Posted on

A big fish story—Jonah 4:1-11

It has been said that God is not responsible for billions of people not knowing about his wonderful love for them; we are. He gave us the Great Commission, yet many of us are more consumed by other passions than by passion to live for Christ and his commands.

The Bible tells us about someone who ran from God’s call. When we think of Jonah, we usually think of him being swallowed by a large marine creature, but sometimes miss the fuller message of the book’s 48 verses (such as God’s concern for all people). We also often focus more on Jonah than on another major character: God.

Sometimes we get proud of our gifts or God working through us, but forget that gifts are given, not merited. God worked through Jonah in spite of himself. Jonah was not trying to evangelize the sailors carrying him to Tarshish, yet they repented (despite his example of disobedience, Jonah 1:10-16). Jonah certainly was not hoping for Nineveh’s repentance, yet they repented. God did not use Jonah because he was godly. The sailors in the ship, who worshiped other gods, showed more compassion on Jonah (1:13-14) than Jonah showed toward Nineveh. Jonah, who earlier praises God for saving his life (2:2, 6), decides that he would rather die than see Nineveh spared (1:12; 4:3) or, for that matter, than suffer heat (4:8). Jonah is not the story’s hero; God is.

God fulfills his purpose, despite Jonah. He sends the storm that ultimately converts the sailors and (in a different way) Jonah. More significantly, the narrative four times uses the verb “appoints,” or “prepares,” with regard to God (8 percent of the Hebrew verb’s uses appear just in this little book). God “appointed” a large sea creature to swallow Jonah (1:17), both to persuade him and to get him back to land, so he could go to Nineveh. Once Nineveh was converted, God set to work converting Jonah more fully. God “appointed” a plant for his shade (4:6); then “appointed” a worm to kill the plant (4:7); and finally “appointed” a hot east wind to make Jonah value his previous shade (4:8).

God’s compassion includes not only warnings of impending judgment (such as Nineveh received) but actual discipline (such as Jonah received) to correct our attitudes and turn us to the right way. If it seems that Nineveh got off lighter than Jonah, we should remember (as the Veggie Tales version also reminds us) that Jonah was a prophet: God’s standards are higher for those who ought to know better.

The book especially teaches us about God’s character. When God spares Nineveh, Jonah complains that he expected as much, because he knew that God was “gracious and merciful” and “slow to anger” (4:2). Jonah knew that this was a description that God offered about himself in his covenant relationship with Israel (Exodus 34:6). Jonah did not feel that God should squander his grace on pagans, indeed, the enemies of Jonah’s people. Jonah was happy for mercy when he received it himself (Jonah 2:1-9), but unhappy to see it applied to others. God reminds Jonah that there were in Nineveh many people (and animals) innocent of the city’s crimes (4:11). The reason God acts the way he does in the Book of Jonah is his unchanging character of compassion.

When we think there are groups of people undeserving of God’s mercy, we act like Jonah. When we find ourselves frustrated by God’s ways, as if they are unfair, we act like Jonah. When we are reluctant to obey God, we act like Jonah. When we hesitate to commit ourselves to God’s calling—which at the least for all Christians includes the Great Commission—we act like Jonah. God will probably not send a large sea creature to swallow us, and may not even destroy our shade; yet in his care for us and those to whom he has called us, maybe he will do something else. How much better, though, to obey without needing extra persuasion.

This is adapted from an article Craig wrote for the Missionary Seer in 2006.

Posted on

The prodigal sons—Luke 15:11-32

Most people who have attended church for awhile know the story of the prodigal son, but not everyone catches the parable’s point in context. The religious people of Jesus’ day criticized him spending time with sinners (Lk 15:1-2), so Jesus responded by telling three stories: about a shepherd, a woman, and a merciful father. Most people looked down on shepherds as low-class, and courts often rejected their testimony, as well as that of women. (That God chose shepherds as witnesses of Jesus’ birth and women as witnesses of his resurrection reveals that God’s values differ from people’s.)

Thus Jesus tells the story of the lost sheep (one of a hundred), the lost coin (one of ten), the lost son (one of two)—and then of the other lost son.

First, Jesus told of a shepherd who left his 99 sheep to look for the one that was lost. (Because shepherds and others herders watched over their flocks together [see Luke 2:8], he would have left the 99 safe with these other watchmen.) When he found the lost sheep, he called his friends together and they rejoiced. Jesus explains that in the same way, when God finds those who had been lost to him, heaven rejoices. God’s “friends” rejoice when the lost is found, yet the religious people were complaining about Jesus reaching the lost. Maybe the religious people, therefore, were not really God’s friends.

Second, Jesus told of a woman who lost one of her ten coins. This was a pitifully small amount of money to most of Jesus’ hearers, but was much for the woman. Poor Galilean homes had floors of loosely-fitted stones; so often did coins get lost between the stones that archaeologists today can sometimes date the homes’ last habitation based on the coins in the floors! These homes had little lighting, so she lights the small kind of lamp that would fit in one’s hand, and sweeps with a broom, hoping to hear it. When she finds the coin, all her friends rejoice with her; in the same way, God’s friends rejoice with him when he rescues the lost person. But many religious people did not care about what mattered to God; they cared about their view of social propriety!

Third, Jesus told of a father who lost one son. The younger son demanded his share of the inheritance (one-third). Demanding one’s inheritance was equivalent to saying, “Father, I wish you were dead!” Yet the father mercifully does the unthinkable: he divides his hard-earned inheritance. Many hearers would have despised the father’s indulgence. The son then squanders the inheritance, behavior that all ancient moralists derided.

The now-destitute son is reduced to feeding pigs—hence a state of uncleanness so he would not even seek help from a synagogue. Hearers might expect the story to end here—the wicked son receives his just desserts for his crimes! Yet this son realizes that things were better off for servants in the father’s house, and returns, seeking to be a servant.

It was considered undignified for older men to run, yet when the father sees him, he runs and embraces him. His son mattered more than dignity! The son volunteered to be a servant, but the father indirectly rejects this request. He orders the best robe in the house—undoubtedly the father’s; a ring—undoubtedly a family signet ring, thus indicating the son’s reinstatement to sonship; and sandals—though poor workers, in contrast to this household’s sons, often wore no sandals. “No,” the father is saying; “I won’t receive you as a servant. I will only receive you as my son.”

Then the father orders a celebration, including the fatted calf (enough food to feed the entire village). So far the story has ended like the others: when the lost is found, there is celebration. But now Jesus turns to the final story: the story of the other lost son.

The older brother is so angry with the father’s mercy that he publicly refuses to enter the house or greet his father with a title. To publicize an intrafamily dispute in front of the villagers gathered for the celebration dishonored the father even more publicly than his younger brother had done! Elder brothers might normally reconcile estranged fathers and younger brothers, but not this son. “This son of yours,” he calls his brother. “This brother of yours,” the father pleads.

“I never even received a baby goat,” the brother protests, “but you killed the fattened calf for a party for him!” Yet the inheritance was divided, so the elder brother’s two-thirds had already been allotted to him (15:12, 31); he had nothing to lose financially, unless he chose to share with his brother. He simply acted from spite.

“It is not fair,” the older brother protests. “I served you all these years.” Notice the elder son’s basis for argument: not a son’s relationship with the father, but a servant’s relationship with a master. The elder son does not know his father’s heart. He is lost in the father’s house. Essentially, he complains, “You showed him mercy, but I am good enough that I do not need mercy.”

There are church people today who resent evangelism, missions, social concern and other forms of outreach. After all, they may feel that they have never needed any outreach to themselves. Perhaps a newcomer might take their favorite pew. There are those who look down on new believers, or believers from less socially “dignified” backgrounds than their own.

Jesus ends the parable with the father’s plea to enter, a welcome invitation to the elder brothers today who remain lost in the father’s house.

This article is adapted from an article Craig wrote for the Missionary Seer in 2006, and follows insights by Kenneth Bailey, Joachim Jeremias and other scholars.

Posted on

Paul’s Asian mission to Europe—Acts 16:9

The first missionaries were not Europeans, but were from a part of Asia just a few days’ walk north of Africa. Yet even at an early time, they brought their message to Europe.

When God gave Paul a dream of a Macedonian inviting him to Macedonia (Acts 16:9), Paul and his companions set sail for Macedonia and began the first recorded missionary successes Paul had experienced since he parted ways with Barnabas. Yet there is a possible geographic significance of this journey that we might miss.

Paul was in Alexandria Troas when he had this vision, and Greeks and Romans typically associated this large city with nearby Troy. Greeks had long considered Troy the entry point for Greek invasions of Asia. In Greeks’ most prominent epic story, the Greeks warred against Troy. Centuries later, the Macedonian prince Alexander the Great claimed to repeat the earlier Greek conquests when he invaded the Persian empire—starting at Troy.

Troy was on the northeast coast of Asia Minor, and Greek and Roman sources regularly treated it as a major boundary point between “Europe” (their own continent) and “Asia.” These boundaries had always been arbitrary—early Greeks had defined everything to their east as Asia, and to their south as Africa, and themselves as Europe. By this period, Greek and Asian culture had interacted with each other for centuries.

Paul’s movement into Europe from Troas might strike many first-century readers as significant. By Greek and Roman standards, Paul and his companions were Asian, and preached an Asian religion (Judea and Galilee were part of the Roman province of Syria in the continent of Asia).

Greeks and Romans sometimes boasted that they were conquerors of Asia, although by this they could mean only part of Asia. (Rome’s most serious military challenge long remained the Parthian empire, which controlled regions now including Iran. Beyond Iran, Rome merely had trade ties, for example with India, Vietnam and China.) Yet now Asian representatives of a universal, but initially Afroasiatic, faith were moving in the reverse direction. Yet these messengers did not go simply as colonialists in reverse. In this case, they brought not violent conquest but good news about God’s universal, transforming kingdom.

Since that time the message about Jesus has spread among many nations. In the first few centuries, north Africa and what is now Turkey were the places where Christianity was strongest; later it spread elsewhere, sometimes diminishing in areas where it was once strong. The east African empire of Axum, in what is now Ethiopia, converted to Christianity in the early fourth century, and has remained predominantly Christian since that time; Syrian Christians evangelized further east, including parts of India. Later, for a period of time, the west was a dominant center of Christianity, but all scholars now agree that Christianity is stronger and growing much faster in Africa, Latin America and much of Asia.

It has never been correct to view Christianity as a “western” religion. Geographically, it originated in what Europeans called Asia, not far from what Europeans defined as Africa. Yet from the beginning, God intended it not only for Israel, not only for Asia, not only for the Mediterranean Roman empire. From the beginning God intended a people for his name from among all the nations. God who created all peoples also sent his Son to redeem members of all peoples. Paul’s dream in Macedonia was just one reminder of this: “Come over into Macedonia and help us.” God loves all peoples. If we love him, we must also love and serve all peoples.

Craig Keener is author of 17 books, including the IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament and a four-volume commentary on Acts, as well as coauthor with Glenn Usry of Black Man’s Religion.

Posted on

Confess with your mouth, believe in your heart—Romans 10:9-10

We often quote Romans 10:9-10 out of context, though we get the basic idea correct (it is talking about salvation). A fuller understanding of the context can help us better appreciate why Paul words these verses the way he does.

Some people were arguing that they could be saved by their good works, by obeying the Bible, rather than by Jesus’ death and resurrection (see Rom 10:5). So Paul quoted the same Bible they professed to obey, showing how even in the Old Testament God saved people by grace. (He has already argued in Romans 4 that Abraham was made right with God through faith, i.e., through trusting him.)

In Romans 10, Paul quotes from Deuteronomy 30 and makes comparisons with Christ:

Moses said that no one needed to ascend to heaven to bring down the law again (Deut 30:12); God had already freely given the law. Paul makes a comparison: in the same way, he says, no one needs to ascend to heaven to bring down Christ again: God already sent him freely (Rom 10:6).

Moses said that no one needed to descend into the depths of the sea again (Deut 30:13); God had already redeemed his people and brought them through the sea. Paul makes another comparison: no one needs to descend to the depths, as if to bring Christ up from the dead; God already raised him (Rom 10:7).

Rather, Moses said, the law is already available, in Israel’s mouths and hearts if they chose to embrace it (Deut 30:14; cf. Deut 5:29; 6:6-7; 10:16; 30:6). Likewise, Paul claims that the message about faith in Christ is similarly available, in our mouths and hearts, if we embrace it (Rom 10:8).

Then he goes on to explain what he means by “in your mouth and in your heart”: it is by confessing with our mouth Jesus’ Lordship, and by believing that he is risen and alive, that we are saved. Naturally, genuine faith that Jesus is the true and living Lord will transform the way we live; but the transformation comes through accepting Christ, not through mere moral self-help efforts apart from faith in Christ.

To whom is this promise available? In the following verses, Paul emphasizes the words “whoever” and “all”: the Bible says that “whoever” believes will not be shamed (Rom 10:11); Christ is Lord of “all,” whether Jew or Gentile (10:12); and (again quoting the Bible, now from Joel) “Whoever” calls on the Lord’s name will be saved (10:13). This fits Paul’s theme throughout Romans: the gospel is for Jew and Gentile alike, not on the basis of Israel’s laws, but on the basis of God’s gift in Jesus Christ.

The passage does not, however, stop by explaining salvation. It also talks about how this “message of faith” (10:8) that we “confess with our mouth” gets spread. How can people call on Jesus without believing in him? Or believe in him without hearing about him? And how can they hear without someone bringing them the message? Sometimes we also quote out of context Romans 10:17: “faith comes through hearing, and hearing through the message about Christ.” In context, 10:17 refers to saving faith through hearing the gospel.

Romans 10:9-10 talk about the mouth and the heart not as if this is the single New Testament formula for salvation (for example, as if every salvation text must mention the mouth, or as if deaf-mutes cannot be saved, neither of which is true). Rather, Paul is explaining a text from the Old Testament that mentions the mouth and the heart. Yet both texts mention the mouth and the heart because they are intimately connected. If we really believe that God raised Jesus from the dead, can we be silent about him? Rather, “shout it from the housetops” (Matt 10:27)! Our Savior is alive, he has set our hearts on fire, and we ought to tell the world about him!

This article is adapted from one that Craig wrote for the Missionary Seer in 2006. Craig is author of 17 books, including 1-2 Corinthians (Cambridge University Press, 2005).

Posted on

Not rightly discerning the body—1 Corinthians 11:17-34

When Jesus met with his disciples the night before his crucifixion, he ate a meal with them. In the ancient world, eating together formed a covenant relationship between those who ate. Sometimes it formed a covenant relationship even between their families into the next generation—in one Greek story, two warriors decided not to fight each other because one’s father had once hosted the other’s father for a meal.

But Jesus’s disciples had often eaten with him, and this was a special meal. Jesus had sent his disciples to prepare the Passover for that evening (Mark 14:12-16). The Passover commemorated God’s action of saving Israel; now Jesus was about to be the agent of a new act of salvation. At the Passover, the host interpreted elements like the bread and the wine.

Over the bread he declared, “This is the bread of affliction which our ancestors ate when they came out of the land of Egypt.” Jesus said, “This is my body, which is for you.” No one thought that the bread at Passover was literally the very bread the ancestors had eaten and digested 1300 years earlier; the disciples should likewise have understood that Jesus was not suggesting literal cannibalism in the eating of his flesh. (Of course, no one today understands the Lord’s supper this way. Even the strictest supporters of transubstantiation do not affirm that the bread’s chemical composition changes to skin and muscle with human DNA.)

Just as Jewish people remembered, reenacted and participated in Israel’s redemption by God in the Passover, so Jesus’ followers reenter into the final night with his disciples when we participate in the Lord’s supper. We recognize that Jesus’ death was no accident or mere miscarriage of justice. It was part of God’s plan to save us, just like the Passover lamb spared Israel from the final, devastating plague.

But in Corinth Christians treated the Lord’s supper in a different way. In their culture, well-to-do people often invited other people over for dinner—and seated them according to social rank. The people with better seats (actually, better couches) often got better food and better wine than people in lower positions. Sometimes those who got the lower seats complained about their humiliation.

Even though we are followers of Christ, we sometimes reflect the values of our culture without realizing it, and it takes either someone very insightful or someone from another culture to point our error out to us. Some of the Corinthian Christians were feasting and getting drunk at the Lord’s supper, while others were leaving hungry (1 Cor 11:21). The Christians had absorbed the values of their culture! Corinthians emphasized social status, and the church there was interested in the same thing (1 Cor 1:26-27; 4:8; 6:4).

The Lord’s supper was not just about Christ’s act of redemption; it was about the people whom he has redeemed. If Christ is the way that all of us were saved, then none of us can boast over another. When he gave his body, it was partly to make us one body (1 Cor 10:17; 12:12-13), and if we despise one another, we do not rightly discern Christ’s body (1 Cor 11:29). This behavior invites God’s judgment (11:30-34).

Do we look down on (or up on) people in the church whose status or role in society differs from ours? More generally, are we divided from other members of Christ’s body, in our local church or elsewhere? (Sometimes this division extends even to debates about the Lord’s supper itself, but the principle also applies to divisions more generally.) We cannot always control others’ views toward us, but insofar as it depends on us, do we live at peace with others? The Lord’s supper is a regular reminder that we share a common faith that matters more than our other differences. To partake of the Lord’s supper with integrity consistent with our faith, we must learn to live out that unity that Christ has established.

This article adapts one that Craig wrote in 2006. Craig Keener is author of 17 books, including 1-2 Corinthians (Cambridge University Press, 2005).

Posted on

Slaves and slaveholders—Ephesians 6:5-9

Early U.S. slaveholders did not want slaves to hear the gospel because they feared that the slaves would think themselves equals of the slaveholders; numerous slave revolts pervaded by biblical imagery (such as Nat Turner, Denmark Vesey, Gabriel Prosser, and John Brown) show that they were right.

Yet slaveholders eventually found a way to truncate the gospel in a way supportive of their interests. The Slave Narratives reveal that many slaves loved Jesus but hated Paul, because slaveholders had often quoted Ephesians 6:5: “Slaves, obey your mortal masters … as you would Christ.” Yet slaveholders (who also argued that most cultures through history had practiced slavery) ripped this saying of Paul’s out of context. They ignored the cultural background and especially the letter’s literary context.

First, they misunderstood the slavery that Paul addressed here and so created an inappropriate analogy. (For informed readers who might wonder: I agree with Harold Hoehner’s argument for Pauline authorship of Ephesians; those who demur nevertheless agree that the narrated author is Paul.)

Different forms of slavery existed in Paul’s day. Slaves condemned to the mines or to gladiatorial combat rarely lived two years; this was the harshest form of slavery. Another harsh form of slavery was the use of slaves on plantations, although it was more common to use free peasants. These slaves had difficult lives, although their situation was in many respects comparable to that of the peasants who worked the feudal estates in the Roman countryside. Neither had much chance in life of changing their lot; slaves could be beaten, but “free” peasants who gave the landlords too much trouble could be assassinated and replaced. In one report of Pliny the Younger, he treats the slaves better than the peasants. Injustice was pervasive.

But Paul addressed a different kind of slavery: he wrote to urban congregations, hence addressed urban, i.e., household, slaves. Ancient Mediterranean household slavery was unjust, yet it differed from the slavery usually practiced in the Americas, which was more like the plantation slavery mentioned above. The category “slavery” included high-status slaves. Some aristocratic women even married into slavery by marrying high-class slaves, thereby improving their own social status; the most powerful slaves of Caesar wielded more power than free aristocrats. More often, household slaves could save money on the side, sometimes buying their freedom and sometimes even buying other slaves (sometimes even while still slaves themselves).

More importantly, a significant proportion of ancient household slaves became free (though partly so slaveholders would not have to keep supporting them). Slaves of Roman citizens freed after age 30 became Roman citizens themselves, and the former slaveholders were responsible to provide them legal, political and financial help. Hereditary aristocrats complained that some of these freedpersons became the “social climbers” of their era. None of these observations diminish the injustice involved in the ancient institution; among ancient household slaves women, in particular, faced exploitation that was at times comparable to that of women household slaves in the U.S. Before the civil war, some U.S. slaves also achieved freedom and even held slaves, but the proportion was tiny compared to the proportion in the Roman Empire. Without exaggerating differences, it should be noted that the range of experiences in ancient Mediterranean slavery differed from that practiced in the Americas.

American slaveholders’ knowledge of ancient slavery was undoubtedly limited. More inexcusably, however, the slaveholders ignored Ephesians’ own context, which went on to demand that slaveholders treat their slaves in the same way! Paul expected believing slaves to take advantage of freedom when they had that opportunity (1 Cor 7:21-23); he also wanted Philemon to free the recently converted Onesimus to help Paul in ministry. But even in our very passage, Paul says that slaves and slaveholders share the same heavenly Lord (Eph 6:9).

Sometimes we are annoyed that Paul did not attack slavery more directly. But we should not forget that these few sentences were not meant to address the institution of slavery itself. Pastors do not counsel someone struggling in their marriage by discussing weddings or marriage-related laws in society. We do not counsel someone struggling with drugs by discussing the legality of drugs, the international sources of drugs, and so forth; we try to help the person deal with their drug problem. Larger structural issues matter, but they are not the immediate subject of our counseling. In the same way, Paul’s letters to real congregations addressed slaves in the situation they were in. These letters do not reveal Paul’s views on the larger question of slavery. Ephesians may, however, imply his views.

Aristotle had complained about some thinkers who felt that slavery was “against nature,” and therefore should be abolished. By Paul’s day, some Stoic philosophers still affirmed that slavery was against nature, but they did not try to abolish it.

Yet Paul not only believes here that slavery is against nature; he calls for Christian ethics that ultimately subvert it. After Paul calls slaves to submit to slaveholders, he calls on slaveholders to “do the same things to them” (Eph 6:9). This is how he expects Christian mutual submission (Eph 5:21) between slaves and slaveholders. One wonder what such instructions would ultimately do to slavery, if anyone paid attention to them. Who would invest money to buy a fellow master? Latching on to principles in Paul and other biblical writers, Christian abolitionists, both black and white, later in history forcefully demanded the end of slavery. Some devoted entire manuals to biblical arguments against slavery.

One of my favorite courses to teach, both in the U.S. and in Africa, is biblical interpretation. Context and background are both essential principles, but there is also another one that the slaveholders missed. The fear of God is the true beginning of knowledge (Prov 1:7): if you fear God, you will be afraid to twist Scripture to make it say what you want. The slaveholders valued their economic interest more than they feared the God who was the only true master of all (Eph 6:9). Hearing God’s voice in Scripture rather than our own can sometimes be a matter of life and death; that was the case in the 1800s, and it remains true on many other issues today. Outright slavery continues in today’s world, though virtually all Christians today oppose it. Yet many Christians overlook other issues of injustice that biblical texts could expose. May God open our eyes, and may we fear him enough to seek what is just rather than what is convenient.

This is adapted from an article that Craig wrote for the AME Zion Missionary Seer in 2006. Craig has authored 17 books and is ordained in an African-American denomination.

Posted on

Religion is not enough—Matthew 24

Matthew’s Gospel includes five discourse sections. The last of these (chaps. 23—25) begins with Jesus pronouncing judgment on scribes and Pharisees, the highly respected religious people of the day. It then closes with him noting how his second coming will distinguish between the righteous and the wicked.

Between these sections, Jesus warns that Jerusalem’s “house,” the temple, would be laid desolate (Matt 23:37-38), and that the temple’s stones would be thrown down (24:2). The disciples consequently asked two questions: “When will these things (the temple’s destruction) happen?” and “What will be the sign of your coming?” The short answer to the former question is, “within a generation” (24:34), and to the latter, “no one knows the day nor the hour” (24:36). But Jesus answers each in somewhat more detail.

He has already spoken of the temple being desolated (23:38). Now he speaks of the promised “abomination,” or “desecration,” which brings about the “desolation” in the sanctuary (24:15). Josephus, the first-century Jewish historian who lived through the events that he describes, believes that the slaughter of the priests in the temple in 66 was the abomination which brought about the temple’s destruction three and a half years later, in A.D. 70. When the temple was destroyed, Romans set up images of Caesar, who was worshiped as a god, on the site. The year 70 was roughly a generation after Jesus warned of the coming desolation (somewhere around the year 30).

Jesus warned those in Judea to flee into the hills (24:16); the massive Roman army would be less effective hunting fugitives on mountain trails, and both David and the Maccabees had found refuge in this way. Because people often dried vegetables or conversed with neighbors on their flat roofs, reached from the outside of the house, Jesus also warns those on the roof not to waste time entering the house (24:17). Peasants who needed their outer garments as blankets at night, but left them at the edge of the field as the workday’s sun grew hot, should abandon them and flee with haste (24:18). Jesus’ point was that judgment was coming, and people should flee as quickly as possible! (My wife, who is Congolese and had to flee as a refugee when war came, understood the importance of such haste.)

The temple was the center of Israel’s religious devotion and hopes for the future. Some considered it impregnable; most considered it blessed. Yet as in Jeremiah’s day, this symbol par excellence of religious devotion could not stay God’s judgment. Religion alone is not enough.

What does all this have to do with Jesus’ answer to the other question, about the sign of his coming? Let me comment first about the timing of that coming. In Jesus’ day, people viewed wars, earthquakes, and famines as signs of the end; but Jesus warns that when these things occur, the end is still “not yet” (24:6-8). A more reliable sign of the end is the good news of the kingdom being proclaimed among all peoples (24:14); if we are eager for Christ’s return, there is something we can do to fulfill this final prerequisite. But as for a literal “sign” of the end? Jesus offers only one: the sign that occurs in the sky at his second coming (24:30). In other words, whoever waits for the final “sign” will wait too late!

After Jesus discusses the temple’s destruction, he speaks of the judgment of his servants at the second coming. He tells of a servant who exploited his fellow servants, as if he would never give account to the master; this minister would be damned (24:45-51). Jesus further contrasts those who would stay ready for his return with those who would not (25:1-30).

In other words, the first part of Jesus’ discourse, against the scribes and Pharisees, has everything to do with the part about the temple and the later part about the second coming. God’s servants were not ready at our Lord’s first coming; today many of us condemn scribes and Pharisees rather flippantly for missing the truth. But Jesus also warns that many of his servants will not be ready at his second coming, either. We should examine our hearts: do we live our lives in light of the fact that we must someday answer to the One who gave us those lives? Mere religion is not enough. We must follow Christ.

Adapted from an article Craig wrote in 2006. Craig Keener is author of 17 books, including two commentaries on Matthew’s Gospel.

Posted on

Near the broken, far from the proud—1 Samuel 1:1-2, 6-20

Often in history, revival flourishes among the lowly and the broken and spreads from there. Sometimes we get comfortable or even proud, but a pervasive biblical principle is that God is nearest the humble. One could provide many examples, but one illustration is the story of Hannah and Eli.

Hannah was unable to have children in a culture where many viewed inability to have children as God’s curse. Moreover, her husband had another wife, who was jealous and mocked her. My wife, whose parents each grew up in polygamous households, recounted the different kinds of relationships the wives could have with each other. Often in her culture, and always in biblical narratives about ancient Israel’s culture, they proved difficult. In 1 Samuel, the “other woman” helped make Hannah’s life miserable.

In a culture in which many evaluated a woman’s worth by her childbearing, a matter that Hannah could not control, she was powerless and marginalized. She had nowhere else to turn except God. Sometimes we need to recognize that our chief battle is a spiritual one. Jacob recognized that when he struggled with the angel the night before he faced Esau; Elisha helped his assistant recognize that when only Elisha could see the armies of heaven around them. In a different way, Abraham had to realize this when he sent away Ishmael; only God could protect his son. Prayer as a regular discipline is valuable, but Hannah couldn’t afford to simply go through the motions of prayer. She poured out her heart to God, the only one who could help her.

Hannah was desperate. She was so passionate, in fact, that Eli the high priest, seeing her emotional state, accused her of being drunk (1:13). Sometimes, when directed toward God, our desperation counts as faith: putting our trust nowhere else, we throw ourselves completely on God. God has the right to say, “No,” and sometimes does so. (This is true even in the matter of childbearing; we know this firsthand, having been through a number of miscarriages.) But sometimes in Scripture obstacles are there for us to surmount, not to invite us to give up.

This pattern appears often in Scripture, in a variety of cases. One thinks of the woman with the flow of blood; she was so desperate to touch Jesus that she violated cultural protocol to do so. One thinks of the paralytic’s friends willing to damage a neighbor’s roof to get their friend to Jesus for healing. One thinks of the Shunnamite woman whose son died, who would not let anything deter her from getting Elisha’s help in restoring him. One also thinks of the woman whose daughter was demonized, willing to humble herself before Jesus despite his initial refusal of her plea. I think of my own wife, Médine, who, when told by a doctor in Africa that she must abort the child or it would die anyway, refused. The doctor ridiculed her and promised that her child would die. Normally one should trust a doctor’s medical wisdom, but Médine refused to give up on the child. At the time of my writing, he is fourteen.

In contrast to powerless Hannah, Eli was the respected high priest. When he blessed Hannah, she expected that God heard her prayer, and went away happy (1 Sam 1:17-18). She respected his office, and God did answer her faith. But Eli, though a follower of God, was not as pure-hearted for God as Hannah was. Friends have told me of people they knew who were miraculously healed when ministers prayed for them, ministers who were soon discredited for moral failings. But it is God who does the miracles, and he can answer the faith of the recipient as well as that of the minister, or just act directly for his name’s sake.

The contrast between Hannah and Eli fits the contrast between her son Samuel and Eli’s sons Hophni and Phinehas. It also fits the book’s later contrast between David and Saul. Hannah dedicated her son to the Lord; Eli, by contrast, put his sons before God (1 Sam 2:29). They dishonored the Lord and the priestly office by their greed and sexual immorality (not unlike a few ministers today), yet Eli refused to remove them from office. He valued the personal tie of fatherhood more than his responsibility to keep the priestly office pure.

Hannah was not praying for revival. She was praying only for a son, but she prayed from a pure heart. Yet God used her prayer from a sincere heart to bring change to all of Israel. People were not hearing from God much in those days (1 Sam 3:1), but by the time her son was himself an elder, the land was full of prophets who listened to God (10:5, 10; 19:20). Eli’s sons were not leading Israel in a true relationship with God that brought God’s blessing; Hannah’s son Samuel led his generation in a different way.

We often respect the public leaders of religion; they are the ones we all know about. Yet when God judges hearts, it is often the people that barely anyone knows about, who simply have humble and sincere hearts before God, who make the greatest difference behind the scenes. Those are the people whose prayers have an impact for all of us. May we respect the humble and learn from them, for God is with them in a special way. As Hannah recognized, God brings down the exalted, but raises up the lowly (1 Sam 2:3-8).

Posted on

The down payment—2 Corinthians 1:22; 5:5; Ephesians 1:13-14

Did you know that we have already begun to taste the future world? We are visitors in this age; our true home is in the age to come. That does not mean that we should be irrelevant to this age; rather, it means that we should be all the more relevant, but the substance of our relevance is not following the fads, fashions and whims of our culture. Rather, we shed the light of God’s kingdom, with its transforming vision of justice, peace and righteousness, in a world that has forgotten the only true and transcendent source of hope.

Hebrews 6:5 says that those who believe in Christ “have tasted of the powers of the age to come.” Likewise, Paul declares that Christ delivered us from (literally) “this present evil age” (Gal 1:4). He also warns us not to be “conformed to this age, but be transformed by your mind being made new” (Rom 12:2). These writers were simply following what Jesus had already revealed. “If I drive out demons by the Spirit of God,” Jesus announced, “then God’s kingdom has come upon you” (Matt 12:28).

Jesus’s contemporaries were expecting the messianic king and future kingdom to come soon; they were expecting the dead to be raised and that God would pour out his Spirit. But the king, Jesus, who is yet to come, has already come the first time. Although we still await the resurrection of our bodies, Jesus has already been raised from the dead in history. And since the day of Pentecost God has been pouring out the Spirit. In the language of many scholars, the kingdom is “already/not yet”: the consummation remains future, but we are already living with some of the benefits of that future kingdom.

This future reality invades our lives by the Spirit. The Spirit is promised for the future age, but through him we can taste God’s presence and power in our lives in the present. That is why Paul speaks of the Spirit as the “down payment” of our future inheritance (2 Cor 1:22; 5:5; Eph 1:13-14). The Greek word sometimes rendered “down payment” here was used in ancient business documents for the first installment: no mere verbal guarantee, it is the beginning experience of what is promised. By experiencing the Spirit, we are experiencing a foretaste of the glories of the coming world in God’s presence.

That is why Paul wrote, “The things that eye has not seen nor ear heard, nor have occurred to the human heart—(so it is with) the things that God has prepared for those who love him. But God has revealed them to us by the Spirit” (1 Cor 2:9-10). Because the Spirit is intimate with God the Father’s heart, Paul explains, we can know God’s heart for us (2:10-16). Through the Spirit, we have a foretaste of the beautiful intimacy that we will share with God through all the ages of eternity.

We belong to a future age; let us not forget that crucial feature of our identity. The world around ought to be able to look at the church and see a foretaste of what heaven will be like. If they cannot, it is because we are living short of our birthright in Christ. May we dare to believe what God declares about our identity in Christ, as partakers of a new creation that began when Jesus rose from the dead.

Craig is professor of New Testament at Asbury Theological Seminary; he is author of The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament.

Posted on

In God’s presence—John 14—16

Some of us feel that we have to earn our way into God’s presence when we pray—that somehow if we pray a certain way or for a particular length of time, God will start hearing us. Some even think that we lack access to God’s presence until Jesus’s return. When Jesus sent his disciples to the world, however, he equipped them with his Spirit (John 20:21-23). This is the same Spirit he had explained to them earlier, who would continue Jesus’ presence among them (John 14:2-23) and in the world (16:7-11).

Jesus begins hinting at this even before he becomes fully explicit. We typically quote John 14:2-3 as if it referred only to Jesus’ future coming: “In my Father’s house are many dwelling places … I will come again and take you to myself.” But as wonderful as our future hope is, Jesus intended something more than this here. The Father’s house is the place in his presence, and we do not belong to it only in the future. The only “coming” Jesus explicitly refers to in this context is his return to them after the resurrection to give them his Spirit (14:16-19, 23), a promise fulfilled in 20:19-23. The Greek term for “dwelling places” in 14:2 occurs in only one other text in the Bible—later in this very conversation (14:23), where Jesus and the Father will make their “dwelling place” within the believer.

If such an understanding seems difficult to us, we should remember that it was no less difficult for the first disciples. Jesus promised to prepare them a place in the Father’s presence, where he was going (14:2-4), but they protested that they knew neither where he was going nor how to get there (14:5). Jesus replied that where he was going was to the Father, and they would get there by coming through him (14:6). Today we understand that we do not have to wait for Jesus’ future return to come to the Father through Jesus; we come to him by faith when we accept him as our Lord and Savior.

In other words, we enter the Father’s presence at the moment of our conversion. Whether or not one recognizes that 14:2-3 speak of present experience, certainly 14:17 and 23 do: the Father, Son and Spirit come to make their dwelling place in believers. This means that, if you have surrendered your life to Jesus, you are in his presence this very moment. The same Jesus who taught and healed in Galilee, who washed his disciples’ feet, who died for our sins and rose from the dead, is with you right now as you are reading this article. He is with you every moment of every day, living inside you and eager to teach you his ways.

But the Spirit not only mediates Jesus’ presence to us; the Spirit also mediates Jesus’ presence to the world. Just as Jesus convicted the world of sin, righteousness, and judgment during his earthly ministry, the Spirit will continue to do so by presenting Jesus to the world (John 16:8-11). But the text also suggests that the Spirit will work especially through Jesus’ followers even to mediate Jesus’ presence to the world (15:26-27). Jesus promised to send the Spirit not to the world, but to believers (16:7); through our testimony of Jesus the Spirit would convict the world by confronting them with the presence of Jesus himself (16:8-11). Because Jesus lives inside us, we can be confident that when we live his ways and share his message, God himself will touch the hearts of the people we share with.

This is adapted from an article Craig wrote in 2004; Craig is author of The Gospel of John: A Commentary (Baker Academic).