Category Archives: New Testament

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Hate the sin but love the sinner — Revelation 2

In Revelation chapter 2, positive models provided by the Ephesian church include testing of prophets. As relativism increases in our culture, discernment and backbone to stand against error become both increasingly unpopular and increasingly vital.  The current postmodern culture of the universities encourages the sharing of diverse beliefs (welcoming Christians in some new ways and providing opportunities previously unavailable to us). But it also forbids us to try to convert  anyone as if  we have absolute truth. We want people to understand  the gospel, but we also seek for them  to embrace  it. Even many Christians, however, are growing uncomfortable with the idea of absolute truth.

If there were in John’s day self-styled “apostles” (2:2) and prophets (2:20), preaching falsely called “deep secrets” (2:24), their number does not seem to have declined  in our own, and the need for vigilance against infiltration by false teachers has not decreased. Thus, for example, a few charismatics have closed ranks against noncharismatic critics of excesses in Word-of-Faith circles, rather than carefully examining the challenges to see which are cogent. Yet the biblical citations for some of these teachings are out of context, and some of the teachings contradict both Scripture and historic charismatic faith.

As a prophet  and an apostle, John  surely was not against  prophets or apostles in general;  but he demanded discernment in his day and would demand it no less in ours. If the Nicolaitans (2:6) supported the popular cultural values of sexual and/or religious compromise,  they also serve as a warning to us to beware  of modern purveyors of what people simply want to hear. Indeed, in talking with some members of churches that preach biblical holiness I have been struck by the number of people who embrace what their pastor says on matters that comfort them but prefer other, more worldly sources for instruction on morality.

Yet part of discernment involves knowing what we must discern, and the tragedy of the Ephesian church’s failure on this count is a tragedy of human nature that recurs through history and in our own time. The same church that rightly “hated” the works of the Nicolaitans  (2:6) wrongly abandoned their earlier commitment to “love” (2:4); like many Christians today, they may have neglected the adage that we should “hate the sin but love the sinner.”

Today,  in fact, our hatred of what we disapprove has sometimes carried beyond sin and those who commit it. Not all doctrines are at the heart of the gospel, not all errors are properly labeled heresy, and not all disagreements are worth  fighting about.

Yet despite important, notable exceptions, many of the churches most firmly committed  to the truth of the gospel are also those churches that have drawn boundaries too tightly on secondary issues. Countless times we have witnessed committed Christians marginalized for their views on gender roles, their different cultural or political perspectives, or for other reasons. In many of these cases those we have marginalized have naturally found circles where they were more accepted- even though many of those circles proved lax on matters that were close to their hearts.

In some of those  cases I  have also watched these  wounded Christians react against the rejection they experienced in their more traditional background in ways that discarded the proverbial baby with the bath water. For example, a professor marginalized by her evangelical campus ministry years ago because she held different views on gender roles now reportedly multiplies her hostility toward the Bible among her students.

Often we have marginalized people by careless thinking. For example, in our biblically correct opposition to divorce we have sometimes condemned faithful spouses abandoned and divorced against their will (about as sensible as condemning a rape victim because we oppose rape).  When  they  then leave our church,  we sometimes  feel confirmed  in our suspicion  that  they must have been unspiritual to begin with!

Even when  we are dealing  with clear cases of sin and error, does not Scripture call us to offer correction  with love and grace (Luke 15:1-2; 2 Tim. 2:24-26)?  Meanwhile, as J. I. Packer rightly notes, many of us Western evangelicals “can smell unsound  doctrine  a mile away,” and yet the fruit of personal experience of God often proves rare among us.

A church  where  love ceases can no longer  function  properly  as a local expression of Christ’s many-membered body. This is one of the offenses for which  a lampstand can  be moved  from its place  (2:5),  through which  a church can ultimately cease to exist as a church. Some churches die from lack of outreach,  lack of planning for the rising generation, or lack of courtesy to visitors; some churches,  like the church  in Ephesus, may risk simply killing themselves off by how they treat others.

(Adapted from The NIV Application Commentary: Revelation, published by Zondervan in 2000. Buy the book here.)

 

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I will remove your lampstand from its place — Revelation 2:6

That  the letters to the seven churches of Revelation often betray characteristics of the cities in which these churches flourished reminds us how easily churches  can reflect the values of their culture if we do not remain vigilant against those values. (This is especially true of the less persecuted churches.)

The two cities that are now completely uninhabited belong to two of the churches most severely rebuked (Sardis and Laodicea); the two cities that held out longest before the Turkish conquest are the only two churches fully praised (Smyrna and Philadelphia); and the city of Eph­esus was later literally moved to a site about three kilometers from where it was in John’s day, just as the church was threatened with removal from its place (2:5)

Such parallels may be coincidence, but they might also illustrate a pat­tern in history: The church, no matter how powerless in a given society, is a guardian of its culture. Just as the presence of the righteous in Sodom was the only factor that could have restrained judgment (Gen. 18:20-32), the fate of a culture may depend ultimately on the behavior of the believers in that culture.

Given the high degree of assimilation of North American Christians to our culture’s values- more time spent on entertainment than on witness, more money spent on our comfort than on human need- the prognosis for the society as a whole is not good.

When pagans charged that Rome fell because of its conversion to Christianity, Augustine responded that it fell rather because its sins were piled as high as heaven and because the commitment of most of its Christian popu­lation remained too shallow to restrain God’s wrath. Naturally we recognize that not all suffering reflects judgment; but some does, especially on the societal level. Is Western Christianity genuinely different enough from our cultures to delay God’s judgment on our societies?

(Adapted from The NIV Application Commentary: Revelation, published by Zondervan. Buy the book here.)

 

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The rich man and Lazarus — Luke 16:19-31

This story resembles a rabbinic story of uncertain date, except that there the rich man did a good deed and made it into the world  to come; here he allows starvation while he lives in luxury, and thus  inherits hell. Some details about the afterlife here are standard features of Jewish tradition; a few are simply necessary to make the story line work (acceptable practice in the telling of parables).

16:19.   Purple was an especially expensive form of apparel  (cf. comment on Acts 16:14); the lifestyle Jesus describes here is one of ostentatious luxury.  Although this man may have become rich by immoral means (as people often  did), the only crime Jesus attributes to him is that he let Lazarus starve to death when he could have prevented it.

16:20.   Some Jewish parables (including the rabbinic one mentioned at the beginning of this section) named a character or two.

16:21.   The crumbs here may be regular crumbs or the pieces of bread used to sop up the table. Had Lazarus gotten to eat them, these  leftovers would  still have been insufficient to sustain him. The dogs here appear to be the  usual kind  Palestinian Jews  knew:  scavengers, viewed as if they were rats or other unhealthy creatures (also in the Old  Testament, e.g.,  1 Kings  14:11; 16:4; 21:24; 22:38). They were unclean, and their  tongues would  have  stung his sores.

16:22-23.  Jewish lore often speaks of the righteous being carried away by angels; Jesus spares his hearers the traditional corresponding image of the wicked being carried  away  by demons. Every person, no matter how poor, was to receive a burial, and not  to be buried was seen as  terrible   (e.g., 1 Kings 14:13).  But Lazarus, having neither rel­atives nor charitable patron,  did not receive one,  whereas the rich man would have received great eulogies. True Israelites and especially martyrs were expected to share with Abraham in the world to come. The  most  hon­ored seat in a banquet would be nearest the  host,  reclining  in such a way that one’s head was near  his bosom.

16:24-26.  Jewish literature often  portrayed  hell as involving  burning. The formerly rich man hopes for mercy be­cause he is a descendant of Abraham (see comment on 3:8),  but the judgment here is based on a future inver­sion of status. Jewish people expected an inversion of status, where the oppressed righteous (especially Israel) would be exalted above the oppressing wicked  (especially the Gentiles), and also believed that charitable persons would be greatly rewarded in the world to come.  But this parable specifies only economic inversion, and its starkness would have been as offensive to most first-century hearers of means as it would be to most middle-class Western Christians today if they  heard it in its original  force.

16:27-31.  If those who claimed to believe the Bible failed to live accordingly, even a resurrection (Jesus points ahead to his own) would not persuade them. Jewish  literature also emphasized the moral responsibility of all people to obey whatever measure of light they already had.

(Adapted from The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament. Buy the book here.)

 

 

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The Word became flesh — John 1:1-14

The Greek  term  translated “word” was also used by many philosophers to mean  “reason,” the  force  which structured the universe; Philo combined this  image  with  Jewish  conceptions of the  “word.” The Old Testament had personified Wisdom (Prov 8), and ancient Judaism eventually identified personified  Wisdom,  the Word and the Law (the Torah).

By  calling  Jesus  “the Word,”  John calls him the embodiment of all God’s revelation in the Scriptures and thus declares that only those who accept Jesus  honor the  law  fully  (1:17) . Jewish people considered Wisdom/Word  divine yet distinct from God the Father, so it was the  closest  available term John had to describe Jesus.

1:1-2.   Beginning like Genesis 1:1, John alludes to the Old Testament and Jewish picture of God creating through his preexistent wisdom or word.  According to standard Jewish doctrine in his day, this wisdom existed  before the rest of creation but was itself created. By declaring that  the Word “was”  in the  beginning and  especially by calling the  Word  “God” (v. 1;  also the most likely reading of  1:18),  John goes beyond  the common Jewish conception to imply that  Jesus is not created.

1:3.  Developing Old Testament ideas (e.g., Ps 33:6; Prov 8:30), Jewish teachers  emphasized that  God  had  created all things   through his Wisdom/Word/Law and sustained them because the righteous practiced the law.  (Some even  pointed out that Genesis 1 declared “And  God said” ten times when  he was creating, and  this  meant that God created all things with his Ten Commandments. )  Ancient  Jewish  teachers would  have agreed  with verse 3.

1:4.    Developing Old Testament prom ises  of  long  life  in  the  land  if Israel obeyed  God  (e.g., Ex 20:12; Deut  5:16; 8:1; 11:9), Jewish  teachers emphasized that the reward for obeying God’s word was eternal life. John declares that this life had always been available through God’s word, which is the same word that he identifies with Jesus. Jewish teachers  called many things “light” (e.g., the   righteous,  the   patriarchs,  Israel, God), but this term  was most commonly applied to God’s  law (a figure also in the Old Testament, e.g., Ps 119:105).

1:5.  That   darkness  did  not  “apprehend” the light may be a play on words (it  could  mean  “understand” [NIV] or “overcome” [NRSV]). Similarly,  in the Dead Sea Scrolls,  the forces of light and darkness were engaged  in mortal combat, but light  was predestined to triumph.

1:6-8.    “Witness” was especially a legal concept in the Greco-Roman world and in Jewish circles. Isaiah used it in relation to the end time, when the people God delivered would testify to the nations about  him  before  his tribunal (43:10; 44:8). This image recurs throughout this Gospel.

1:9-10.   Jewish  tradition declared  that God  had offered  the law to all seventy nations at  Mount Sinai  but  lamented that   they  had  all chosen  to  reject  his word; only Israel had accepted it. In the same  way, the world of John’s  day has failed  to recognize God’s  Word among  them.

1:11.    Here  John  breaks  with the image in Jewish  tradition, according to which Israel  alone of all nations had received the law. Jewish people expected  that  the  faithful  of Israel  would likewise accept the revelation when God gave forth the law again in  the end time (Is 2:3; Jer 31:31-34). (In most Jewish  tradition,  the law would, if changed at all,  be more stringent in the world to come.)

1:12-13.   The emphasis  is thus not on ethnic  descent  (v. 11)  but  on spiritual rebirth;  see comment  on 3:3, 5 for details on how ancient  Judaism  would hear the language of rebirth.

1:14.   Neither Greek philosophers nor Jewish teachers could conceive of the Word becoming flesh. Since the time of Plato, Greek philosophers  had emphasized that the ideal was what was invisible and eternal;  most Jews so  heavily emphasized  that  a human  being could not become a god that  they never considered that God might become human. When God  revealed his glory to Moses in Exodus 33-34, his glory was “abounding in covenant  love and covenant    faithfulness”  (Ex  34:6),  which could also be translated “full of grace and truth.”

Like  Moses of old  (see 2 Cor  3:6-18), the disciples saw God’s glory, now revealed in Jesus. As the Gospel unfolds, Jesus’ glory is revealed in his signs (e.g., Jn 2:11) but especially in the cross, his ultimate act of love (12:23-33). The Jewish people were expecting God to reveal his glory in something  like a cosmic spectacle of fireworks; but for the first coming, Jesus reveals the same side of God’s character that was emphasized to Moses: his covenant love.

“Dwelt” (KJV, NASB) here is literally “tabernacled,” which  means  that  as God tabernacled  with his people in the wilderness,   so  had  the  Word   taber­nacled among his people in Jesus.

(Adapted from The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament. Buy the book here.)

 

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Separation of church and state — Romans 13

In Romans 13  Paul depicts relations with  the state within a particular kind of situation. What happens, however, when a state, far from avenging wrongdoing, is itself the persecutor? Paul wrote early in Nero’s reign, before he began persecuting Christians.  Nevertheless, as a Jew who had faced Roman rods (2 Cor 11:25) and lived in Judea, Paul was well aware that the empire already oppressed peoples and that injustices often occurred under its auspices.  Injustice notwithstanding, he does not side with the Judean nationalist ethos already building when he was writing (ct. Rom 15:31), which would soon climax in open war with Rome.

Many historically used this passage (among others) to support the divine right of kings.  But if Paul follows Jesus’s  teaching on giving to Caesar what is Caesar’s (13:6-7;  Mark 12:17), he presumably also agreed with his caveat that some things belonged only to God (Mark 12:17).  For example, Paul surely would not, out of allegiance to the state, sanction participation in the popular imperial cult (ct. 1 Cor 10:20-21). Further, submission was a temporary expedient; Paul did not expect Rome or other worldly empires to continue for long (ct. Rom 2:5; 8:21-23; 9:22; 11:26-27; 12:19; 13:12).

Nor did Paul have reason to envision modern democracies, in which Christians as citizens would in a sense constitute part of the government, and hence need to evaluate and critique government activities.  Finally, Paul lacked reason to envision this minority movement ending up in a situation of significant influence over the political  process and so being able to address large-scale injustices  like slavery (despite Paul’s personal concerns, ct. Phlm 16-21). Opposed to ideologies behind the Judean revolt, Paul was likely in practice a pacifist. But what do personal pacifists do in extreme cases, when their influence affects whether genocide may be forcibly stopped? German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a pacifist, ultimately participated in a plot against Hitler because of the magnitude of evil involved.

While few would support the divine right of kings today, the subservience of the leaders of the German state church to Hitler’s Third Reich, based on this  passage, raised anew the issue of its application, and Christian cooperation with the apartheid government in South Africa had the same effect. Abolitionists and liberation theologians have long grappled with these issues. Most likely, Paul would have applied 13:1-7 as the norm where possible, living in a respectable manner in society but allowing dissent where necessary and political participation for justice when possible.

For example, he would presumably urge Christians in China (given the normal situation there at the time I am writing  this) to be model Chinese citizens, yet without  imbibing atheism.  In cases of wholesale massacres of Christians or their  neighbors, such as have happened at various times in northern Nigeria, the Indian state of Orissa, parts of Indonesia, and so forth, conclusions are harder to come by (though these were not sponsored by national governments, a situation closer to, e.g., the Turkish genocide of Armenians in 1915).  I am inclined to think that Paul would not endorse armed resistance in such cases, but it is admittedly easy for me to pontificate from a currently safe location. I know of other settings where suppression and the killings of individuals led to armed uprisings, which most often led to more suffering without decisive liberation; but other solutions seemed hard to come by. Once we recognize that Paul’s words addressed a particular historical situation, translating the message into new situations becomes more problematic.

Respect for one’s government and the expected obligations of citizenship have limits (though as a modern Western reader I am probably overly inclined to emphasize this qualification). Paul cooperated with the Jerusalem church’s identification with their culture (which was also his culture, Acts 21:20-26), but  not to the extent of honoring such nationalism  above his commitment to the Gentile mission (Acts 22:21-22). When Christians are more loyal to our ethnicity  or nation than to Christ’s body, when nationalism or racism corrupts our love for fellow believers, we have gone beyond giving Caesar what is Caesar’s to giving Caesar what is God’s. On many other points, however, Christian ethicists debate the boundaries between those two spheres.

(Adapted from Romans: A New Covenant Commentary, published by Cascade Books. Buy the book here.)

 

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Paul’s perspective on the flesh in the book of Romans

Neoplatonic and gnostic dualism absorbed by later Christianity denied that the body was good, and many scholars today, reacting against this conception, argue that Paul’s use of sarx bears little  relation to soma, “body.” Some translations (such as the NIV)  even poorly translate sarx simply as “sinful  nature” (which for some Christian traditions also evokes a dualism of two natures struggling within the believer).

Paul certainly believes that the body can be used for good (Romans 12:1) – but also for evil (6:13).  The body as such is not evil, but if the body’s desires rather than God’s Spirit  dominates one’s existence, one readily comes into the power of sin.   Paul speaks of the “passions” (1:24; 6:12;  13:14)  and “desiring” what is not one’s own (7:7-8; 13:9). Impure hearts lead to defiling bodies sexually (1:24); the old life in Adam involves the “body of sin” (6:6); one should avoid obeying the desires of the mortal body (6:12);  the existence of moral defeat is characterized by the “body of death” (7:24; cf. 8:10-13).

Paul connects the term “flesh” with the body. Ultimately this is not an anthropological dualism between two parts within a person (in 7:23, the mind remains subject  to the flesh), but  humanity as sarx contrasted with  God’s Spirit (8:4-9; Gen 6:3). The Old Testament employed the equivalent Hebrew term basar for humans (or other animals) in their limited creatureliness, including  their mortality.  By Paul’s day, some Jews employed the term for human weakness in  its susceptibility  to sin.  Basar and its Greek translation sarx were not inherently evil, but as “human weakness” were susceptible to sin. Flesh was not meant to lead human life, but to be the arena in which life should be lived in obedience to God. Paul could use “flesh”  also for the outward existence (Rom 1:3; 2:28; 4:1; 9:3, 5, 8; 11:14), again what is merely human (though not intrinsically  evil) rather than empowered by God (he sometimes contrasts flesh with the Spirit or the promise). Despite these observations, flesh had an inescapable bodily dimension.

Contrary to the views of a large proportion of New Testament scholars, mostly following secondary sources, Diaspora Jews by Paul’s day commonly did  distinguish soul and body, often expecting immortality  for the former even when affirming resurrection for the latter.   In 7:5, sinful passions working in the body’s members characterize being “in the flesh.” In 8:13 one is either destined for death in the flesh or resurrection by putting to death the body’s deeds. Flesh is also linked with the body in 6:19; it contrasts with the mind in 7:25; the law working in one’s bodily members (7:23) is the law of the flesh (7:25).

The conflict  between the law of sin in the members and the law in the mind in 7:25 was not the basis for the verdict of “no condemnation” in 8:1, as if God would overlook physical sin provided one’s mind harbored good motives. Far from it: 8:1-13 contrasts those who serve the flesh with those who serve God by the Spirit! Paul’s goal is a way of thinking dominated not by the flesh (hence by one’s physical desires, which have a legitimate place, but not in ruling life), but a way of thinking dominated by the Spirit (8:5-9).

This new way of thinking  involves a renewed mind (12:2). This renewed mind teaches believers how to present their bodies in the service of the larger body-the body of Christ (12:1, 4-5). Such a mind is no longer self-centered, but Christ­ centered; no longer seeking full autonomy, it now submits gladly to the greater good of God’s purposes. “Flesh” is the localized self in contrast both to depen­ dence on God (through the Spirit) and the corporate interests of Christ’s body. Life ruled by the flesh is, at root, human selfishness and self-centeredness (or sometimes centered in one’s group), rather than genuinely altruistically  sharing God’s interests. Paul’s goal is not to annihilate self, as in some religions, but to connect it to the service of a greater purpose (ct. 12:1-8; Matt 6:33). Paul was no gnostic, but neither was he a hedonistic  Western individualist who keeps religion in its subjective place.

(Adapted from Romans: A New Covenant Commentary, published by Cascade Books. Buy the book here.)

 

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Overcoming prejudice: the Roman centurion in Matthew 8:5-13

The Gentile mission was at most peripheral to Jesus’ earthly ministry: he did not actively seek out Gentiles for ministry (Mt 10:5), and both occasions  on which he heals Gentiles he does so from a distance (8:13; 15:28). The Gentile mission became central  to  the  early  church, however,  and  early  Christians  naturally looked to accounts of Jesus’ life for examples of ministry to the Gentiles (compare 1:3, 5-6; 2:1-2, 11; 3:9; 4:15).

The significance of Matthew 8:5-13 is clarified by some basic information about  Roman centurions  and what  they represented to Jewish  people in the first century.  In this period soldiers in the Roman legions served twenty years. Unlike aristocrats, who could become tribunes or higher officials immediately, most centurions rose to their position from within the ranks and became members of the equestrian (knight) class when they retired. Roman soldiers participated  in pagan religious oaths to the divine emperor.

Matthew here demonstrates that a call to missions work demands that disciples first abandon ethnic and cultural prejudice. His Jewish readers would be tempted to hate Romans, especially Roman soldiers, and perhaps their officers even more; this would be especially true after A.D. 70. Jesus’ teaching about accommodating a Roman soldier’s unjust request (5:41), paying taxes to a pagan state that used the funds in part for armies (22:21) or paying a temple tax that the Romans later confiscated for pagan worship (17:24-27) would seem intolerable to anyone whose allegiance to Christ was not greater than his or her allegiance to family and community. But Jesus is not satisfied by our treating an enemy respectfully; he demands that we actually love that enemy (5:44). No one challenges our prejudices— and sometimes provokes our antagonism more than a “good” member of a group that has unjustly treated people we love. This narrative challenges prejudice in a number of ways.

“Exceptions” can make a difference. When one white minister living in the U.S. South was experiencing the deepest trauma of his life, some African-American Christians took him under their wing and nursed him back to spiritual and emotional health. The white minister began  to experience the spiritual resources and strength that the black American church had developed through slavery, segregation and contemporary urban crises and was eventually ordained irl a black Baptist church. Subsequently he discovered slave narratives and other accounts that brought him face to face with what people who looked like him had done to the near ancestors of his closest friends. He became so ashamed of the color of his skin that he wanted to rip it off. But the love of his African-American friends and the good  news of Christ’s love restored him, and soon he began to feel part of the community that had embraced him.

He often joined his friends in lamenting the agony of racism and its effects. But one day after a Sunday-school lesson, a minister friend said something about white people in general that he suddenly took personally. “I didn’t mean you,” the black minister explained quickly. “You’re like a brother to me.• The black minister made an exception because he knew the white Christian, but the white Christian wondered about all the people who didn’t know him. He had experienced a taste of what most of his black friends regularly encountered in predominantly white circles.

The next week the ministers were studying together the story of the centurion’s servant in Luke, and they noted that the centurion’s Jewish contemporaries viewed him as an exception  to the rule that Gentiles were oppressors. They also noted that the Gospels tell this story because that exception in Jesus’ ministry points to a huge number of Gentile converts pouring in at the time when the Gospels were being written.

If even a few people  become exceptions and really care enough about their brothers and sisters of other races to listen, these exceptions can show us that the racial and cultural barriers that exist in our societies do not need to continue. If we are willing to pay the price-which will sometimes include hints of rejection from people  we have come to love-we can begin to bring down those barriers.

(Adapted from Matthew: The IVP New Testament Commentary Series. Buy the book here.)

 

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You will know them by their fruits – Matthew 7:16-20

The false prophets in Matthew 7:15  claim  to have  prophesied, exorcised and  effected miracles by Jesus’ name (v. 22). Although Matthew is surely charismatic in a positive way (compare, for example, 5:12; 10:8, 40-42; 23:34), here he challenges false Christian charismatics  whose disobedience Christ will finally reveal  (10:26). Although  some  could  prophesy and  work signs by demonic power  (for example, 2 Thess 2:9; Rev 13:13-16; compare Jer 2:8; 23:13), one could also manifest genuine gifts of God’s Spirit yet be lost (1 Sam 19:24).

Once  we  acknowledge that God  can  inspire  people  to speak  his message   (and   this  would   apply   to  gifts  like  teaching   as  well  as prophecy), how  do  we  discern  his genuine representatives?  Like  his follower Paul, Jesus subordinates the gifts of the Spirit to the fruit of the Spirit (compare 1 Cor 13)  and  submission  to Jesus’  lordship  (1  Cor 12:1-3). Jesus’ words about fruit thus refer to repentant works (Mt 7:21; 3:8, 10), recalling Jesus’ ethical teachings in 5:21-7:12.

Much of today’s church may miss out on prophecy altogether, which is not a healthy situation  (1 Thess 5:20). Prophecy  remains a valid gift until Jesus’ return (1Cor 13:9-12), and we should seek it for our churches (1 Cor 14:1, 39). But wherever the real is practiced,  the counterfeit will also appear  (a phenomenon I as a charismatic  have  witnessed  frequently;  compare 1 Cor 14:29; 1 Thess 5:21).

An adulterous minister may exhibit many divinely bestowed gifts— sometimes because God is answering the prayers of people in the congregation— but such ministers are unworthy of our trust as God’s spokespersons  as long as they continue in sin. Yet Jesus wants us to look even closer to home. Do we become so occupied with “the Lord’s work” that we lose sight of the precious people God has called us to serve? Do we become so preoccupied with our mission and our gifts that we neglect a charitable attitude toward our families and other people around us?

Yet the image of the tree and the fruit also reminds us that behavior flows from character, and in Christian teaching character comes through being born again rather than merely through self-discipline. Our own best efforts at restructuring unregenerate human nature  are  doomed  to  failure (Gal  5:19-21). By contrast, a  person transformed by and consistently dependent on the power of God’s Spirit will live according to  the traits of God’s character because of God’s empowerment, just as trees bear fruit according to their own kind (Gal 5:18, 22-23).

(Adapted from Matthew: The IVP New Testament Commentary Series. Buy the book here.)

 

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God does miracles only when we need them — Matthew 14:13-21

The miracle of the “feeding of the five thousand” in Matthew 14:13-21 is greater than the manna of the exodus, since none of the manna would be left over. But manna was never left over because it was to be provided every day, whereas this miracle is a rare one. So much was left over that each of the twelve disciples gathered food in his wicker basket (v. 20). The leftovers stress the lavish abundance of God’s miraculous power in Christ; many people felt that a good  host should  provide enough food  that some would always be left over.

Yet the gathering of the leftovers (compare 2 Kings 4:7, 44; 7:1-2, 16-20; 1  Kings 17:16; Jn  6:12) teaches us something further. Most moralists condemned wastefulness and emphasized thrift. Jesus trusted that God’s provision would always be available when it was needed (compare 16:9-11), but like most moralists he refused to squander what was available. The extra  bread, which was more than the amount started with, could be used for other meals.

Everett Cook, a retired Pentecostal minister running a street mission, confronted an associate who had a growth on his nose but refused to see a doctor. “God will heal me,” the man insisted.

“If you needed a miracle, God would give you one,” Everett retorted, “but right now he’s given you a doctor and medical insurance. You need to use what he’s given you.”

The next time they met the man’s growth was much bigger, but the man still insisted, “I am healed.” The third time they met the growth had spread further, and finally the man was thinking that perhaps he needed to see a doctor.

God performed a miracle when he created the world and set its laws in motion, and we are often wise to start with natural means when those are available. God performs miracles to meet our genuine needs, but he will not perform them merely to entertain us.

God is not intimidated by the magnitude of our problem. The disciples saw the size of the need  and  the littleness of the human resources available; Jesus saw the size of the need and the greatness of God’s resources available. Often God calls us to do tasks for him that are technically impossible-barring a miracle.

The day before I was going to call my prospective Ph.D. program to say I was not coming because I had no money, God unexpectedly met my need. And in the summer after I finished my Ph.D., I found myself still unable to locate a teaching position for the fall. After much prayer, one night I finally determined the bare minimum I needed to live on and to store my research that year, and I cried out in despair. Barring a miracle, I thought, I will be on the street this year. Less than twenty-four hours later Rodney Clapp called from InterVarsity Press and offered me a contract to write the IVP Bible Background  Commentary: New Testament I had proposed-plus an unexpected advance that was, to the dollar, what I’d decided I needed for the year. Undaunted by the magnitude of my need, God was teaching me that he alone has the power to meet my needs.

Another lesson in the miracle is this: God often begins with what we have. Jesus often takes what we bring to him and multiplies it (vv. 16-19). When Moses insisted that he needed a sign to take with him, God asked him what was already in his hand and  then  transformed it (Ex  4:1-3), using what  had  been  merely a shepherd’s rod even to part the sea (Ex 14:16). When a widow needed financial help, Elisha asked what she had in her house; she responded that she had only a small amount of oil, so he commanded her to borrow jars into which to pour the oil and then multiplied it until all the jars were  full (2 Kings 4:1-7).

Although God  created  the universe from nothing, he normally takes the ordinary things of our lives and transforms them for his honor (see, for example, Judg 6:14; 15:15-19). The narrative does not even report that Jesus prayed for the food to multiply; confident that he represents the Father’s will, he merely gave thanks (the meaning of the Greek expression that some translations render “blessed”; “blessing” food merely means giving thanks for it), which was the standard Jewish custom before and normally after meals.

(Adapted from Matthew: The IVP New Testament Commentary Series. Buy the book here.)

 

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Mary, Joseph, and the virgin birth of Jesus — Matthew 1:18-25

Ancient biographers sometimes praised the miraculous births of their subjects (especially prominent in the Old Testa­ ment),  but there are no close parallels to the virgin  birth.  Greeks told stories of gods impregnating women, but the text indicates that   Mary’s conception was not sexual; nor does the Old Testament  (or Jewish tradition) ascribe sexual characteristics to God. Many miraculous birth stories in the ancient world (including Jewish  accounts,  e.g., 1 Enoch 106) are heavily embroidered with mythical imagery (e.g., babies filling houses with light), in contrast with the straightforward narrative style  of this passage.

1:18.    Betrothal (erusin) then was more binding than most engagements are today and was normally accompanied by the groom’s payment of at least part of the bride price. Betrothal, which commonly lasted a year, meant that  bride and groom were officially  pledged to each other but had not yet consummated the marriage; advances toward anyone else were thus regarded as adulterous (Deut 22:23-27). Two witnesses, mutual consent (normally) and the groom’s declaration were necessary to establish Jewish  betrothals (in Roman betrothals, consent alone sufficed).

Mary would  have probably  been between the ages of twelve and fourteen (sixteen at the oldest), Joseph perhaps between eighteen and twenty; their parents likely arranged their  marriage, with Mary and Joseph’s consent. Pre­marital privacy between  betrothed persons was permitted in Judea but apparently frowned upon in Galilee, so Mary and Joseph may well not have had any time alone together at this point.

1:19.    The  penalty for adultery under Old Testament law was death by stoning, and this penalty applied to infidelity during betrothal as well  (Deut 22:23-24). In New Testament times, Joseph would have merely been required to divorce Mary and expose her to shame; the death penalty was rarely if ever executed for this offense. (Betrothals were so binding that if a woman’s fiancé died, she was considered a widow;  betrothals could otherwise be terminated only by divorce.) But a woman with a child, divorced for such infidelity, would be hard pressed ever to find another husband, leaving her without means  of support if her  parents died.

But because divorces could be effected by a simple document with two witnesses, Joseph could have divorced her without making her shame  more widely known.  (It was necessary  to involve a judge only if the wife were the one requesting  that the husband divorce her.) Much later rabbinic tradition charges  that  Mary slept with another man, but Joseph’s marrying her  (v. 24) demonstrates that he did not believe this was the case.

1:24-25.   Joseph acts like Old Testament men and  women of God who obeyed God’s call even when  it went against all human common sense. Marriage consisted of covenant  (at the betrothal;  the marital contract also involved a monetary transaction between families), a ceremony and consummation, which ratified  the marriage, normally on the first night of the seven-day wedding. Joseph here officially marries Mary but abstains from con­summating the marriage until after Jesus is born. Jewish teachers thought that  men  had  to marry young because they could not resist temptation (many even blamed a woman’s uncovered hair for  inducing lust).  Joseph, who lives with Mary but exercises self-control, thus provides a strong role model for sexual  purity.

(Adapted from The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament. Buy the book here.)