(P.S., in the video I mention that I’ve continued sponsoring a child through decades. It’s not all the same child. The first one grew up )

https://www.cbeinternational.org/resources/recording-audio/african-womens-struggle-personal-journey-congo-america

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You won’t have to read many of my blog posts to figure out that I believe God does miracles. But if you’ve been around very long, you probably also know some people who haven’t experienced healing, despite much prayer. You undoubtedly know godly people who have experienced tragedies. Some of us live through our tragedies and find happiness on the other side, but that not everyone does is itself often part of our experience of tragedy.

How do we make sense of these things? Sometimes those of us who are theologically inclined bristle at leaving some things a mystery, such as why one person is healed (sometimes even in inexplicably dramatic ways) and another person isn’t. Although there are definitely principles that change outcomes in many cases, there are some exceptions to all our humanly devised theological rules.

The Book of Job addressed God’s people facing tragedy and not understanding why. For those who persevere it offers hope (James 5:11), whether in the short run or the long run. Sandwiched between its narrative introduction and its narrative conclusion, most of the book consists of Job’s poetic dialogues with his “comforters,” who actually prove to be rather “sorry” (NASB) or “miserable” (ESV, KJV, NET, NIV, NRSV, WEB) comforters (Job 16:2). They withhold kindness and prove to be fair-weather friends (6:14-17, 21a).

Job’s comforters start out helpfully, lamenting with Job and staying silent for seven days (Job 2:12-13). They mourn with those who mourn, sharing Job’s pain. If they would have just kept their mouths shut the story would have taken a different turn. Instead, they soon begin spouting conventional wisdom, providing many wise sayings but misapplying them to Job’s case. Knowledge can be applied in foolish ways: “The legs of a disabled person hang limp; so does a proverb in the mouth of a fool” (Prov 26:7 NRSV); “Like a thorn that falls into the hand of a drunkard, so is a proverb in the mouth of fools” (26:9 NASB).

Job didn’t need their theology lesson about why he was suffering. Job already knew the sorts of “wisdom” they were unloading on him: “What you know, I also know; I am not inferior to you” (Job 13:2, NRSV). He really didn’t need them to justify God by condemning him: “If you would only keep silent, that would be your wisdom!” (13:5).

Job’s friends kept insisting—and more so as the conversation progressed—that God is righteous and punishes the wicked. That, of course, is true. But they also kept insisting—and again more so as the conversation progressed—that this meant that Job must have sinned. Job didn’t understand his situation, but he knew that he wasn’t being punished for impiety. Certainly he at least was no worse than his accusers. So he pushed back—and himself the more so as the conversation progressed—insisting that he was innocent and that God would not justly find fault with him. God’s power is unlimited, but if God heard Job’s plea he would vindicate him.

In the book’s closing chapters, God calls to account both Job and his friends. God first answers Job at length (Job 38—41). Does Job understand all the secrets of creation, all the interests that God must wisely balance in bringing to pass his purposes? Before God’s infinite majesty, Job confesses his own inadequate understanding of the divine purpose (42:2-6; esp. 42:3 with 38:2). But God also speaks, far more concisely, to the leading voice among Job’s friends. (God sidesteps directly answering the speech of Elihu in Job 32—37; scholars differ as to whether this is because Elihu voices God’s perspective or does not even merit an answer!)

To Job’s chief comforter, God replies: “I am angry with you and your two friends, because you have not spoken the truth about me, as my servant Job has.So now take seven bulls and seven rams and go to my servant Job and sacrifice a burnt offering for yourselves. My servant Job will pray for you, and I will accept his prayer and not deal with you according to your folly. You have not spoken the truth about me, as my servant Job has” (Job 42:7-8, NIV).

Indeed, Job was more righteous than they, and while God would reprove Job’s pretense of understanding, he would defend Job before his friends. They submitted to God immediately, and God answered Job’s prayer to forgive them.

In one way, God reproved both Job and his friends, because in a sense they both misunderstood God’s ways. Job’s friends believed that bad things should happen only to bad people, and therefore Job was bad. They were theologically wrong, and their assumption that Job had merited his suffering was morally wrong, misjudging Job and contributing further to his suffering.

Job misunderstood God’s ways in a slightly different sense. Backed into a rhetorical corner by his accusers, he kept insisting that he was not a bad person, and that God should vindicate him. Yet Job was still partly working from the wrong assumption that his friends shared: that bad things should happen only to bad people. God’s answer to Job was to show his glorious design in nature, that his wisdom is beyond our wisdom, and therefore to leave us back at the bothersome answer we often want to dismiss at the beginning as simplistic.

We may be welcome to explore and seek for greater knowledge, but we are finite and some things will always be a mystery to our limited intellects (cf. Deut 29:29; Prov 25:2). We know enough that we should trust the Lord who is smarter than we are when there are some things we don’t know. If we think we can explain adequately all the Lord’s ways, we, like Job, may learn otherwise when we stand before him (Job 42:5-6).

God never explains to Job the backroom discussion with the superhuman accuser (Job 1—2) who is far more powerful than Job’s earthly accusers. He never explains the sorts of celestial negotiations that may go on behind the scenes, to which we are normally not privy except when he grants special revelation. Job doesn’t need to know those things, and wouldn’t have been prepared to understand them in his era if he had. He does need to remember that God is trustworthy no matter what. Further, Job may be innocent with regard to the suffering, but that is beside the point. His own right hand cannot deliver him (Job 40:14). In NT language, God’s blessing comes by grace.

In any case, Job was right that he had not merited his suffering, and his friends acted sinfully when they judged him. Unless God provides insight into a given case, we don’t know why a given person is suffering. Looking down on them is sometimes a way of distancing ourselves from having to consider that we could experience suffering ourselves. “You see my suffering and are afraid” (Job 6:21b).

Others do not assume that the suffering have sinned, but they assume that they lack sufficient faith to escape. Some quote Job 3:25: “what I fear befalls me, and what I dread overtakes me,” as if Job’s fear brought these events on him. But Job probably refers to his present fears; he had reasons for posttraumatic (or in this case, during-trauma) stress. Compare Job’s lament about how unexpected his sufferings were: “When I expected good, then evil came; When I waited for light, then darkness came” (30:26, NASB). Part of the point of the book is that Job did not do anything (1:1)—or neglect anything (cf. 1:5)—to deserve his suffering. God himself declares this: “Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man who fears God and turns away from evil” (1:8, NRSV).

When brothers and sisters suffer, let’s mourn with those who mourn (Rom 12:15), like members of one body who suffer together (1 Cor 12:26). Mystery can be difficult from the standpoint of theodicy or apologetics. Scoffers may complain, “Where is their God?” (cf. Ps 42:3, 10; 79:10; 115:2; Joel 2:17). But while we do our best to honor him, God is able to defend his own honor, and he owes no answers to scoffers. Sometimes, in this life, he does not even explain himself to us.

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.)

Dr. Craig S. Keener (PhD, Duke University) is F. M. and Ada Thompson Professor of the New Testament at Asbury Theological Seminary. He is especially known for his work as a New Testament scholar on Bible background (commentaries on the New Testament in its early Jewish and Greco-Roman settings). His award-winning, popular-level IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament (now in its second edition [2014], and available in a number of languages) has sold over half a million copies.

Before joining the faculty of Asbury in July, 2011, Dr. Keener was professor of New Testament at Palmer Theological Seminary of Eastern University, just outside Philadelphia, where he taught happily for 15 years; before that time he was professor at Hood Theological Seminary.

Craig has authored 25 books, five of which have won awards in Christianity Today, and more than a million of which are in circulation. His recent books include Galatians (Cambridge, 2018); Mind of the Spirit: Paul’s Approach to Transformed Thinking (Baker Academic, 2016); Spirit Hermeneutics: Reading Scripture in Light of Pentecost (Eerdmans, 2016); Miracles: The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts (Baker Academic, 2011); The Historical Jesus of the Gospels (Eerdmans, 2009); The Gospel of Matthew: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary (Eerdmans, 2009); Romans (Cascade, 2009); 1-2 Corinthians (Cambridge, 2005); The Gospel of John: A Commentary (Hendrickson/Baker Academic, 2003).

His award-winning, multivolume commentary on Acts (Acts: An Exegetical Commentary, 4 vols., Baker Academic, 2012-2015) includes some 45,000 references from ancient extrabiblical sources. He is New Testament editor, and author of most New Testament notes, for The NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible (Zondervan, 2016), which won Bible of the Year in the Christian Book Awards and first place in the Religion: Christianity category of the International Book Awards.

He has written for various journals, both academic (e.g., Journal for the Study of the New Testament; Journal of Greco-Roman Christianity and Judaism; Bulletin for Biblical Research; Perspectives in Religious Studies; A.M.E. Church Review) and popular (e.g., Christianity Today; Charisma; Christian History; Good News; A.M.E. Zion Missionary Seer). He has published roughly 100 academic articles and more than 150 popular ones. He wrote “2 Corinthians” in The New Interpreter’s Bible One Volume Commentary, and has published other popular materials with Abingdon, InterVarsity, and Zondervan. He was program chair for the Institute for Biblical Research (2010-12) and currently edits Bulletin for Biblical Research.

Craig has taught in various countries (on all continents except Antarctica). On rare occasions, he also speaks in other forums (in recent years, for example, for the Vida Nova conference in Brazil; for the Special Divine Action conference for the Ian Ramsey Centre for Science and Religion, Oxford University; for pastors’ conferences in Cuba; for the national ministers conference of the American Baptist Churches USA; for the National Council of Churches Committee on the Uniform Series); for scholarly meetings (e.g., a plenary address for the Institute for Biblical Research; papers at Society for Biblical Literature or the Society for New Testament Studies); and lectures at a diverse range of academic institutions, in recent years including among others Houghton College; Talbot School of Theology; Northeastern Seminary of Roberts Wesleyan University; Missouri State University, religion department; Spring Arbor University; the Assemblies of God Seminary; Pentecostal Theological Seminary; New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary; John Leland Center for Theological Studies; Southern Adventist University; Andrews University; Macquarie University (Ancient History Department), Australia; New Theological College, India; Chongshin Theological Seminary, South Korea; Trinity Theological College, Singapore; Asia Pacific Theological Seminary in Baguio, Philippines; and Evangel Seminary in Hong Kong).

Craig is married to Médine Moussounga Keener, who holds a Ph.D. from University of Paris 7. She was a refugee for 18 months in her nation of Congo, and together Craig and Médine work for ethnic reconciliation in the U.S. and Africa (e.g., teaching on this subject among 1700 pastors in Côte d’Ivoire). Craig was ordained in an African-American denomination (National Baptist Convention) in 1991 and for roughly a decade before moving to Wilmore was one of the associate ministers at Enon Tabernacle Baptist Church, an African-American megachurch in Philadelphia. ***Craig and Médine’s story together is Impossible Love: The True Story of an African Civil War, Miracles, and Hope Against All Odds (Chosen Books, 2016).

Craig also used to maintain (it’s now way out of date) a personal website, which you can visit by clicking here.

One of Craig’s friends maintains for him a Facebook page. He also has a personal FB page, but it reached FB’s friend limit. (You can still follow it if you want, though …)