God’s amazing love—1 John 3:1
1 John 3:1 (ESV): “See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are.”
1 John 3:16 (NIV): “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters.”
1 John 4:8-11: “Whoever doesn’t love doesn’t know God, because God is love.This is how God showed his love among us: God sent his one, special Son into the world so that we might live through him.In this is love: not that we came to love God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to atone for our sins. My loved ones: since God loved us in this way, we also must love one another”
1 John 4:16: “… God is love, and whoever stays in love stays in God, and God in him:
1 John 4:19: “We love, because he first loved us”
We may be accustomed to such emphatic language of love, which offers an explicit perspective on the implicit depiction of Christ’s sacrificial compassion in the Gospels and God putting up with his people for so long in both the OT and NT.
But it would have struck people as more distinctive in the first century. Granted, people envisioned patron deities, who had their favorite mortals or peoples. But a God who was reaching out to people of all ethnicities, whose love was so great that he sacrificed his Son, was quite different from typical ancient religious imagination.
Even today, a message of a God who loves all people, whoever will enter covenant with him, is unbelievably good news. It was an idea with which I originally struggled as a new convert; because I lacked analogies, it seemed too good to be true. But it is true—and it is good. And it invites us to love in turn others whom God also loves.
This is not simply the idiosyncratic perspective of one disciple. Rather, it reflects the meditation of Jesus’s early followers on who he is and what he has done for is. To give some samples from Paul alone:
Rom 5:5: “God’s love has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us”
Rom 8:35, 37, 39: “Who can sever us from Christ’s love? …in all these hardships we utterly prevail through the one who loved us. For nothing … will be able to sever us from God’s love that’s encountered in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
2 Cor 5:14: “For Christ’s love compels us, knowing this, that one died for all …”
Gal 2:20: “God’s Son, who loved me and surrendered himself on my behalf”
Eph 1:4-5: “… In love he set us apart beforehand to adopt us as children for himself through Jesus Christ”
Eph 2:4-5, 7: “Because of his great love by which he loved us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive in Christ … so that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable wealth of his graciousness by his kindness to us in Christ Jesus”
Eph 3:19: “to know Christ’s love that surpasses knowing …”
Eph 5:2: “behave in love, just as Christ loved us and surrendered himself on our behalf …”
Or Rev 1:5: “to the who loved us,” etc.
This is no minor theme, yet sometimes in our commendable focus on details we miss the big picture. God saved us because he loves us. And nothing makes him happier than when we, as agents of his heart, show that same gracious and patient love for one another. Indeed, “behold what sort of love the Father has given us” (1 John 3:1)! As Charles Wesley put it, “Amazing love, how can it be? That Thou, my God, shouldst die for me!”
Paul and the Jerusalem Church: when nationalism blinds us to God’s mission—Acts 21:17-26
Some writers today condemn the Jerusalem church for being too “Jewish.” I believe that this perspective misses the point. They were part of their culture, and they had as much right to practice Jewish customs as Paul’s gentile Galatian converts had the right to maintain gentile practices that did not contravene their new faith in the Jewish Messiah. There was nothing wrong with Jerusalem’s believers identifying with their culture; indeed, some of their culture was directly inherited from Scripture!
The problem arose only when that identification blinded many of them to God’s mission elsewhere. Commitments to nation, culture, ethnicity, denomination and the like may be honorable. But if Christ is truly Lord, then unity with the rest of our family in Christ must come first.
When Paul visited Jerusalem for the last time, Judea was in the midst of a nationalistic resurgence. Paul was aware of the dangers from Judean nonbelievers and remained uncertain how even his fellow Jesus-followers there would respond to his gift (Rom 15:31). But live or die, he was so committed to the unity of Christ’s body that he was determined to bring an offering from the gentile churches to help the poor believers in Jerusalem (Acts 21:13; 24:17; Rom 15:25-27).
A comparison with nationalism today may help us be more sensitive to the setting of Judean believers. Analogies are always imperfect, but the comparison serves as an illustration to make their setting more concrete for us. Many events of the 1960s and 1970s began shifting the United States in a direction that appeared inevitably more liberal or progressive (depending on your viewpoint). Nearly all of us now recognize some events as positive, such as the civil rights movement, greater recognition of the unfairness of male infidelity and abuse, and we as Christians also would appreciate heightened sensitivity to needs of genuine refugees. By contrast, the so-called sexual revolution has had largely negative cultural impact, weakening families and correspondingly wreaking unexpected economic costs on society. Obviously the drug culture’s impact has been largely negative, and we as Christians would also complain about the devaluing of life. So my comparison at this point is not passing wholesale judgment on what a culture deems “conservative” or “liberal” but to highlight a point of comparison with first-century Judea.
The “Reagan revolution” of the 1980s shattered the illusion that “liberal”/“progressive” trends were inevitable, again redefining the middle in public discourse. Seeds sown in that era blossomed again under George W. Bush and climaxed so far in the administration of Donald Trump. President Obama’s second term shifted many policies and much rhetoric to the left, inviting from some quarters a reaction to the right; President Trump shifted policies and rhetoric to the right, inviting strong reaction from other quarters. Increasing polarization between the two dominant political parties in the U.S., with primaries often playing to the louder voices on either side of the respective parties, have often led to massive shifts in policy with new administrations. The two-party system often makes policies a package deal.
Popular opinion in Judea experienced some similar pendulum swings. Herod the Great’s internationally powerful kingdom in Judea gave way to a series of Roman governors, until the short rule of Herod Agrippa I (AD 41-44). Agrippa had courted favor among elites in Rome, and as king he courted favor with traditional Judeans. He was wildly popular among Judeans, and his short-lived reign rekindled Judean nationalism, shattering the apparent inevitability of direct Roman rule. After Agrippa’s death (narrated in Acts 12:23), successive Roman governors exploited and misadministered the province, provoking increasing resistance. By the late 50s and early 60s—by the time of Paul’s final visit and his consequent voyage to Rome in Roman custody—tensions were nearing a breaking point. While the Judean elite (or at least its elders) tried to maintain a voice of “moderation,” mediating between the interests of Rome and their people, voices of resistance were only a few years short of open revolt.
Yet Judean believers in Jesus, though suppressed under Agrippa I (see Acts 12), now flourished. Although scholars disagree how much hyperbole may be intended, Luke reports “tens of thousands” (myriadoi) of believers in Judea (21:20). Debates about Jesus’s identity polarized Judeans far less at this point than responses to Roman abuse of power, and Judean believers shared the political concerns of their peers. At this point in Judea’s history, the most prominent gentiles with whom they had to contend had given gentiles quite a bad name, and most Judeans, unlike Jews elsewhere in the Roman world, had little on-the-ground contact with other gentiles. That believers number so many in Acts 21 shows how well they were reaching their culture in relevant ways; they were effective in contextualizing the gospel for their local setting. Most, however, had little exposure to what God was doing in other parts of the world.
These believers were “zealous for the law” (21:20), which Acts probably understands in a mostly honorable way (cf. 23:3; 24:14; 25:8; 28:23; Luke 2:24-27, 39). Paul himself is ready to show his solidarity with his people in this way (Acts 21:23-26). Paul was not against Jewish people honoring the law; he was against imposing it on gentiles as a condition for being right with God or being “first-class” believers (13:38-39; 15:1-2). Leaders in the Jerusalem church understood and agreed (21:25).
Acts is explicit, however, that these leaders understood some nuances that were lost on many of their followers. In antiquity as today, nuance can get lost in sound bites, and popular sentiment sometimes divides in binary ways. Many Judean believers assumed that if Paul was against imposing the law on gentiles, he was against the law (21:21). As James and the elders warn: “You see, brother, how many thousands of Jews have believed, and all of them are zealous for the law. They have been informed that you teach all the Jews who live among the Gentiles to turn away from Moses, telling them not to circumcise their children or live according to our customs” (21:20-21, NIV). Paul agrees with these leaders on a plan to challenge this mistaken stereotype; he bends over backwards to identify with their local interests (21:22-26). His concern, affirmed by the movement’s Jerusalem leaders, is simply that the mission beyond Judea also retains its cultural freedom (21:25). The church’s unity is paramount. Different political perspectives or cultural customs do not entitle us to assume the worst in the other’s motives. Paul was ready to do whatever necessary to try to help hold together the churches of different cultures.
Acts does not tell us how Judean believers as a whole responded, since Paul’s gesture of goodwill and solidarity is met with misunderstanding from non-believing enemies. A riot flares in the temple, and Paul ends up with one final opportunity to preach to his people in Jerusalem. He addresses them in what was now the Judean mother tongue, emphasizing again his solidarity with their zeal for the law and even his past, violent defense of his people’s customs (22:2-5, 12, 14). He goes on to preach Jesus, and no one interrupts him; perhaps partly because of the Jerusalem church’s sensitive witness, belief in Jesus is not a current political dividing point (unlike in 12:1-3).
But Paul is not willing to stop with preaching Jesus. Genuinely responding to Jesus’s Lordship means more than acknowledging him as an option or even the best option. Genuinely submitting to his Lordship brings us into solidarity with his other followers, the rest of Christ’s body. If nationalism trumps spiritual unity, then Christ is not our Lord. Those who truly follow Christ should maintain our witness to their culture, but not at the expense of our unity with brothers and sisters in Christ. Attending an evangelical church on Sunday morning does not, for example, make you a true Christian if you are burning crosses on black people’s lawns at night (or engaging in corrupt business practices, or sleeping with your neighbor’s wife, etc.)
So Paul does not simply invite the crowd to follow Jesus abstractly. Jesus had already warned that gentiles would destroy Jerusalem (Luke 19:43-44; 21:20-24). Jerusalem is already on that course of conflict, and only the true gospel of Christ, which offers love of enemies and reconciliation across cultures, can challenge that course.
So Paul climaxes his testimony in Acts 22:21: “Jesus said to me, “Go! For I’ll send you far away to gentiles!” For Paul, the good news of Christ includes and requires unity with one’s fellow believers of other cultures, a spiritual temple that matters more than the earthly one (Eph 2:18-22; cf. 2:14-15).
For the crowd, however, admitting God’s concern for gentiles was a step too far. Their experience with gentiles was a negative one. “Up to this word they listened to him. Then they raised their voices and said, “Away with such a fellow from the earth! For he should not be allowed to live” (Acts 22:22, ESV). The wise reader of Luke’s work may remember a shout from a previous generation’s Jerusalem crowd: “Away with this fellow! Release Barabbas for us!” (Luke 23:18, NRSV). Jerusalem had just rejected its final opportunity to turn back from the path of judgment—as Jesus had essentially warned (cf. Luke 19:42-44; Acts 22:18).
Paul ends up in Roman custody, a custody later described as being “the prisoner of Christ for the sake of you gentiles” (Eph 3:1). Christians often have our differing political perspectives. Insofar as possible, we must support what we believe is truth and justice. We are not, however, free to disrespect one another or break the body of Christ over our politics, culture, or secondary theological issues. To do so is to deny Christ’s ultimate Lordship. Today there are believers in most cultures in the world, and in the U.S. and many other nations we have Christians from diverse cultural backgrounds. Listening to one another’s issues can help provide nuance beyond the stereotypes.
Years ago, when my African-American pastor was sharing with a mostly white group about ethnic reconciliation, I felt my heart breaking. I felt as if Jesus was saying, “Can’t you see how it hurts me when my body is torn asunder?” I felt the pain of a body being torn apart. If we love Jesus, we must love one another—to do otherwise is to hurt not only one another, but to hurt our Lord himself.
For me, the implications this message has for the church in the U.S. seem obvious. Not least, while “America first” might sometimes or often be good for America, Jesus’s own people in the U.S. must have wider concerns, whether (for example) our brothers and sisters in northern Nigeria facing genocide from Boko Haram, our brothers and sisters in Honduras facing gang violence, or our brothers and sisters in some Asian countries facing potential disfranchisement.
But whether you live in the U.S. or (with many of my readers) in other nations, consider what implications you believe this message might have. What does it mean to love fellow believers more than the interests of our own nation, culture, party, denomination, or the like?
(A few more comments on polarization in another post)
Will nasty bloggers be damned?—LOIDOROI in 1 Corinthians 6:10
Although we often notice Paul’s denunciation of sexual sins in his vice lists, one sin not so often noticed is his mention of “revilers.” This appears in his list of damnable sins in 1 Cor 6:10 (and 5:11). Paul might focus on it there because it may have been an issue in the Corinthian church—perhaps even against fellow believers there, given the divisions that were harming the church (1:10-12).
BDAG (a basic New Testament Greek dictionary) defines “reviling” (loidoria) as “speech that is highly insulting, abuse, reproach, reviling.” Normally it is not even subtle, but directly insulting (cf. Macrobius Sat. 7.3.2, trying to explain it in Latin). (It does not simply express disagreement.) It applies, for example, to people mocking Jesus during his passion (1 Pet 2:23) and the enemies of Jesus’s early followers insulting them and their movement (1 Tim 5:14; 1 Pet 3:9).
The verdict is consistent also with Paul’s list of death-worthy sins in Rom 1:29-32, which includes slanderers (1:30). The list in Rom 1 helps further set up Paul’s argument for why everybody needs God’s forgiveness and transformation; the list in 1 Cor 6 helps express Paul’s shock at how some of his converts are behaving.
One need not scan the internet very long, in various blogs, tweets and especially comments, to notice that reviling is a common pastime. Politics and even religious disagreements may generate heated passions, but the person who regularly reviles others falls short of Christian ethics. Like other sins on Paul’s lists, this is one he considers damnable. May we all learn to exercise restraint and, even when we are rightly passionate, to season our words with grace (Prov 15:1; Eph 4:29; Col 4:6). Or better yet, at some other times, to stay out of the fight altogether (Prov 17:27-28; 2 Tim 2:14, 23-26).
Reliability of Gospels (plus harder questions about John and about Christmas)
George Wood interviews Craig regarding his book Christobiography and therefore on the reliability of the Gospels. At the end, he hits Craig with harder questions. Listen to Craig try to figure out what to say! 😮
https://influencemagazine.com/en/Practice/The-Gospels-as-Truthful-Biographies-of-Jesus
Count the cost—Luke 14:26-35
The Gospels speak often about the cost of discipleship. They emphasize that Jesus is worth everything. And this should make sense if we think about it even for a moment. “For how does it profit someone to gain even the entire world but lose oneself forever?” (Luke 9:25). If Jesus really is our savior, he’s worth everything. If Jesus really is Lord of the universe, he is worth everything.
Everything thus hinges on his identity; real faith in Jesus, therefore, is not a passive assent like some fire escape just-in-case. To genuinely believe in Jesus is to stake our life on his claims, to entrust our eternal welfare into his care. Our level of commitment to him may be directly proportional to the genuineness of our faith in him.
Statements about radically abandoning everything include an element of hyperbole, in that God knows that we have basic needs as physical beings. God promises to look out for Jesus’s followers having food and clothing (Luke 12:28-30), though he calls us to seek first his kingdom (12:31). But of course the point of hyperbole—rhetorical overstatement—is to grip our attention and make us consider our ways—not to let us dismiss them as “merely hyperbole.”
To come after Jesus was to be his disciple, his follower. Yet Jesus says that to come after him one must “hate” his parents, wife, children and siblings (14:26). From Jesus’s teachings elsewhere, it is clear that he does want his disciples to honor their parents (Luke 18:20), to remain loyal to their spouse (16:18), and to welcome and care for children (18:16). But by comparison with loyalty to Jesus, such loyalties can be depicted hyperbolically as hatred! Matthew’s Gospel puts this phrase more gently: anyone who loves another more than Jesus is not worthy of Jesus (Matt 10:37)—Jesus comes first.
When households are divided because some oppose Jesus, loyalty to Jesus must transcend loyalty to the household (Luke 12:53). When in times of persecution even relatives and friends might betray you to protect themselves (21:16), loyalty to Jesus must remain first. Jesus said this in a society where family ties were paramount and such betrayals might seem inconceivable. But persecution did come, and some families divided over how much Jesus was worth.
Jesus’s first disciples were ready to pay this price. When Jesus challenged the rich ruler to sell everything, give it to the poor, and become a disciple of Jesus, the ruler balked at the cost (18:18-25). Peter then reminded Jesus that he and his colleagues had “left everything we had to follow you!” (18:28). Jesus pointed out that whoever left home and family for the kingdom’s sake—perhaps driven away by persecution or by a calling that no one else would embrace—would receive great reward (18:29-30). The reward included both a larger spiritual family in this world and eternal life in the coming one (18:30).
Yet Peter and his colleagues themselves balked at Jesus’s further demand. We must love Jesus more than our own life; we must take up our cross to follow him (14:26-27). Despite Jesus’s clarity, when it came time to take up their crosses to follow him, all his disciples were in hiding, and soldiers had to draft a bystander, Simon of Cyrene, to carry Jesus’s cross (23:26).
Jesus wanted his disciples to understand, going into the mission, what it might cost them. As a young Christian zealously sharing my faith on the street, I sometimes was beaten or had my life threatened. I assumed this was par for the course, because I understood that my life in this world became forfeit from the moment of my conversion. Every moment after my conversion was a gift, an opportunity to make my life in this world count for something that matters forever. I already had what I needed, nothing which could be greater: eternal life in fellowship with my creator.
Jesus offers two examples in this passage of counting the cost. Why start a building and leave it half-finished? People who pass your building will laugh at your foolishness (14:28-30). (My wife assures me that this happens sometimes in her country of Congo.) Likewise, a sane ruler will not start a war against another ruler who has much greater firepower (14:31-32). Jesus is worth everything, but times of testing reveal how much we believe that, how much we value him. It is best to count the cost up front, and live accordingly so that it becomes an ingrained habit.
Some people suppose that Jesus told only a rich ruler, in the context of seeking eternal life (18:18), to sell everything and give to the poor (18:22). This reflects something of a pattern:
- Explaining his message of repentance, John declares that anyone with even just two shirts should share one with the person who doesn’t have any (Luke 3:11)
- Promising the kingdom, Jesus invites disciples to sell their possessions and give to the poor, so they will have treasure in heaven (12:33)
- Here in 14:33, Jesus declares, “none of you can be my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions” (NRSV).
Is there an element of hyperbole here? Luke’s glowing description of the early Jerusalem church suggests that there is. Rather than selling everything upon their conversion, they sold it as needed afterward to help those in need (Acts 2:44-45; 4:32-35). This was a sign of their experience of the Spirit, an experience that empowers radical discipleship. We do not lose all our property at the moment of conversion. We do, however, lose our ownership of it, as Charles Finney aptly pointed out during nineteenth-century revivls. Our resources are now God’s resources, to be deployed most effectively for the purposes of his kingdom.
Jesus then compares his disciples to salt. Salt was important in antiquity, but if salt loses its identity as salt, it becomes worthless (14:34-35). True disciples must live out the values of the kingdom.
We who have eternal life in Jesus need not balk at any price in this world. Instead, we can invest our resources in ways that count for all eternity. A mediocre life that comes and goes in this world may lack significance. But a life devoted to Jesus has ultimate significance, as we devote our resources to his cause, caring for those in need. Those needs are far greater than our resources, which is why we never have good reason to neglect our mission.
I want to devote all my time and money to things that will last forever. I don’t waste time on frivolous games or entertainment; I don’t waste money on petty trinkets or fashion that will not advance the kingdom. Of course sometimes I must bend for the sake of others who don’t share or understand these commitments. My desire, however, is that in counting Jesus worth everything, they too will invest all their resources in matters of eternal significance. Why waste anything when the world’s need is so great and our resources can count forever?
Each person must decide for themselves what such a lifestyle of devotion looks like. Stewardship demands wisdom—some investments generate more returns for the kingdom. Some of us will seek to earn more to invest in serving people for Jesus. Some others will seek to have more free time to invest in serving people for Jesus. Some have only a widow’s mite to invest, but God looks on what we do with what we have. This is not about judging someone else’s commitments by how much they put in the offering plate or coach Little Leaguers or the like. But each of us should consider: what kind of difference we want to make in this world. We each have just one life: how will we deploy it in service of the kingdom? What will have eternal significance? What will count forever?