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All these things will be added to you—Matthew 6:33

What does Matthew 6:33 mean when it says, “all these things shall be added to you” (NASB) or “all these things will be given to you” (NIV, NRSV)? The context indicates that it refers to basic necessities—food and covering.

Jewish people sometimes used Gentiles—non-Jews, who were usually what they would have regarded as “pagans”—as examples of what upright Jews should avoid. The rest of the world seeks food, drink, and clothing, Jesus says, but you should not seek these things (6:31-32). Instead, Jesus’s followers should seek his kingdom, and these other things—the basic necessities of life—will be taken care of (6:33).

It is probably not a coincidence that Jesus had just taught his disciples to pray first for the agendas of God’s kingdom (6:9-10) and only after that for their own basic needs (6:11-13). In Greek, in fact, “your” is emphatic in the first three lines: “Hallowed be your name, may your kingdom come, may your will be done.” Only after that do we pray for our daily bread, forgiveness, and protection from temptation.

This does not mean that we should not eat. When Jesus’s disciples were going through a grainfield, he defended their biblical right to pluck grain even though it was the sabbath (Matt 12:1-8). When people condemned them for not fasting more, he defended them (9:14-17). When not enough food was available for the crowds that followed him, he multiplied it (14:15-21; 15:29-38). The key issue in all these cases is that people were following him, seeking the kingdom; by the end of Matthew’s Gospel, it is clear to all who follow him that Jesus is the king (28:18).

If we hunger and thirst for righteousness (5:6), we will put God and his work before our own needs. We indeed pray for our daily bread, but we pray even before that for the coming of his reign. Rather than storing up earthly treasures (6:19-21), we store up heavenly ones by meeting the needs of other people about whom God also cares (19:21). God is well able to supply our needs, especially if we are willing to live with the basic things he provides rather than competing with others for status symbols (6:28-32).

Most of the stories we read about God supplying the needs of his people miraculously come in settings like this—where in faith we put God’s work first and sacrifice. George Müller, Pandita Ramabai, Heidi Baker and others trusted God to help them care for orphans; Hudson Taylor, Isaac Pelendo and many Majority World missionaries today have trusted God to help them spread his message. Similarly, Paul and many others have been willing to labor manually in the places where God sent them, even though they could have profited financially more elsewhere; one may think also of businesspeople, physicians and others who bridge barriers for the gospel in various ways that sometimes require sacrifice. Mission is the context of some of God’s provision in Matthew’s Gospel, although the provision may be basic and is often through others (cf. 10:9-11, 40-42).

Jesus himself modeled this lifestyle for us—for the sake of the kingdom he had nowhere to lay his head (8:19-20), as he was often traveling to announce the kingdom and to meet people’s needs. In the end, he was ready to lay down everything for us—trusting his Father to raise him up. Let us put God first and see what he will do.

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The Lord’s Army in Joel 2

The Bible often speaks of spiritual warfare, for example in Ephesians 6:10-20, where the armor includes righteousness, faith, and truth. In Revelation 12:11, believers “triumph over” their accuser by the blood of the lamb and the message to which they bear witness.

Not all the biblical passages that some interpreters apply to spiritual warfare really mean that, however. It took me a long time to figure out that when most people were singing, “They rush on the city, they run on the wall,” they did not realize that they were singing about judgment. They were thinking of Joel 2:9 out of context. The passage is not referring to a spiritual battle, but a physical one. Nor is it referring to believers.

Although the third chapter of Joel seems to describe a future war, chapters one and two depict as an invading army a devastating locust plague (Joel 1:4; 2:25). This text does not depict the church as a spiritual army of evangelists; it depicts locusts as an agricultural judgment against the sins of God’s people. Although Joel uses figurative language, as was common in the prophets, the great army that carries out God’s command (Joel 2:11) is explicitly an “army” of locusts in Joel 2:25 (see also 1:4, 6-7)! If God’s people recognized the judgment and repented, God would turn back the judgment and restore his people (1:13-14; 2:13-32).

This image of a locust plague, however, does blend into greater future judgments; it functions as a foretaste of them. The prophets often grouped events according to the kind of event they were rather than specifying their exact sequence.

The day of the Lord may apply to the day of God’s reckoning through the judgment of the locusts (Joel 1:15, 2:1, 11, 31), but it also foreshadows a greater day of God’s judgment to come (3:14). At that time the nations would gather against God’s people and be defeated (Joel 3:16). The darkness of the locusts obscuring the sky (2:2, 10, 30) foreshadows the judgment of that day (3:15). The restoration after the locusts (2:26-27) resembles the restoration after the attack from the nations (3:18).

Of course, the nations gathered against God’s people in the future judgment of Joel 3 do not represent godly spiritual warriors, either. God’s army in Joel simply cannot be identified with the righteous, if we pay attention to context at all.

The New Testament does not read all these events as chronologically bound together; it applies part of the context to something different than either locusts or war. Jesus’s followers learned that the beginning of the promised outpouring of the Spirit and era of salvation happened not simultaneously with either a locust plague or nations attacking Jerusalem. It was a different kind of foretaste of the future (2:28-32; Acts 2:17-21, 39).

That the passage is sometimes misapplied does not mean that it has nothing to say to us. The passage tells us plainly that God does not look the other way in a world of injustice. Although the promised day of the Lord will set all things right, even judgments in the present age foreshadow that future judgment. Like most passages that address judgment in this world, this one addresses judgments on societies, rather than implying that every individual who suffers has done something wrong. Nevertheless, that sufferings strike even the proud oppressors should remind them that they are ultimately no stronger than those they oppress. Judgments remind us that all of us will one day have to answer for how we have treated others and how we have heeded God’s summons to us. God is not looking the other way. (See also http://www.craigkeener.org/let-the-weak-say-i-am-strong-—-joel-310/.)

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How do we imitate God?—Ephesians 5:1; 1 Corinthians 11:1; and other passages

What does Eph 5:1 mean when it exhorts us, “Follow God’s example, therefore, as dearly loved children” (NIV)? Should we try to be omnipresent (everywhere at once), as God is? Should we try to create the universe? The context is very specific how we should imitate God. We should forgive as God in Christ forgave us (4:32) and love one another, just as Christ sacrificially loved us (5:2).

Paul similarly invites his hearers in Corinth to imitate him as he imitates Christ (1 Cor 11:1). Paul offered himself in 1 Cor 9 as an example of giving up his rights; in 10:33, he summarizes, “just as I try to please everyone in everything I do, not seeking my own advantage, but that of many, so that they may be saved” (NRSV). This is how Paul followed the example of Christ, and invites others to follow his example.

Other passages also speak of imitating God or Christ, although in different words. For example, 1 Pet 1:14-16 urges us not to act like we did before we followed Christ, but to be holy in our behavior as God is holy. That is, God has set us apart for himself, so we should behave like those who are consecrated for God’s eternal purposes, not living for things that do not really matter. (Peter cites Lev 11:44-45, where God already invited this imitation, in that case by Old Testament food customs separating Israel from surrounding cultures.)

In Matthew 5:48, Jesus calls us to be perfect as our heavenly Father is. This does not mean that if we miss a point on a test we are disobeying this command. The context is God’s example: he sends the agricultural blessings of sunshine and rain on both those who serve him and those who do not. In the same way, we should love our enemies, thus acting like his children who follow his example (Matt 5:44-45). (This is clear in the same context in Luke, where Jesus is instead quoted as, “Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful”; Luke 6:36 NASB.)

Something goes even deeper than imitation, however, and enables us to imitate God in these moral ways. If we recognize Jesus as our Lord and Savior, he sends God’s Spirit to live in us (Rom 8:9). The fruit of God’s Spirit in us means that God’s own character, his own heart, is at work inside us. Because of this, we will grow to be more and more like him, because of his own gift of his Spirit to us. (For more detail on this, see the post on this website concerning the fruit of the Spirit: http://www.craigkeener.org/the-fruit-of-the-spirit-galatians-522-23/.)

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Does the New Testament Quote the Old Testament Out of Context?

Some claim that the apostles took Scripture out of context in the New Testament, and that their example authorizes us to do the same. We could respond that, no matter how led by the Spirit we may be, we are not writing Scripture.

But the fact is that claims about New Testament writers taking the Old Testament out of context are mostly overrated. Some passages are fairly straightforward, including some that announce the future reign of a Davidic descendant; these texts, however, are not the issue to be addressed here.

Many times New Testament writers do not give a straightforward interpretation of Old Testament texts. What we need to keep in mind is that this is not always what the writers were trying to do.

Most of the examples critics give fall into one of three categories, none of which authorize us to discover a text’s meaning by ignoring its context. First, when responding to opponents who used proof-texts, the biblical writers sometimes responded accordingly (“answering a fool according to his folly,” as Proverbs 26:5 suggests). Some of Paul’s uses in Galatians might fall into this category (e.g., Gal 3:12). Writers could also use the sorts of arguments popular in their day to make their point, without assuming that this was what a text actually meant. (Thus, for example, Paul emphasizes that “seed” or “offspring” in Gal 3:16 is singular, but he knows very well that it can be a collective singular. He uses the same Greek term for many people in Gal 3:29. If one reads how ancient rabbis often handled Scripture, however, Paul is usually tame by comparison.)

Second, and much more often, the writers simply drew analogies from the Old Testament, using them to illustrate a principle found in those texts or the lives they present. To apply a principle genuinely illustrated in a figure or a text is not to take it out of context; without this method, preaching would become next to impossible for most texts. For example, if a psalm describes the anguish of a righteous sufferer, the principle could apply to Jesus as the righteous sufferer par excellence. (At least with particular psalms, the early Christians probably did also believe that God intended some descriptions that matched this ultimate righteous sufferer more specifically. Nevertheless, that belief would not invalidate a more general application to those who suffer unjustly from others’ enmity.)

Third, and perhaps most often, the texts we think are out-of-context sometimes reflect our own failure to recognize the complex way the writer has used the context. Readers often accuse Matthew of quoting Hosea 11:1 (“Out of Egypt have I called my son”) out of context; they often present this as the one of the most blatant cases of the New Testament writers misunderstanding context. They make this claim because Hosea in context is talking about God delivering Israel from Egypt, whereas Matthew applies the text to Jesus.

But Matthew knows the verse quite well: indeed, instead of depending on the standard Greek translation of Hosea here, he even makes his own more correct translation from the Hebrew. If we read Matthew’s context, we see that this is not the only place where he compares Jesus with Israel: as Israel was tested in the wilderness for forty years, Jesus was tested there forty days (Matt 4:1-2). Matthew also expects his target audience to know Hosea’s context: as God once called Israel from Egypt (Hosea 11:1), he would bring about a new exodus and salvation for his people (Hosea 11:10-11). Jesus is the harbinger, the pioneer, of this new era of salvation for his people.

In the same context, Matthew applies Jeremiah 31:15 (where Rachel weeps over Israel’s exile) to the slaughter of infants in Bethlehem (Matt 2:17-18), near which Rachel was buried (Gen 35:19). But Matthew knows Jeremiah’s context: after announcing Israel’s tragedy, God promises restoration (Jer 31:16-17) and a new covenant (Jer 31:31-34). Matthew compares this tragedy in Jesus’ childhood to one in Israel’s history because he expects his first, biblically knowledgeable audience to recognize that such tragedy formed the prelude to messianic salvation.

Matthew also knows the context of Isaiah 7:14, which he quotes in Matthew 1:23 (see the post on that passage on this website); the context remains fresh in Matthew’s mind when he quotes Isaiah 9:1-2 in Matthew 4:15-16. Matthew is not ignoring context: he is comparing Jesus’ ministry with Israel’s history and the promises those very contexts evoke. He may extend analogies further than we generally do today, but he read the context better than most of his critics have!

These observations are not meant to deny that people can sometimes teach us true principles using texts taken out of context. The point is that we cannot guarantee that the principles we find will be truly biblical if we get them from texts never meant to say those things. If we want to hear what God inspired the first authors to communicate, we need to read their texts in their context. Otherwise we can (and some today do) make texts say anything we want—things that will often run counter to the biblical message and sometimes prove very harmful to others.

See at greater length The Bible in Context, available at: http://www.craigkeener.org/free-resources/

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Supplement to Boko Haram is not new

Because of the time that I spent in northern Nigeria, I also wrote an article about the extremists in 2004 for Christianity Today:
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2004/november/23.60.html

(Note: the links become available when you click on my specific post, rather than just view it from my home page.)

I offer this as a supplement to my post a few days ago, better informed by recent events (and other information published by investigators not available to me in 2004):

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/craig-s-keener/boko-haram-is-not-new_b_5303689.html
Again, there are others who can speak to these matters with greater experience and fuller knowledge than I. But it is important for the world to know that these events have been building for a long time. Those in Nigeria working for peace and restoration (including help for the girls) need our prayers.

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Boko Haram is not new

I spent much of three summers in northern Nigeria, 1998-2000. I am very grateful that the world is now paying attention to Boko Haram there–my disappointment is that it has taken so long to get the world’s attention. Boko Haram as such did not exist at that time, but the forms of extremism that fed into it did.

Normally I restrain myself and only offer Bible studies to be included on this site, but this issue was too close to my heart to ignore. Following is my post on this issue with the Huffington Post:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/craig-s-keener/boko-haram-is-not-new_b_5303689.html

It is said that Boko Haram wants to discredit the government and establish an Islamic state in northern Nigeria. It is not satisfied with states that declared sharia there years ago.

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A Multicultural Multitude—Revelation 7:9-17

While there is some debate about the identity of the 144,000 in 7:1-8, everyone agrees that the innumerable multitude in the next vision refers to believers from all peoples—a vision that ultimately includes all of us who believe in Jesus.

These people are “from all nations and tribes and peoples and languages” (7:9). Revelation uses this fourfold formula, in varying sequences, seven times. The formula echoes the book of Daniel. Daniel has the threefold formula six times; the Greek translation of Daniel makes the first instance (Dan 3:4) fourfold, as in Revelation. That context applies to Nebuchadnezzar’s Babylonian empire.

By the time of Revelation, however, people would no longer think of “all nations” as part of the Babylonian empire. Another passage in Daniel predicted an innumerable multitude from all nations serving the Son of man (Dan 7:13-14). Yet despite the hyperbole of Roman imperial claims, most people in John’s urban audience in the Roman province of Asia knew about many other parts of the world beyond the Roman Empire. The Roman Empire had trade ties with India, China, parts of Africa as far south as Tanzania, and northern Europe perhaps as far west as Iceland. The idea that members of all peoples would stand before God’s throne would have been unthinkable!

Much of John’s audience may have been shocked by the implausibility of his vision, yet we are living in its reality. By the second century, the greatest strongholds of Christian faith were in Syria, Egypt and what is now western Turkey. In the fourth century both the Roman empire and the Ethiopian kingdom of Axum in east Africa became predominantly Christian, and Jesus’s movement was spreading, usually in its Syrian forms, much further east in Asia. In different periods different regions had more of the gospel.

The shift in global Christianity over the past century has been one of the most dramatic in history. Some estimate that just 16.7 percent of Christians lived in Africa, Asia and Latin America in 1900; but that this figure will be close to 70 percent by 2025. This growth has been especially explosive among particular groups in the past generation. For example, in 1960, Africa, Asia and Latin America had an estimated fifty million evangelicals; today that figure is about 600 million, with a majority in Pentecostal and charismatic circles. Majority World evangelicals outnumber those in the West perhaps five times over. (These statistics are from Operation World and, following that resource, the introduction to a recent book edited by myself and Daniel Carroll, Global Voices.)

In Daniel 3, Nebuchadnezzar demanded that all peoples worship the statue he made; in Revelation 13, the quintessential evil kingdom demands that all peoples worship the image of its ruler. Nebuchadnezzar and Revelation’s beast have their global empires, but Jesus has a true international, multicultural kingdom. Whereas Nebuchadnezzar and the beast impose their rule by force or deception, Jesus’s followers are those who love him and trust him because he gave his life to redeem us.

Notice what the believers in this passage are doing: worshiping God, they “serve day and night in temple,” like priests (Rev 7:15); in fact, Revelation elsewhere declares that they are a kingdom and priests (1:6; 5:10). Because they wear white robes like the martyrs in 6:9-11, many scholars think they are martyrs. In any case, they are people who persevered in faith during their time on earth and are now in heaven (7:14).

Yet they appear as a triumphant people hailing a conqueror; Israel often waved palm branches to hail a victorious leader (7:9). Whereas some Jewish people believed that they would constitute God’s end-time army to defeat the Gentiles, here God’s people are portrayed not with weapons but with branches, hailing the victor. And the victor, God’s conquering lion (5:5), turns out to be a slain lamb (5:6), who won the victory in God’s sight not by earthly conquests but by offering himself to suffer for truth and righteousness.

John declares that the lamb will shepherd them (7:17). This image is striking for two reasons. First, Israel’s chief shepherd in the Old Testament was God himself (e.g., Ps 23:1). The lamb here is God in the flesh. But second, lambs were not shepherds; lambs were in fact the most vulnerable members of the flock, who most needed a shepherd to protect them. Yet our shepherd is also a lamb who was slain for our sins; he understands our suffering because he became one of us and shared that suffering.

Revelation describes the hope that awaits us in terms familiar to John’s first audience from their Bibles. We will no longer be hungry or thirsty, nor suffer from sin or heat (7:16); our shepherd will guide us to springs of water (7:17). Most of this description comes from Isa 49:10, depicting God’s care for his people Israel. John’s depiction changes two important details: Jesus fills the divine role here, and all his followers belong to his people. John also says that Jesus will wipe away our tears (Rev 7:17; cf. 21:4), which alludes to Isa 25:8: when God raises the dead, he will wipe away his people’s tears.

Whatever we suffer, we may remain confident that our Lord loves us. For our sake he has already experienced suffering and death; he understands what we suffer. He is with us now and he will be with us forever. Weeping may endure for a night; but a morning is coming when our Lord will wipe away every tear from our eyes.

Craig Keener is author of The NIV Application Commentary on Revelation (Zondervan, 2000, also available in Spanish and Chinese) and the IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament (InterVarsity; over half a million sold; also available in Spanish, Chinese, Korean, and some other languages). He and M. Daniel Carroll R. coedited Global Voices (Hendrickson, 2013).