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The good Samaritan, part one: Luke 10:25-30

Verse 25: As this law-expert would know, students normally sat to listen to teachers, but might stand to ask a question or (normally only for non-students) to issue a challenge. How to inherit eternal life was a common subject of discussion in early Judaism.

26: Teachers frequently answered questions with questions. Rabbis often asked,”How do you read?”

27: Some other Jewish teachers gave answers like this (see also Jesus in Mark 12:29-31). Using the ancient Jewish interpretive principle of linking texts based on a common key word, it was natural for Jewish scholars to link Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18 (both beginning with, “You shall love”).

28: Various passages in the law promise long life on the land for those who keep the commandments (Leviticus 18:5; Deuteronomy 4:1, 40; 8:1; 16:20; 30:6, 16-20). Many later Jewish interpreters reapplied this promise to involve eternal life, as here (cf. Lk 10:25).

29: Jewish people typically applied “neighbor‚” to “fellow Israelite.” While this was the immediate context of Leviticus 19:18, the rest of the context applies the principle to all non-Israelites (Leviticus 19:34).

30:  Jesus’ story deliberately confronts his audience’s values, forcing identification with a solitary merchant or a Samaritan, while Israel’s religious elite side with the bandits by default. Parables usually have a central point (though sometimes also some subsidiary points), so some details are present simply for the story’s setting, not communicating any symbolic meaning.

Jerusalem was higher in elevation than Jericho (thus the man goes “down”). Robbers were not uncommon on the steep, 17-mile downhill road; they naturally targeted especially those traveling alone. Although clothes were a valuable commodity, completely stripping him treated him like a corpse on a battlefield. In ancient texts, “half-dead” meant that, insofar as one could tell, the person was dead.

(Adapted from Dr. Keener’s personal research. Used with permission from InterVarsity Press, which published similar research by Dr. Keener in The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament. Buy the book here.)

 

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Living out our new identity in Christ

When Christians do not live out the character of God’s Spirit  living in them (cf. the “fruit  of the Spirit”  in Gal 5:22-23), we fail to take saving faith to its logical conclusion. We do not do righteousness to get God’s gift; rather, righteousness is God’s gift in Christ, and we demonstrate active faith in Christ as we live accordingly. We do not stop sinning in order to be “saved”; rather, we are “saved” from sin through faith. To the extent that we really believe, however, we should live accordingly.

While Paul usually presents this  ideal in terms of two contrasting options (e.g., Spirit  versus flesh, Romans 8:3-11),  the life of Abraham shows that the faith through which he was initially  reckoned righteous (Genesis 15:6) was imperfect (e.g., 16:2). Nevertheless, over the years it grew to the place where he could offer up the promised seed in obedience to the God he trusted (22:10-12). Initial  justification  and transformation is obviously crucial,  but  it  is only the beginning of God’s plan to display his righteousness in those who depend on him.

Zeal in itself  is no guarantee of pleasing God (cf. 8:8;  10:2-3). Even actions offered by one generation or person in sincere devotion to God can become for another routine legalism once severed from the motivation of the Spirit. That is why churches born out of passion for God can become legalistic or complacent in the next generation when they continue their forebears’ behavior without cultivating their relationship with God.

Church history reveals that the church, at least on a large-scale political  level, has often lived no differently than nonbelievers (and in some cases worse). But then, Paul’s theology may have been largely untested because it has been largely untaught; emphasizing either moralism or justification  without transformation truncates Paul’s message of unity with Christ.

Western Christendom today has imbibed the radical Enlightenment’s skepticism of the supernatural, suspicious of miracles and other divine  interventions. For Paul, however, the genuine Christian  life  is “supernatural”  (divinely empowered) from start to finish, a life by God’s own Spirit. Apart from acknowledging and embracing the Spirit, the best imitations of Pauline religion are just “flesh.”

(Adapted from Romans: A New Covenant Commentary, published by Cascade Books. Buy the book here.)

 

 

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Christian celebrity cults: Paul vs. Apollos in 1 Corithians 4:6-21

Sometimes we get so excited about various figures we respect today or in church history that we lose sight of the fact that they were just people like us. A true man or woman of God can say like Paul and Barnabas, “We are people just like you” (Acts 14:15). In our consumeristic society it seems effective for ministries and publishers to market the people who represent them; but we must not lose sight of the One who really matters, who really saves us. This reminder is especially important for the leaders who get marketed.

Students of rival teachers in Corinth often competed and sometimes came to blows; this broader societal problem spilled over into the church. Even though Paul and Apollos personally were on good terms, their respective followers divided over who was the more clever speaker. That is, they focused on their celebrities, just the way their wider culture focused on its celebrities.

Paul reminds the Corinthian Christians, however, that their heroes were not as big as the Corinthians thought. Everything, after all, was a gift (4:7); we can’t boast in what was given to us, as if we earned it. Indeed, God had given the Corinthians Paul and Apollos and others for their sake, to build them up (3:21-22).

Like non-Christians in Corinth, the Christians there wanted to compare teachers, determining who was wisest. They used criteria such as speaking ability. Since they want to be wise, Paul adopts mock philosophic language. Many philosophers claimed that only the truly wise person had the wealth that mattered and was fit to reign as a king; Paul says, “You’ve become rich, you’ve become kings! Hey—I wish this were really true, so you could share some of that ‘royalty’ with us!” (4:8; cf. them being “wise” in 4:10). Even the Corinthians should have known that true sages, even in their culture, often demonstrated their commitment to their teachings by sufferings. Some even offered lists of what they had suffered—as Paul will now do (4:9-13).

Paul thus offers his own example (4:9-13). His orientation is not toward making himself a celebrity or acting for his own benefit, but rather working for Christ’s sake and for theirs. Although elsewhere Paul lists “apostles” as first among the gifts (12:28), he notes here that they are last (4:9). In this context, he means that they must suffer the most persecution and dishonor; the greatest—their founding apostle—is truly the least. Paul may also be saying that apostles are the “last act”—probably alluding figuratively to the closing act of criminals being executed in the arena (15:32). Thus, he says, “we have become a spectacle to the world” (4:9). Some argue that even the language of “scum” and “dregs” Paul that uses in 4:13 sometimes applied to people who were killed on behalf of others. In any case, Paul’s apostolic role is not the lifestyle of a carefree celebrity, but of a suffering servant. Like Jesus, Paul blesses when reviled (4:12).

Paul then invites the believers in Corinth to follow his example (4:14-21). His mock praise of them in 4:8 and 10, and his contrast of their attitude with his sacrifice, is not meant to humiliate them, he points out. Rather, he admonishes them as his dear children (4:14). He addresses them as his children because he is their father; teachers were sometimes called their disciples’ “fathers,” but Paul more than any other kind of teacher, for he brought them the message of Christ (4:15). So Paul, their father, invites them to do what children often do with their fathers: to imitate him (4:16). He offers Timothy, his son in the Lord, as an example of this behavior (4:17). If they choose not to receive his gentle, fatherly admonition, however, they would leave him no alternative but to come discipline them as a father must (4:18-21).

Sometimes today we are tempted to identify with people that we exalt, instead of exalting the Lord. But Paul’s example shows us that true servants of the Lord humble themselves; the greatest is the least. Paul was ready to offer any sacrifice in his life to serve God’s purposes. We must do the same. It’s not about being famous, but about being faithful; not about being praised, but about bringing praise to the One who merits it.

 

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God’s forgiveness — Exodus 32:7-14

Have you ever done something so bad that you wondered on what basis God could forgive you?

Soon after God delivered his people from slavery, they did something very bad. Instead of worshiping the true, imageless God who brought them out of Egypt, Israel asked for a god of their own making, and attributed their deliverance to a golden calf. Israel would have been accustomed to the Egyptian worship of bovine images in Egypt, but by this point they already knew better, because God had forbidden making an image of him like anything on earth (Exod 20:4-5).

Israel claimed that the calf was their god who brought them up from Egypt (Exod 32:8). Angrily, God spoke to Moses of Moses’s people whom Moses had brought up from Egypt (32:7). Moses in turn reminded God that these were God’s people whom God had brought up from Egypt (32:11).

God declared to Moses, “I have seen this people,” noting their obstinacy and threatening to destroy them (32:9). Much earlier, when God first called Moses, God spoke of seeing his people: “I have seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt,” and, “I have seen the oppression with which the Egyptians are oppressing them.” There he announced that he had heard their cries and had come down to deliver them (3:7-9). This new declaration to destroy his people reversed his earlier intention, declared when he called Moses to deliver them. His people clearly had acted very badly.

Moses offers a couple arguments to intercede for his people; one is for the honor of God’s name among the Egyptians (32:11-12). We know that God cared what the Egyptians thought because he had sent judgments to show the Egyptians that he was God (7:5; 14:4, 18). (Indeed, God’s plan was for the Egyptians to know him one day; Isaiah 19:21.)

But (more to the point of this Bible study) Moses also argues by reminding God of his own promises. When God had initially revealed himself to Moses, he declared that he was the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (3:6, 15). He had promised to deliver Israel and bring them into a land flowing with milk and honey (3:8). So now Moses calls God to remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, to whom he promised multiplied descendants and the land for them (32:13). He did not want God to reverse his earlier plan, and appealed to God’s characteristic faithfulness. So the Lord changed his mind and did not destroy his people (32:14).

God spared his people because of his covenant faithfulness, because of his promises to his servants Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. And it is the same with us today. God spares us, forgives us, and looks on us with favor because of what Jesus Christ has done for us. God is still the God who is faithful to his covenant. He does not forget his mercy. And he has provided us that mercy at the greatest cost to himself, for Jesus was even more than a faithful servant of God like Abraham, Isaac, or Jacob. He was God’s own Son, whom God gave on our behalf to save us.

 

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Bible interpretation methods you should avoid

One must be very careful with word-studies, and should entirely avoid the usual sort of word-study sermons: These are equivalent to preaching from a dictionary rather than from the Bible!  Thus some ministers preach on the different “kinds” of love in different passages, agapao love versus phileo love.  But the distinction between these two “kinds” of love had virtually disappeared by the New Testament period, so they are often (probably even usually) used interchangeably!  Tracing all the uses of a particular word in the Bible is helpful for finding out the different ways that word can be used.  It should never form a sermon outline, however (the exception might be some passages in Proverbs), because that is preaching from a concordance rather than from a text studied in its context.

One should also avoid determining the meaning of words by their etymologies.  That is, you cannot break a word down into its component parts and always come up with its meaning, and you usually cannot determine the meaning a word has by looking at how it was used centuries earlier or how the word originated.  For a contemporary example, if one of my students called me a “nice professor,” they might intend it as a compliment.  But if I were committed to understanding words according to their origins, I could grow very angry.  In English, “nice” is a friendly term; but its Latin source means “ignorant” or “foolish.”  So I could misunderstand someone calling me “nice” as that person calling me “ignorant”!  We know that English does not work that way, and we should not expect ancient languages to work that way, either.

For example, some take the Greek word for “repent,” metanoieo, and divide it into two parts, of which the second, noieo, is related to thinking.  Therefore, they say, “repent” simply means a change of mind.  The problem with this interpretation is that the meaning of words is determined by their usage, not by their origins!  The New Testament generally uses “repent” not in the Greek sense of “changing one’s mind” but in the sense of “turn” in the Old Testament prophets: a radical turning of our lives from sin to God’s righteousness.

Another example of this problem occurs when interpreters speak of the Church as the “called-out ones” based on the Greek word for church, ekklesia.  We are, to be sure, “called-out,” but we know that for other reasons, not because we can determine that from ekklesia.  Some divide ekklesia into ek, meaning “out of,” and kaleo, which means “call.”  But ekklesia had already been used by Greeks for centuries to mean an “assembly” or “gathering”; Jewish people who knew Greek spoke of the congregation of Israel in the wilderness as God’s ekklesia.  So the New Testament does not make up a new word to call Christians the “called-out-ones”; rather, it uses a standard term for an assembly, and probably the first Christians thought especially of God’s own assembly in the Old Testament, his people.

People can twist Greek the way they can twist English, Hausa, or anything else.  When Jehovah’s Witnesses claim that John 1:1 calls Jesus “a God” because there is no definite article (“the”) in front of “God” there, they neglect several factors, of which I will briefly summarize two.  First, “God” does not always have a definite article in John’s Gospel; the God who sent John the Baptist does not have a definite article (Jn 1:6), but Jehovah’s Witnesses never say he was simply “a god.”  Second, grammatically “God” is a predicate nominative in “the Word was God,” and predicate nominatives usually omit definite articles.  Even without moving any further, we can see that the Jehovah’s Witness interpretation here is based on a lack of knowledge of Greek.

Some people speak of zoe as the “God-kind-of-life,” but zoe refers to human life just as easily.  Some misinterpret Greek grammar, claiming that “faith of God” must mean “the God-kind-of-faith”; it could mean that, but in context probably means “faith in God.”  Some claim that “now” in Hebrews 11:1 means present-tense “now”; but the Greek term there means “but” or “and.”  Someone once claimed to me that Christians would all become Christ, because he would come with “ten-thousands of himself” in Jude 14.  The person’s error was simple–”ten-thousands of him” is the appropriate way to say in Greek, “ten-thousands belonging to him”–but it led them into a serious doctrinal error.  More often than not (there may be some exceptions), when someone comes up with an interpretation based on Greek or Hebrew that contradicts what one would have thought from reading the rest of the Bible, they may be reading into the Greek or the Hebrew something that is not there.  It is helpful to learn Greek and Hebrew for yourself, but if you cannot, sticking with a couple good translations is usually safe.

The most common anticontext Bible interpretation method is practiced by cults like Jehovah’s Witnesses by also widespread in churches of most denominations.  We read into the text what we already expect to find there, because of our doctrine or because of how we have heard a story told!  How often have we read a Bible story only to realize that part of the story we always heard is not in that passage?  How often have we read our doctrine (maybe even a correct doctrine, supported by other texts) into a text or texts that did not really address the issue?  When this happens, Christians from different groups can no longer use the Bible as a common basis for seeking truth, because we are all “sure” of our own interpretations, which we sometimes cannot defend from context!  It is important enough to respect the Bible enough to let it speak for itself.  If our doctrine is not in a passage, we do not need to read it in; our doctrine is probably in some other passage–or else respect for the Bible’s authority may require us to fix our doctrine.  In this way we are open to fresh discoveries in the Bible each time we study it.  At the same time, this does not mean that we throw away everything we have already learned and start with nothing each day.  We build on what we have already learned, and go back and change particular interpretations only as we study the text as honestly as possible and find a need to change.  This way we can also dialogue with other honest Christians around the Scriptures.

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A response to those who are skeptical of miracles

Craig asserts that eyewitnesses have offered hundreds of millions of claims of what they believe are miracles. But have you ever encountered someone who says miracles don’t happen? In this video Craig responds to those skeptics. Additionally, he shares how he was an atheist before his conversion to Christianity and how that perspective helps him understand those who don’t believe.

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A common objection to studying in context

I will deal here with one objection to studying the Bible in its context that arises in some circles.

Some people quote Scripture out of context and then claim they are right because they have special authority or a special revelation from God.  But they should be honest in claiming that this is a special revelation rather than the Scripture.  All revelations must be judged (1 Corinthians 14:29; 1 Thessalonians 5:20-21), and God gave us a Bible in part so we could test other revelations.

No one has the right to short-circuit hearers’ rights to evaluate their claims from Scripture by claiming a revelation about Scripture’s meaning which the hearers cannot evaluate by studying it for themselves.  Otherwise anyone could claim that Scripture means anything! Any view can be supported based on proof-texts out of context; any theology can make its reasoning sound consistent; Jehovah’s Witnesses do this all the time.  We dare not base our faith on other people’s study of the Bible rather than on the Bible itself.

We should be very careful what we claim the Bible teaches.  Claiming that “The Bible says” is equivalent to claiming, “This is what the Lord says.”  In Jeremiah’s day, some false prophets falsely claimed to be speaking what God was saying, but they were in fact speaking from their own imaginations (Jeremiah 23:16) and stealing their messages from each other (Jeremiah 23:30) rather than listening to God’s voice for themselves (Jeremiah 23:22).

God can sovereignly speak to people through Scripture out of context if he wishes, just as he can speak through a bird or a poem or a donkey; if God is all-powerful (Revelation 1:8), He can speak however He pleases.  But we do not routinely appeal to donkeys to teach us truth, and how he speaks to one person through a verse out of context does not determine its meaning for all hearers for all time.  The universal meaning of the text is the meaning to which all readers have access, namely, what it means in context.

When I was a young Christian recently converted, I was taking a class in Latin and supposed to be translating Caesar for my homework.  Wanting to read only my Bible and not do my homework, I flipped open the Bible and stuck my finger down, hoping to find a text that said, “Forsake all and follow me.”  Instead, I found, “Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s” (Luke 20:25).  God chose to answer my foolish approach to Scripture on the level it deserved, but this hardly means that this text now summons all Christians to translate Caesar’s Gallic War!

All claims to hear God’s voice must be evaluated (1 Corinthians 14:29; 1 Thessalonians 5:20-21), and listening to someone else’s claim can get us in trouble if we do not test it carefully (1 Kings 13:18-22).  Paul warns us: “If anyone thinks himself a prophet or spiritual, let him acknowledge that what I write is the Lord’s command.  If one ignores this, he himself will be ignored” (1 Corinthians 14:37-38).  The one revelation to which all Christians can look with assurance is the Bible; what we can be sure it means is what God meant when he inspired the original authors to communicate their original message.  This is the one revelation all Christians agree on as the “canon,” or measuring-stick, for all other claims to revelation.  Thus we need to do our best to properly understand it, preach it and teach it the way God gave it to us, in context.

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The importance of context in Bible study

Context is the way God gave us the Bible, one book at a time.  The first readers of Mark could not flip over to Revelation to help them understand Mark; Revelation had not been written yet.  The first readers of Galatians did not have a copy of the letter Paul wrote to Rome to help them understand it.  These first readers did share some common information with the author outside the book they received.

We’ll call this shared information “background”: some knowledge of the culture, earlier biblical history, and so on.  But they had, most importantly, the individual book of the Bible that was in front of them.  Therefore we can be confident that the writers of the Bible included enough within each book of the Bible to help the readers understand that book of the Bible without referring to information they lacked.  For that reason, context is the most important academic key to Bible interpretation.

Often popular ministers today quote various isolated verses they have memorized, even though this means that they will usually leave 99% of the Bible’s verses unpreached.  One seemingly well-educated person told a Bible teacher that she thought the purpose of having a Bible was to look up the verses the minister quoted in church!  But the Bible is not a collection of people’s favorite verses with a lot of blank space in between.  Using verses out of context one could “prove” almost anything about God or justify almost any kind of behavior–as history testifies.  But in the Bible God revealed Himself in His acts in history, through the inspired records of those acts and the inspired wisdom of His servants addressing specific situations.

People in my culture value everything “instant”: “instant” mashed potatoes; fast food; and so forth.  Similarly, we too often take short-cuts to understanding the Bible by quoting random verses or assuming that others who taught us have understood them correctly.  When we do so, we fail to be diligent in seeking God’s Word (Proverbs 2:2-5; 4:7; 8:17; 2 Timothy 2:15).

One prominent minister in the U.S., Jim Bakker, was so busy with his ministry to millions of people that he did not have time to study Scripture carefully in context.  He trusted that his friends whose teachings he helped promote surely had done so.  Later, when his ministry collapsed, he spent many hours honestly searching the Scriptures and realized to his horror that on some points Jesus’ teachings, understood in context, meant the exact opposite of what he and his friends had been teaching!  It is never safe to simply depend on what someone else claims that God says (1 Kings 13:15-26).

I discovered this for myself when, as a young Christian, I began reading 40 chapters of the Bible a day (enough to finish the New Testament every week or the Bible every month).  I was shocked to discover how much Scripture I had essentially ignored between the verses I had memorized, and how carefully the intervening text connected those verses.  I had been missing so much, simply using the Bible to defend what I already believed!  After one begins reading the Bible a book at a time, one quickly recognizes that verses isolated from their context nearly always mean something different when read in context.

We cannot, in fact, even pretend to make sense of most verses without reading their context.  Isolating verses from their context disrespects the authority of Scripture because this method of interpretation cannot be consistently applied to the whole of Scripture.  It picks verses that seem to make sense on their own, but most of the rest of the Bible is left over when it is done, incapable of being used the same way.  Preaching and teaching the Bible the way it invites us to interpret it—in its original context–both explains the Bible accurately and provides our hearers a good example how they can learn the Bible better for themselves.

If we read any other book, we would not simply take an isolated statement in the middle of the book and ignore the surrounding statements that help us understand the reason for that statement.  If we hand a storybook to a child already learning how to read, the child would probably start reading at the beginning.  That people so often read the Bible out of context is not because it comes naturally to us, but because we have been taught the wrong way by frequent example.  Without disrespecting those who have done the best they could without understanding the principle of context, we must now avail ourselves of the chance to begin teaching the next generation the right way to interpret the Bible.

Many contradictions some readers claim to find in the Bible arise simply from ignoring the context of the passages they cite, jumping from one text to another without taking the time to first understand each text on its own terms.  To develop an example offered above, when Paul says that a person is justified by faith without works (Romans 3:28), his context makes it clear that he defines faith as something more than passive assent to a viewpoint; he defines it as a conviction that Christ is our salvation, a conviction on which one actively stakes one’s life (Romans 1:5).  James declares that one cannot be justified by faith without works (James 2:14)—because he uses the word “faith” to mean mere assent that something is true (2:19), he demands that such assent be actively demonstrated by obedience to show that it is genuine (2:18).  In other words, James and Paul use the word “faith” differently, but do not contradict one another on the level of meaning.  If we ignore context and merely connect different verses on the basis of similar wording, we will come up with contradictions in the Bible that the original writers would never have imagined.