Appropriate for Christmas season: have you ever preached from Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus? Or heard someone preach from it? Matthew opens his Gospel with Jesus’s heritage, which leads right up to the story of Jesus’s birth. Here is a video of Craig explaining salient features of Matthew’s genealogy:
If you prefer a written version to video, see also: Jesus’s genealogy and Matthew’s genealogy
(Because Craig’s cartoons each take only a few seconds to read, they are not meant to compete with his serious [non-cartoon] posts.)
In this five-minute video, Craig talks about the first Christmas in Luke 2:1-7 and how it contrasts the true, humble, heavenly king with the pomp of the earthly emperor.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyfgaqh6XZc
This 13-minute video was the introductory part of a lecture that Craig gave regarding the Gospels at B. H. Carroll Institute in Texas in May 2014:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qya_IcKG7dE
Some of Craig’s other videos posted earlier address similar issues, e.g.:
http://www.craigkeener.org/can-we-trust-the-disciples-to-have-remembered-jesus-teachings-correctly/
http://www.craigkeener.org/gospels-as-ancient-biographies-part-1/
http://www.craigkeener.org/gospels-as-ancient-biographies-part-2/
Some almost indispensable parts of the Moses-movie tradition are unlikely: for example, most Pharaohs had scores of children, so it’s highly unlikely that Moses and the next Pharaoh grew up together as close brothers or rivals. (Admittedly, a more accurate depiction on this point wouldn’t work as well for cinematic depiction.) Still, each Moses movie offers some valuable contributions: for example, the Moses of Ben Kingsley and of Dougray Scott depicted Moses’s self-doubt emphasized in Scripture; the Prince of Egypt cartoon for children actually may capture God’s heart the best.
Understandably, for magnificent scale and special effects the new Exodus: Gods and Kings is unmatched. Nevertheless, the biblically literate will have more than quibbles with some details of the newest film’s plot. With regard to some of these details, the biblical narrative is more coherent than (and in these cases might have received better reviews than) that of the movie.
In any case, my post here is not intended as a movie review. (Personally, though I don’t have time or resources to go to many movies, I felt this new movie was well worth what I paid to see it. But that doesn’t reduce my unhappiness regarding some key theological issues.) I bring up the movie because its depiction of the God of the Hebrews is what provoked the question on which I comment briefly here.
Did God love the Egyptians when he struck Egypt with plagues? In the larger biblical narrative, the answer is obviously yes. The prophet Isaiah later prophesies about judgments on Egypt (Isa 19:1-17, 22; akin to judgments he also prophesies against Israel); as a result, Egyptians will turn to God and they will become part of God’s people alongside Israel (19:18-25). In the law of Moses, Israelites are forbidden to despise Egyptians, because Israel’s ancestors found refuge in Egypt (Deut 23:7).
Within the Pentateuch itself, under the Pharaoh of Joseph’s day, Israel experienced great hospitality and Egypt received great blessings. The Exodus narrative suggests that Egypt’s plagues at that time reversed the effects of the very sort of prosperity with which God blessed them in the time of Joseph. The reason the plagues assaulted the Egyptians was not because they were Egyptians; God at other times blessed Egypt. Indeed, ancient Egyptians themselves recognized that fertility was a blessing of the gods—it was simply that they sought the wrong gods (see further comment below).
We needn’t digress to the rest of the Bible, however, to understand why God dealt so harshly with Egypt in the Book of Exodus. A generation earlier, in the same book, Egyptians drowned Israel’s babies in the Nile. God’s judgments clearly evoke that event, leaving no doubt that the plagues address this injustice. Pharaoh drowned babies in the Nile; the first plague thus turns the Nile to blood (with apologies to the movie, no crocodiles are specified). Pharaoh drowned babies in the Nile; the last plague is thus the death of some of Egypt’s children, including Pharaoh’s. Pharaoh drowned babies in the Nile; God thus drowns Pharaoh’s army in the sea.
Moreover, Egypt had enslaved and exploited Israel, and Egypt’s current prosperity partly rested on that exploitation. As Moses said in the Prince of Egypt children’s movie, “No empire should be built on the backs of slaves.” (Compare slave trade as the climax of the list of Babylon’s imports in Rev 18:13; in that case, God pronounces judgment at least partly on Rome, in an era when Egypt was one of Rome’s most exploited provinces.)
I confess that I always wince at the narratives of Egypt’s sufferings; as a modern Western reader, or even a Christian reader from the standpoint of the New Testament, I feel badly for the individual Egyptians who suffered because of Pharaoh’s choices. It was much easier for hearers in ancient Israel and among their contemporaries to think in corporate terms than it is for most of us today. Having said that, however, the Egyptians as a whole shared the false ideology that stood behind Pharaoh’s resistance: most believed that their many gods, including Pharaoh himself, were more powerful than the pathetic single god of the enslaved Hebrews.
Understood in this context, God’s judgments on Egypt were visible reflections of a spiritual battle; God was discrediting false gods to turn people from empty objects of worship to truth and life. When describing the purpose of the plagues, God specifies that his plagues are at least partly directed against “the gods of Egypt” (Exod 12:12; cf. Num 33:4).
God cares not only that Israel trusts him, but also what all peoples think about him. God reports that he raised up (or spared) this particular Pharaoh for his own purposes: to reveal God’s power (through the plagues) so God’s name would be recounted “in all the earth” (Exod 9:16)—among all peoples. Pharaoh is sometimes described as hardening his heart (Exod 8:15, 32; 9:34), so Pharaoh cannot complain if, even after divine activity became most conspicuous, God handed him over to further hardness. God hardened Pharaoh’s heart, especially during mercy, when the judgments relented (Exod 9:12; 10:20, 27; 11:10; 14:8). God hardened Pharaoh so God could reveal divine power (Exod 7:3; 10:1; 14:17), and so the Egyptians would know that he was God (14:4).
God’s purpose in hardening Pharaoh was that he could give further signs and further convince Egypt. Mere liberation could have been achieved in an earlier response to the plagues, but God wants not only liberation but also recognition of his identity. A conspicuously repeated phrase throughout the plague narratives highlights God’s ultimate purpose: “that the Egyptians may know that I am the LORD” (Exod 7:5, 17; 8:10, 22; 9:14, 29). God performed these dramatic signs also that Israel might know that he was God (Exod 6:7; 10:2; cf. 16:12; Num 16:28). Even the Philistine priests later understand this principle in 1 Sam 6:5-6 (cf. 4:8).
From the Christian perspective, the greatest blessing is to know the living God, and thus have eternal life (John 17:3) God alone can fill our deepest need (Jer 2:13; Hos 13:9; John 4:14). In that light, afflictions that get our attention can be for our good (or for the good of hardships’ survivors; cf. Ps 119:67, 71, 75); they are invitations to seek and find the true God.
Did God love the Egyptians? Yes. He was seeking to gain the attention of Egypt for the one true God. In this era, Israel was becoming a primary vehicle of God’s revelation, despite Israel’s many failures throughout its history (not least in their worship of the golden calf soon after the plagues). God had warned that those who cursed his people would be cursed just as those who blessed them would be blessed (Gen 12:3; 27:29; Num 24:10), a principle that another Pharaoh learned as early as Gen 12:17. But God always intended his work in Israel to become a blessing to all the peoples of the earth (Gen 12:3; 18:18; 22:18; 26:4; 28:14).
Christians believe that we have a fuller revelation of God today, offering to all peoples access to God. For us, the climax of Israel’s story comes in Jesus, the fullest revelation of God’s purpose. (It’s no surprise that Egypt was one of the earliest areas massively converted to Christian faith in the movement’s first few centuries.) In Jesus, God demonstrates his love for all the world. Jesus bore the curse to bring blessing to anyone who blesses him, from any of the peoples of the earth. God loved not only Israel, and not only Egyptians, but God loved the world: he proved it in giving his Son for all of us (John 3:16; Rom 5:6).
Jesus declares that one of several aspects of his mission is to preach good news to the poor. In so doing, he echoes Isaiah’s theme of good news about restoration and the deliverance of God’s people.
On the day of Pentecost, Peter applies Joel’s prophecy to the church’s mission: God’s Spirit empowers us to speak for God like the prophets of old (Acts 2:17-18). In the context of Jesus’ words in the previous chapter (Acts 1:8), the most important element of this mission involves testifying of Christ to all peoples.
But while evangelism is central to our mission, the parallel with an earlier scene in Luke’s work suggests that we should not neglect another prophetic theme that is also part of Spirit-empowered mission. As Joel’s prophecy provides the text for the church’s inaugural message in Acts, a prophecy of Isaiah provides the text for Jesus’ inaugural message in the Gospel of Luke.
Luke 4:16-30 recounts the opening scene of Jesus’ public ministry in Luke’s Gospel. The placement of this scene at this point in Luke highlights the important role that it fills in Luke’s Gospel. Luke elsewhere usually follows the same sequence as Mark, where Luke includes the same events that Mark does, even though no one expected ancient biographies to follow chronological sequence. On this occasion, however, Luke provides a scene not only more detailed than Mark’s parallel but earlier than in its place in Mark. Luke’s scene prefigures some key elements in Jesus’ ministry.
Here Jesus applies the words of Isaiah 61 to his own ministry: the Spirit anointed him to bring liberation to those in need. First, his mission was to proclaim good news to the poor. Throughout Jesus’ ministry in the Gospel of Luke, he indeed emphasizes God’s care for the poor (Luke 6:20; 16:22) and the responsibility of others to care for them (12:33; 14:13; 18:22). (Sometimes he even miraculously provides food for hungry crowds.)
Jesus also came to free captives and liberate the oppressed; while Jesus did not literally break people out of prisons (perhaps to John the Baptist’s chagrin), Jesus certainly freed those who were oppressed by the devil (Luke 13:12-14; Acts 10:38). Likewise, in line with Isaiah’s prophecy, Jesus came to heal the blind, like the blind man by the Jericho road (Luke 18:35). Indeed, he later healed Saul of both physical and moral blindness (Acts 9:18; 26:18).
The announcing of good news in Isaiah 61, which Jesus quotes, harks back to a theme that appears earlier in Isaiah (see for example Isaiah 40:9; 41:27; 52:7). In these passages, God comforts suffering Israel with a promise of restoration. Israel will be taken captive, enslaved and impoverished, but God will liberate and bless his people. This is a good news about peace for God’s people, a message that God is ready to demonstrate his reign, or kingdom (Isaiah 52:7). By Jesus’s day, many Jewish people had settled again in their land, but they still longed for God to redeem, restore, and exalt Israel. Jesus, in his person, not only preaches that good news but embodies it, for he is the savior of the world.
When Jesus announces this part of his mission, his home town initially responds pleasantly (Luke 4:22). But then Jesus begins to apply Isaiah’s prophecy beyond the oppressed of Israel. Jesus warns that, like earlier prophets, he will face unbelief at home (Luke 4:24). Elijah, for example, had been sent to a widow in the land of Phoenicia—from the same region as the hated Jezebel (4:26). Elisha had not healed the lepers of Israel, but only the foreign general Naaman (4:27). (After 2 Kings 5 spoke of Naaman, 2 Kings 7 spoke of uncured lepers in Israel’s capital, Samaria. In Luke 17, Jesus heals a Samaritan leper along with Jewish ones, even though Samaritans in his own day were often hostile to his people.)
Once Jesus challenges his people’s nationalism, they are no longer pleased with his words, but in fact wish to kill him (Luke 4:28-29). They have suffered enough from the Gentiles, and do not want to hear about God’s concern for outsiders. This opening scene prefigures Jesus’ mission in the Gospel: to reach the outsiders, even at the expense of incurring the enmity of the “insiders.” This activity paves the way for the church’s (often reluctant) mission to non-Jews in the Book of Acts. Thus in Acts, for example, it is Jesus’s own followers who need to be reminded to welcome outsiders (Acts 11:1-3).
Jesus’s message in the Nazareth synagogue in Luke 4 offers a stark warning for us today. The Spirit has empowered us to cross cultural and other barriers with Jesus’s message, a message of concern for people, a message of justice, liberation, and salvation. To do so effectively, however, we must be ready to go beyond the assumptions of our own nation or culture, to side with whatever God declares in his word. Jesus wants to bring his followers into unity with one another, beyond all our ethnic, nationalistic or other prejudices. May we continue to carry on the mission of bringing the good news about God’s kingdom and caring for people’s needs.
For further details, see Craig’s IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, now in its second, revised edition (2014).
The first-century historian Josephus reports that Jesus was a sage who performed wonders. This is a non-Christian source from Jesus’s era. This is treated briefly in the following video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGxRQDXq-o0
Some internet detractors demand eyewitness reports from the first century before they will believe, but such a demand displays historiographic ignorance–by this standard we would know almost nothing about ancient history. We have the next-best thing: sources from the first generation, including some who consulted eyewitnesses (Luke 1:1-2). I have addressed these issues elsewhere (including in http://www.craigkeener.org/gospel-truth-luke-11-4/; http://www.craigkeener.org/the-real-historical-jesus/; for videos: http://www.craigkeener.org/gospels-as-ancient-biographies-part-1/; http://www.craigkeener.org/gospels-as-ancient-biographies-part-2/; http://www.craigkeener.org/can-we-trust-the-disciples-to-have-remembered-jesus-teachings-correctly/), but suffice it to say that unless critics invent special standards for Jesus that we do not apply to the rest of ancient history, we know quite a lot about him. (As for eyewitness testimonies of miracles, we not only have sources from within a generation of Jesus’s ministry, but we do have eyewitness accounts of his followers performing miracles, such as in Acts’ “we” section, Paul’s appeal to the Corinthians’ eyewitness experience of his miracles, eyewitness accounts in the church fathers, and millions of eyewitness claims today. But that is, again, another story. See e.g., http://www.craigkeener.org/divine-action-presentation-at-oxford-video/; http://www.craigkeener.org/medical-evidence-of-miracles/; and other material filed at http://www.craigkeener.org/category/current-issues/miracles/)
This may sound like a harsh way to start an obituary, but: Craig Keener (d. 1975) was exceptionally greedy, selfish, arrogant, and lustful, not to mention blasphemous. There’s really very little that his critics could say about him today that could be worse than what he really was.
For example, by age 9 he arrogantly declared, as if he wielded great knowledge, that there was no reason to believe in a god. He soon decided that humanity would have to ensure its own survival against all possibilities of disaster by conquering other life forms in the universe. This, he determined, could be achieved only if humanity were united and made efficient. This could be accomplished through genetic engineering (breeding) and the extermination of useless professions such as ministers. (He figured that, once they knew better, most people would abandon useless professions anyway.)
After reading the Iliad (about the Trojan War) at age 12, Keener thought that ending other people’s lives could be heroic. He wrote gory stories and poetry and drew gory artwork depicting the bloody killing of Trojans. He invoked spirits of Greek gods to make him better at killing. Sometimes he even tortured people in his imagination, though I should add that he thought himself quite capable of showing mercy when the occasion allowed. Yet he also tried to learn good strategies and skills to aid in subjecting the world to make it united and efficient.
Finally, at age 13, he began reading Plato and decided that ultimate reality was, as Plato thought, in the realm of ideas, so that one’s physical senses were not trustworthy testaments to ultimate reality. Taking Plato a step further, this self-centered young man decided that, given the unreliability of external senses, he could not be sure of the real existence of anyone except himself. Of course, he continued to accommodate the sensory world just in case, still looking both ways before crossing the street on the way to school.
Keener made fun of Christians, but he was also a little scared, just in case they were even partly right. Obviously the stakes were pretty high: if there was a God, absolutely everything depended on God. We owed our origin and destiny to him, and nothing mattered so much as serving him; moreover, truth mattered, and there could be no higher truth than an infinite God if he existed. But Christianity didn’t seem likely: most people claimed to be Christians, but it didn’t look to him like they were staking everything on that belief. If they didn’t believe in a God worthy of obedience, he reasoned, why should he? He knew of their god only from hearsay.
Yet he could not explain the combination of his own unique identity along with the fact that it had a beginning and, little as he cared to admit it, would have an ending. If there was nothing absolute, his own existence was an infinitesimally random coincidence. How could he explain his existence as a distinct individual, with his unique heredity and experience as a self? Was it truly utterly meaningless? Worse yet, if there was nothing infinite to guarantee more than the present life, in the infinite span of eternity life was infinitesimally short.
Only in an absolute, infinite Being could finite humans find meaning and eternal hope. But if there were such a God, Keener supposed, that God would care to confer such benefits on humans only if he were supremely loving. And if he were loving, Keener reasoned, that God would give those benefits first to those who, like him, were loving.
And thus Keener knew he had a problem. For even if, best of all imaginable possibilities, there were a God who was both infinite and loving, Keener had no way to get this God’s attention. Why would such a God want Keener? Keener himself wasn’t loving; he wanted to know of such a God only to surmount his own mortality, to find a way to live forever. Keener wasn’t good; even a good God, then, wouldn’t likely care about him. “God, if you’re out there, please show me!” he sometimes cried. But he didn’t know if God would hear. After all, Keener hadn’t even publicly admitted that he had become less than certain about his atheism.
One day, however, two genuine Christians stopped him on the street. They explained to Keener that, by Jesus’s death and resurrection, God offers eternal life to anyone who will trust him. Keener raised objections, wondering what evidence these Christians had besides their holy book. But after he rejected what they said and began walking home, he felt himself overwhelmed by a sense he’d never felt before while studying or discussing other religions or philosophies. A Presence refused to leave him alone, until finally, after perhaps an hour of resistance, he dropped to his knees. “God, I don’t understand how Jesus dying and rising restores me to you, but if that’s what you’re saying, I’ll believe it. But I don’t know how to experience this, so if you want to bring me to yourself, you’ll have to do it yourself.”
Keener felt something rushing through his body, and jumped up, terrified. He wasn’t sure how to explain what had just happened to him, but he had always believed that if he ever learned that God was real, he would give God everything. Now he had found truth and would commit himself to exploring and following all the way.
That was the day that the old Craig Keener with his selfish goals died, and a new Craig Keener committed to Christ’s eternal kingdom was born. “For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God” (Col 3:3, NIV). “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” (2 Cor 5:17, NIV).
Someone who reads only the heading of this post may misunderstand and start a rumor that Craig Keener is physically dead. (To avoid that misunderstanding, we borrowed the ancient label of “funeral oration” for the title, rather than requiem or “in memoriam.”) Even if premature, such a rumor will eventually prove true (as Samuel Clemens [a.k.a. Mark Twain], who quipped that the report of his death was greatly exaggerated, must have eventually learned), unless Christ returns first. But the good news is that the new life in Christ lasts forever. So whether we are physically alive or dead, we are always the Lord’s (Rom 14:8). And that is what matters forever.
Nathanael’s question about Nazareth performs a special function in its context in John’s Gospel. The reader of John’s prologue knows that Jesus is not primarily from Nazareth, but from God. This is something that Nathanael, however, is about to learn, and Jesus will explain it partly in terms of Jacob’s ladder, the connection between heaven and earth.
For details, please click the following link:
http://www.bibleodyssey.org/places/related-articles/can-anything-good-come-out-of-nazareth.aspx
When Jesus knows that his disciples understand enough, he asks them about his identity. The setting is significant: Caesarea Philippi (Matt 16:13; also Mark 8:27) was a predominantly Gentile city known for its worship of the pagan deity Pan. Jesus chooses a Gentile region for the first confession of his identity, prefiguring a mission that will eventually extend to all peoples. It is no surprise that Matthew chooses to include this important information in his very Jewish Gospel, which emphasizes God’s concern also for Gentiles (Matt 1:3-5; 2:1-11; 4:13-15; 8:5-13; 10:14-15, 18; 11:21-24; 12:41-42; 15:21-28; 24:14; 27:54; 28:19).
Many people believed that Jesus was just a great prophet, but Simon Peter declared that he was the Messiah, God’s Son (Matt 16:16). Peter is not the first person in this Gospel to suggest that Jesus might be the promised Son of David—that is, the Messiah (9:27; 12:23; 15:22; later 20:30-31; 21:9, 15). But he is the first to do among those who are Jesus’s disciples, his close followers.
Although Jesus must qualify Peter’s understanding, he first praises it. Only God could reveal Jesus’s identity truly (11:27), and he had done this for Peter (16:17). God had revealed the truth not to the highly educated scribes, but to the comparatively unlearned Peter (compare 11:25).
Jesus promised to build his community of followers “on this rock,” on Peter’s affirmation of (or role as affirmer of) Jesus’s identity (16:18). (Scripture already spoke of God “building” his people, e.g., Jer 24:6; 31:4; 33:7.) Jesus plays on Peter’s nickname here (“Simon” was such a common name it required an additional name to specify which Simon it was). In Greek, petros (“Peter”) means “rock,” and on this petra (“rock”) Jesus would build his church. As Paul says, the church is built on the foundation of apostles and prophets, with Jesus being the cornerstone (Eph 2:20; cf. Jesus in Matt 7:24-25). But why apostles and prophets? And why Peter, and especially now? Jesus praises Peter here because Peter has just confessed Jesus as the Messiah. Peter plays a foundational role by declaring Jesus as Messiah.
The “gates of Hades” will not prevail against Jesus’s church (Matt 16:18). “Gates of Hades” was a common ancient expression for the realm of the dead. Death itself would not prevail against Jesus’s church; martyrdom—about which Jesus will soon have more to say (16:21, 24-25)—will not stop his work. The holder of palace keys was a major official (cf. Isa 22:22); by confessing Jesus as Christ, Peter would exercise great kingdom authority. Whereas the wrong-headed teachers of God’s people were shutting people out of the kingdom (Matt 23:13; Luke 11:52), Peter’s confession of Jesus was a key to let people in.
After praising Peter’s confession that Jesus is the promised king, Jesus goes on to define his kingship in a way that none of his contemporaries anticipated—in light of the cross (Matt 27:37). Jesus’s Messiahship must remain a secret at that stage in his ministry (16:20), since no one was prepared to understand it. As Christ, Jesus was going to be rejected by the religious and political leaders of his people, killed, and would then rise again (16:21).
Having boldly confessed Jesus’s Messiahship by divine revelation, Peter now denies Jesus’s true messianic mission (16:22)—by satanic revelation (16:23). The good “rock” of 16:18 now becomes a bad rock, “a stumbling block” to Jesus (16:23). A disciple’s role was to “follow” after his teacher (16:24), but Jesus has to command Peter to “get behind” him (16:23; intended figuratively, since Jesus turns to him).
Granted that Peter misunderstands Jesus’s mission, is this offense serious enough to call him “Satan”? Sadly, yes. The devil’s climactic temptation to Jesus in Matt 4:8-9 was to offer Jesus kingship over all the world—if Jesus would bow down to the devil. In contrast to the Father’s will, the devil’s way for Jesus to be “God’s Son” (4:3, 6) was the kingdom without the cross. Jesus responded, “Begone, Satan!” (4:10), and Jesus responds to Peter in the same way, because Peter now echoes Satan’s temptation.
Nor will Peter be the last one in this Gospel to echo Satan. As the devil urged Jesus to prove by some dramatic act that he was God’s Son (4:3, 6), so do Jesus’s mockers at the cross: “If you’re really God’s Son, come down from the cross!” (27:40; cf. 27:43). The scribes and elders mock, “He supposedly saved others; now he can’t save himself. He is supposed to be Israel’s king; let him come down from the cross and then we’ll believe in him” (27:42). In other words, Jesus could get everyone to “follow” him if he offered a more popular way. But it was not the Father’s way, and everyone would still die in sin. Jesus could not save himself if he wished to save others; God’s Son would obey his Father.
This was not the sort of Messiah whom people wanted to follow. The popular idea of the Messiah was a king who would lead his people to victory; that was what Peter wanted. But if Jesus’s messianic mission was the cross, that was also to be the mission of his followers. If we follow, we must follow to the cross: “If anyone wants to come after me, let them deny themselves, and take up their cross, and follow me” (16:24).
Condemned criminals normally had to carry their own cross to the site of their execution. Later Jesus’s disciples literally failed to take up the cross and follow him; the Romans had to draft a bystander to do it for Jesus (27:32). Happily, Jesus’s resurrection changed them, and eventually they were prepared to follow him to the death. Jesus is forgiving and he patiently forms us into the people he has called us to be. But as much as he desires to lavish his gifts, such as healing and deliverance, on people, he also cares enough to make us realistic about this world. If we follow the Father’s way instead of the devil’s, we will face suffering. The kingdom without the cross is still a temptation, and it is still a satanic message.
But the promise of God’s reward far exceeds the suffering. It is those who recognize that eternity is longer than the present, who are willing to give even our lives for our Lord if that need arises who will have life forever (16:25-27). We were worth everything to Jesus, and he is worth everything to us.
–Craig Keener is professor of New Testament at Asbury Theological Seminary and author of The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament.