Category Archives: New Testament

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He came to change from the bottom up

“You know that those who are considered rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. But it is not so among you; but whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first among you must be slave of all. For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.”—Jesus, in Mark 10:42-45 (adapted from NRSV, NIV and ESV)

In imperial propaganda, the emperor was simply the princeps, “the first” (see 10:44); but while he lavished benefactions on the Roman people, he was no one’s slave (10:43), and no Roman hearer could exclude the emperor from the verdict of 10:42. The contrast with 10:45 was an absolute ideological challenge to the dominant ideology of the empire—yet in a form that offered no threat of uprising (cf. 12:16-17). So long as elites were not compelled to believe it, they might welcome all the greater submission among those they considered foolhardy enough to embrace it.

Jesus came to change the world from the bottom up—not by power in human terms, but by humbly serving and dying for others. Who is ready to follow his example?

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Mary kept all these things in her heart—Luke 2:19 (and: prophecies vs. ‘prophetic declarations’)

But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart (Luke 2:19, NIV)

Christmas is a joyful time for many parents, but also a time of grief for those who have lost children. (This is also true for other deep relational losses, some of which my wife and I have experienced, but few losses run deeper than the loss of a child—something Mary would eventually experience.) This may be especially true for those who believe that God has shown them about their child’s destiny and, at least so far, things appear to be working differently.

Jesus’s birth, of course, is special in a way that no other birth is. But we can still learn some lessons from how Mary responded to clear revelations about Jesus’s identity and mission.

The shepherds testified about what the angels had said: this baby would be a savior, Christ the Lord (Luke 2:8-17)! This testimony confirmed the message that Mary had already received directly from the angel Gabriel (Luke 1:28-37). Many in Bethlehem marveled at the shepherds’ testimony (2:18). Mary, however, preserved these matters in her heart (2:19). She does the same thing later after the young Jesus’s encounter with Bible experts in the temple (2:51). (Luke might even tell about Mary’s memory of these events to suggest that Mary is his source for this information; certainly he met at least briefly with Jesus’s brother James, in Acts 21:18.)

The term used for the “matters” or “words” she kept in her heart appears often in the preceding context, for Gabriel’s message to her (1:37-38), for God’s wonderful work for Zachariah and Elizabeth (1:65), and for the angels’ message to the shepherds (2:15, 17). It will soon be used for God’s prophetic message to Simeon (2:29). All children are special, but Mary, more than any other mother, had good reason to know that her child was the most special of all—the one we all must depend on.

Soon after this event Simeon in the temple prophesies that this child, God’s Messiah, will embody salvation for all peoples (Luke 2:26-32; cf. 2:38). This goes well beyond what Mary and her husband would have imagined (2:33). This message also fits a theme that Luke develops further throughout his work (e.g., 3:6; Acts 13:47; 28:28).

Yet Simeon also prophesies that this child will face opposition and that Mary will face pain (2:34-35). He is prophesying what the Spirit is saying—not simply making a “positive confession” about what Mary might want to hear, or what Simeon might want to come to pass. He is not merely expressing everyone’s hopes for the child. There is a difference.

Simeon’s message underlines a steep price to Jesus’s mission. God has appointed Jesus to expose what is really in the hearts of people (2:35), using Greek terms that Like later uses for Jesus revealing the hypocrisy of many religious people (5:22; 6:8) and even the wrong thoughts of his own disciples (9:47; 24:38). By showing people for what they were, he would become a stumbling block for many, what Simeon calls their “falling” (2:34; cf. 20:18). By contrast, he would be for others a promise of resurrection, what Simeon calls their “rising” (2:34; everywhere else in Luke-Acts this means the resurrection of the dead). Jesus as a sign will also be “spoken against” (2:34: antilegô), a term also applied to hostility against his followers (21:15; Acts 13:45; 28:22).

Further, a figurative “sword” will also pierce Mary’s own heart (Luke 2:35), perhaps initially fulfilled when her son is missing (2:43-48), because she cannot yet understand his life mission (2:49). It may have been further fulfilled when, instead of immediately answering Mary’s concerns, Jesus embraces his disciples as mother and siblings (8:19-21). He warns that loyalty to himself comes before loyalty to parents (12:53; 14:26; though Jesus still affirms honoring parents, 18:20). Even Mary herself must accept the role of disciple as well as mother (Acts 1:14). Jesus’s death would surely prove most traumatic of all.

Sometimes a prophecy is true and it comes to pass in ways that do not make sense to us. The cross was a steeper price than Mary would have imagined; and how could the cross lead to Jesus embodying salvation? Joseph’s father disapproved of his dreams (Gen 37:10), but his father kept it in mind (37:11), just like Mary did centuries later. Yet with Joseph’s apparent death, any possibility of the dream being fulfilled seemed hopeless (37:33-34). Unlike Jacob, the reader of Genesis 37 knows that Joseph remains alive. But how will his exploitation as a slave lead to his exaltation?

Jacob’s son Joseph still has enough faith to remain loyal to God (39:9). He has enough faith—or at least such irresistible gifting—to continue interpreting dreams (40:8-22). And finally this gift exalts him, ironically fulfilling part of his own dream many years earlier (Gen 41).

That is often how God works: he brings humility and often even humiliation before exaltation (Prov 15:33; 18:12; Matt 23:12//Luke 14:11; Luke 18:14). That pattern climaxes in the cross: our divine Lord humbled himself. He did so even to the point of the most shameful and humiliating of deaths, execution for treason against the mighty and widely feared empire of his day (Phil 2:8). Yet every knee will bow at Jesus’s name (2:10) and every tongue confess that he is Lord, to the glory of God the Father (2:11). God’s plan was fulfilled (Acts 2:23-24).

Unfortunately, not all prophecies are clear. Moreover, in circles today where we believe that God’s Spirit still speaks to us, we also need to do a better job of testing today what some claim that God is saying. Some circles risk watering down real prophecy, even inadvertently, with their own interests. Toward the beginning of their callings, God warned both Jeremiah and Ezekiel not to be moved by the opposition they would face for speaking the truth (Jer 1:8, 17; Ezek 2:5-7; 3:8-9). Those who prophesied only what people wanted to hear were suspect (Jer 28:9), and if their hearers were living ungodly lives, the prophecies of peace were false (Jer 4:10; 6:14; 8:11; 14:13; 23:17; Ezek 13:10, 16; Mic 3:5). Of course, not all prophecies include elements of reproof or bad news; two of the seven New Testament churches in Asia Minor were spared reproof, and one was even spared any bad news (Rev 2—3).

Scripture is worth standing on. Scripture also says that we should hold fast true prophecies from God (1 Thess 5:20-21). The same context, however, warns that prophecies must be tested (5:21-22; 1 Cor 14:29). Circles that believe that God will bring about whatever one speaks in faith weaken the distinction between what they say and what God says. Yet “Who can speak and have it happen if the Lord has not decreed it?” (Lam 3:37, NIV). Genuine authority to command mountains (Mark 11:23-24) presupposes faith in God (11:22), which in turn presupposes that what we are trusting for, God actually supports.

Not everything that everyone says to us is God’s message, and that may be true especially in circles where people believe they can make “prophetic declarations” apart from genuine direction from God’s Spirit. When those declarations are made publicly and fail, they can make true prophecy harder to believe. But of course more people today, like most people in Jeremiah’s day, will listen to those who tell them what they would like to hear (2 Tim 4:3). Full disclosure: I personally also absolutely prefer what is positive! But in the long run, truth is what matters most of all. God is not wrong simply because someone spoke wrongly in his name. But when we speak in God’s name and are wrong, we dishonor God’s name. Whether in prophecy or in the gift of teaching Scripture, we should be very careful when we say, “The Lord says.”

Other times are more like the above examples from Jesus’s childhood, or the earlier story of Joseph’s dreams. God really has spoken, but we do not understand the message’s full import until it is fulfilled.

Sometimes what God has spoken is best kept in our hearts, as in the case of Mary, until we understand how it will be fulfilled. This helps prevent bringing dishonor on God’s name; a prophecy, like a biblical text, sometimes needs interpretation. Our understanding is finite, and our interpretations are limited. Not everything God tells us is for public consumption, especially when it seems foolishness to outsiders, and especially when we are not yet sure enough of the meaning to risk God’s honor in case we are wrong.

We know in part and we prophesy in part (1 Cor 13:9), but we can truly trust that God has everything under control. We know he works things for our ultimate good, even when we do not understand how (Rom 8:28). In faith, we do our best to follow his leading. In faith, we trust that he knows what he is doing even when we do not.

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Jairus’s daughter and the woman with the flow of blood

One had been alive for twelve years; the other had suffered for twelve years. One grew up in a prominent household; the other was now destitute and socially marginal. Both had a desperate need, and Jesus met that need. Both Jairus (on behalf of his daughter) and the woman with the flow of blood become models of faith in this story.

I give more details in a web article that Christianity Today asked me to write this week, here. Because of our miscarriages, my wife and I have experienced grief over the loss of children, though not children that we had spent years raising. But we can also celebrate the miracles that God does. We can learn from the faith of these two individuals in Mark 5, when called to trust Jesus for a miracle; we can also learn from the faith that the disciples should had (but didn’t) in the face of suffering, later in the Gospel. And we all can celebrate the hope that the gospel provides.

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Discipleship

People think of various things when they hear about discipleship. In the first century, though, being a disciple meant following a teacher or belonging to a group that followed a sage’s teaching. Most disciples of teachers started in their teens and passed on their teacher’s teachings. (Youth ministers take note: most of Jesus’s disciples were probably teenagers!)

Following Jesus was different in some respects from following most other kinds of teachers, but especially because Jesus was different from most other teachers. (This is clear for those of us who recognize Jesus’s deity.) His disciples grew to learn his compassion, his wisdom, his healing power. Disciples were supposed to imitate their teachers, and Jesus expected his disciples to carry on such work. Although we don’t have the advantage of Jesus’s presence with us physically right now, we have his most important teachings in the Gospels and we also experience his presence by the Holy Spirit. So we can continue to learn from Jesus. In terms of being disciples, we even have advantages that the first disciples initially lacked: for example, we already know, through their later testimony, that the cross was not a failure, that Jesus has risen, and that he is divine. It took them time to understand these matters.

Nevertheless, from the start, following Jesus was never meant to be incidental to one’s life. Most Jewish teachers expected their disciples to remember and pass on their teachings, but Jesus demanded more. Jesus called people to value him more than their livelihoods; sometimes fishermen and tax collectors left their businesses to follow Jesus. Jesus called people to value him more than financial security: he summoned a rich young ruler to donate everything he had to the poor, and Jesus taught disciples more generally to lay up their treasure in heaven.

Likewise, Jesus is above residential security. When someone volunteers to follow him across the lake of Galilee (Matt 8:18-19), Jesus warns that his mission offers less of a place to rest than foxes and birds have (Matt 8:20//Luke 9:58). Jesus matters more than society’s or even family’s approval. Someone else volunteers to follow Jesus once he has finished his final filial obligation, namely, burying his father. Given ancient funerary customs, the man is probably asking for either a year’s delay (to complete the secondary burial, if his father has died) or to wait until his father died. Jesus insists that matters of the kingdom are more urgent than that (Luke 9:59-60). And when someone else asks to just say goodbye to his parents—what Elisha requested before becoming a disciple of the prophet Elijah—Jesus declares the kingdom more urgent than even that (Luke 9:61-62)!

The Gospels show us that Jesus often used hyperbole—rhetorical overstatement—as a graphic way of making his point. Yet he makes the point so often that we should not underestimate what he wants. In Luke 14:33 he declares that if we are really his disciples, then everything we have belongs to him. A few verses earlier he insists that we must love him more than our families (14:26). Indeed, he warns, no one can be his disciple unless we take up the cross and follow him (14:27)—loving him more than life itself.

If you have fallen short of this so far, don’t despair. The Lord takes us where we are at and begins to transform us, if we invite him and welcome him to do so.

You see, Jesus’s first disciples did not take up their crosses to follow him. Jesus warns that no one can be his disciple unless we take up the cross and follow him. Yet when Jesus was arrested, his disciples abandoned him and ran off! Jesus’s executioners had to draft a bystander—Simon of Cyrene—to carry his cross because none of Jesus’s own disciples were there to do it. Indeed, they fell asleep on him at Gethsemane; his leading disciple denied him, and another disciple betrayed him. Jesus still went to the cross for all who would be his followers. He offered his life for us not because we were perfect, but because he knew what he could make us to be. As we continue to walk with him, he teaches us his heart. And the better we get to know him, the more we want to be like him.

Jesus is worth everything. He is like a pearl of great price or a treasure hidden in a field. We can learn to live like we really believe that. Living like we believe that means pouring the resources of our time, energy and money into things that count forever—investing in other people’s lives. Being a disciple of Jesus may cost us this world—but it promises us both the world to come and its foretaste in relationships of love in the present.

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Good news about Christobiography

Usually I just post Bible studies, videos, etc. (and often silly cartoons) here, but I did want to pause to acknowledge gratitude. Christianity Today listed my recent book Christobiography as its top biblical studies book for this year. There were many other great books out this year but I’m grateful for the further attention this brings to this book.

https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2020/january-february/christianity-today-2020-book-awards.html

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Megachurch

Lest my blog about God’s building program (http://www.craigkeener.org/the-new-building-program/) leave the wrong impression, I want to make clear that I am not opposed to megachurches. I was an associate minister in one in Philadelphia, a church I love.

In Acts 2:46, Jerusalem’s Jesus movement, by this point numbering in the thousands (2:41), met together. Here the apostles could pass on their teaching to large numbers of people at once (2:42). This arrangement was not possible for churches in other Mediterranean cities in which churches were later planted. Temple grounds were public spaces that could accommodate crowds listening to sages, but the other temple grounds in the Roman empire were for pagan deities. Only Jerusalem’s temple was a suitable mass-meeting place for Christians. The next largest locations would often be villas, but these were often quite a long walk from where many other Christians lived.

Megachurch, however, is not the normal state of the church through history. One might compare dog breeding. Breeding has produced many kinds of dogs. If those dogs were on their own in the wild, however, their cross-breeding could eventually produce more generic dogs, much like their pre-bred forebears (albeit perhaps with some improvements from the stronger and more survivable varieties). When persecution comes, homes (or even caves or forests) become more natural and often safer meeting places. When transportation becomes difficult (as in the case of fuel shortages), neighborhood churches become much more serviceable.

That we see something of both models in Acts suggests that what matters is not a prefabricated format but what works for the kingdom. Still, Acts itself shows us that even in Jerusalem, where the church could meet in the public temple, the church also met in homes (Acts 2:46). They broke bread together (2:42), something more suitable in a household setting; probably the twelve apostles also made rounds in many of these homes.

That all the churches in the New Testament ultimately met in homes, wherever else they may have gathered when that was also possible, is important because it reminds us about the church’s DNA. We are family, and therefore a family setting is helpful. Still more important, we are one body with interdependent gifts (Rom 12:4-8; 1 Cor 12:4-26), and we need a setting sufficiently intimate for us to contribute our gifts to one another. By itself, watching a sermon or even a worship team is not church (even though we do need people to preach and lead worship). We function as church when we are in relationship with one another. If we designed our architecture to that end, we would be facing one another rather than facing a stage.

Again, this is not to deny the value of what megachurches can provide in religious free and economically complex societies. Pooling resources in ways that smaller gatherings cannot, megachurches can provide programs for various age groups and other target groups. These could also be provided by alliances of smaller local churches (at least in urban areas), though coordination can be more complicated, and denominational differences would have to be addressed. But without small groups, megachurches do not automatically provide relationships. For those of us who are introverts, that might be an appeal, but we still need others. Whatever the church setting, we need to be in relationships with other believers, need to be able to contribute gifts that God has given us, need to be able to receive spiritual gifts from others (which cannot all be dependent on the pastor-teacher or another single gift).

Paul’s letters to entire churches and groups of churches in cities and regions, and particularly his teaching on the church as Christ’s body, means that we need to be the church together, whatever format that looks like. Even if you get some good teaching on YouTube or other “distance learning,” you still need time together with other believers, talking about and worshiping the Lord.

Those who emphasize meeting together often cite Hebrews 10:25: “not forsaking our own assembling together” (NASB), “not giving up meeting together” (NIV). But keep in mind that the verse continues, “encouraging one another” (NASB; NIV). The writer emphasizes that this is all the more the case in difficult times and as history moves toward its future climax. Church is not only a matter of assembling, but also of interaction with at least some fellow believers, whom we can strengthen and who can strengthen us.

Whether due to fuel shortages, climate changes, legislation that taxes church property, or outright persecution, we cannot count on megachurches being the church’s permanent format. The house churches Paul started in gentile cities around the Roman world undoubtedly seemed less impressive than the Jerusalem megachurch, which had grown particularly massive by the late 50s or early 60s of the first century, some thirty years after Jesus’s resurrection (Acts 21:20 might be hyperbole, but literally the Greek text speaks of tens of thousands). But God knew the future. Jerusalem would soon lay in shambles, and the future lay more with the dispersed churches positioned to reach their localities around the empire.

If many have the current blessing of large churches today, we need to think wisely in terms of the long-range future. What matters most in the long run is not the number of people who attend, but how many people we genuinely reach for Christ, and how deeply we present them mature in Christ (Col 1:28). What matters is not how much seed is sown, but where that seed will flourish and in turn produce more seed (Mark 4:15-20). It is not even how many people pray an initial prayer acknowledging Christ; only those who persevere will be the laborers’ reward (cf. 1 Cor 3:14-15; 2 John 8).

Whatever the ministries God has assigned us, let us responsibly care for the sheep, and equip God’s people to minister to one another (Eph 4:11-13).

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The New Building Program

I have never been one for church building projects. I am willing to be pragmatic about it: sometimes one does run out of room, and if the resources invested in the building will ultimately yield more fruit for the kingdom than another allocation of those resources, then by all means it is worthwhile. But where building programs simply function to measure a leader’s status (what has sometimes been facetiously labeled an “edifice complex”), the motivation deserves further scrutiny.

I also grant that buildings can bring God glory, for those with eyes to see it. Whether we examine ancient pyramids, medieval cathedrals or modern skyscrapers, such engineering feats warrant our praise of the God who created human beings with such ingenuity. As I marvel at God’s handiwork in nature, I wonder marvel at his glory displayed in human designs. When we look at remains from the ancient world, we imagine the splendor of civilizations of Egypt, Rome, and the like.

While I thank God for modern engineers, however, some ancient building projects also remind me of the impoverished workers and slaves by whose labor such structures were erected at the behest of elites. Building projects such as Babel’s ziggurat (Gen 11:4) or the pyramids also reflect human pride or false religious beliefs. Earthly splendor may outlast its contributors, but ultimately it remains destined for oblivion. From God’s perspective, the eternal destiny of the laborers counts far more heavily than the bricks that may have outlived them.

Jesus’s disciples were impressed with the splendor of Jerusalem’s temple (Mark 13:1), and for good reason. Jerusalem’s temple for the one true God dwarfed even Ephesus’s temple of Artemis temple, or Athens’ Parthenon. It was the greatest temple of the ancient world, and had it survived, it would surely draw more visitors today than does the Parthenon (which, I can attest as one who has visited there, does draw many visitors). It was undoubtedly the most magnificent structure to which Jesus’s Galilean disciples had been exposed.

But God’s standards are not ours. After the disciples pointed Jesus’s attention to the temple complex’s various buildings (Matt 24:1) and massive masonry (Mark 13:1; most stones weighed many tons), Jesus pointed out the temple’s impending fate. “Not one stone will be left on another” (Matt 24:2; Mark 13:2). Jesus may have used some hyperbole, but within a generation (cf. Matt 23:36; 24:34), in A.D. 70, this splendid temple lay in ruins. In Jesus’s day, the temple was big business, and some of its top leaders were apparently more consumed with the business side of the temple than its spiritual side (21:13). Its priesthood scrupulously attended to its ritual functions, but they also forgot that they were mere tenants (Matt 21:33-36). Unwilling to hand over authority to God’s Son, they rejected him (21:37-39; 23:31-36). Their house would thus be left desolate (23:38; 24:15).

Jesus invested instead in a different building. When Peter confessed Jesus’s identity as the Messiah, the Lord announced: “On this rock I will build my church” (16:18). In the OT, God spoke of “building” his people (or, in times of judgment, tearing them down). What lasts forever is not the physical building in which the church meets. In the New Testament, the church itself—people—are God’s temple. And God continues to build his house through the confession of who Jesus is.

Church buildings are resources, means to an end. What matters more is making disciples who can endure through testing, followers of Jesus who will last forever. That’s why the great commission involves both evangelism and teaching (28:19-20). Our greatest investments should be not in what the world sees and values, but in what God sees and values—the lives of his people.

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Video podcast with Michael Brown on the biblical future (48 minutes)

Friends at CBET recently interviewed Dr. Michael Brown and myself regarding our book, Not Afraid of the Antichrist. The book explains why we do not find any passages in context that support a pretribulation rapture (though we have friends who disagree!)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntFde3GQCBw