In this video, Mike Licona asks me off the cuff about the Gospel of John.
John was my dissertation area under D. Moody Smith at Duke, and I wrote on it a two-volume commentary (Baker Academic), plus a shorter background one more recently (for Zondervan).
Mike Licona interviews Craig about differences in the Gospels.
God had a plan for your life long before you started learning about it. “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,” God told Jeremiah. “Before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations” (Jer 1:5 NIV). There is often a rush of excitement learning that God has a special plan and significance for us, special gifts and roles in his larger plan.
We may, however, also experience a sense of apprehension. What if we already had different plans of our own? Different plans do not always prove incompatible, but sometimes they do. Jeremiah’s mission would end up consuming his attention and most of the rest of his life. If our plans prove incompatible with God’s, it’s wise to scrap ours straight off and not waste time fooling around. (Moses and especially Jonah took a good bit of persuasion, and, especially in Jonah’s case, it wasn’t pretty.)
Jeremiah’s objection was different. “Oh, Lord, I can’t speak in front of people! I’m just a kid!” he protested (Jer 1:6). Protocol back then meant that people’s rank in society dictated the weight attached to their words. Who would listen to Jeremiah? Protesting one’s calling was not a new thing. Moses, who could have protested that he was too old (eighty, Exod 7:7), tried to explain to God that he was a bad speaker. Nobody was going to listen to this old shepherd from the backside of the wilderness (Exod 4:10; 6:12, 30). Gideon protested that he was youngest member of the least respected family in his tribe (Judg 6:15). Most of us could at least voice Isaiah’s objection: confronted with God’s absolute holiness, he recognized the finiteness and weakness of his own lips (Isa 6:5).
Most of us would love our lives to have significance in God’s plan. But most of us also recognize that having such a role demands something more than what we seem to be made of. A prophet to the nations? (Jer 1:5) (Jeremiah was mostly a prophet to Judah, but also offered oracles concerning many nations, which helped put his prophecies to Judah in perspective. Later Paul as an apostle to the nations/gentiles would actually proclaim the message of Christ in many gentile cities.)
The bad news is that our initial fear is correct: we’re not capable of doing what God called us to do. The good news is that we’re in good company, as neither is anybody else. God delights to use people who can’t fulfill his call in our own strength, so that we have to depend on him. By the time God fulfills what he calls us to do, we recognize that he gets the credit, not us. (Some of you read my blogs because you know me as a Bible scholar. You probably didn’t know that for a few years I was really worried whether I would even get into a PhD program. I’m doing now what I was made to do, but though it burned in my heart back then, it seemed entirely possible that I would just pastor small congregations and support myself by flipping burgers. And there are still aspects of my calling for which I look to the Lord.)
The really good news is that when God calls us, he is with us to fulfill his calling. It’s not our doing: it’s him using us (Jer 1:8-10, 18-19). God’s word was going to come to pass, because God was speaking it (1:12, 14-16); but Judah needed to hear the message beforehand, so that they would understand why God was judging them.
Now some more bad news, at least from the human perspective: people were not going to like what God was giving Jeremiah to say. This may be harder on those of us who are sensitive to what others think than on somebody thick-skinned and pugnacious. It was certainly going to be hard on Jeremiah. God’s assurance, “Don’t let them scare you! I’ll rescue you!” (Jer 1:8) gave a hint where this was going. “If you give in to them, you’re through,” God essentially says (1:17). Jeremiah would struggle inwardly, but he never did renounce his message to Judah.
“They’ll fight against you,” God warns, but it will be okay because God will be with him and rescue him (1:19). Centuries earlier, Moses asked, “Who am I?” (Exod 3:11), and instead of answering who Moses was, God reminded him that God was with him (3:12). God also provided a more important declaration of identity: “I AM who I AM” (Exod 3:14). It’s not who we are but who God is that makes the difference.
In the short run, this was bad news for Jeremiah. Following God’s will meant that he would be ostracized and attacked. “Nobody owes me money, nor do I owe money to anybody else, but everybody curses me anyway!” (Jer 15:10). He would have to stay single—to spare him from the grief of having to lose a family when judgment came (16:2-4). He couldn’t attend parties or funerals; separated by his devotion to God, he fed on God’s words but was isolated from what mattered to the rest of society (15:16-17; 16:5-9). His closest friends would turn on him (20:10). He would endure public beating, humiliation and imprisonment for not being appropriately “patriotic” (20:1-3). His own relatives, priests in Anathoth (cf. 1:1), would want to kill him (11:21).
Yet in the long run, he turned out to be the one true prophet of his generation. His generation didn’t listen to him, but after judgment fell, Judah learned their lesson. Three books of the Bible written after Jeremiah’s lifetime emphasize that God’s words to Jeremiah were fulfilled: Daniel (Dan 9:2), the conclusion of 2 Chronicles (2 Chron 36:21-22) and the beginning of Ezra (Ezra 1:1).
When Jesus called disciples to follow him, they had to leave their professions and everything they owned behind, at least for awhile (Mark 1:18, 20). In the end, they found themselves unprepared for Jesus’s even greater demands to take up their cross and follow him (8:34; 15:21)—although that changed after Easter and Pentecost (Acts 2:14, 37, 42).
We live on the other side of Easter and Pentecost. Your calling might seem big or small in others’ eyes. Maybe all you know about God’s plan for you so far is the basics: love him, love your neighbor, love your fellow believers, and share Christ with the world. Whatever God’s plan is for you, are you ready to surrender everything to him? Are you ready to recognize that his plan for you is what is best, and is worth any price you must pay along the way?
After some introductory comments about Corinth, we examine what drew Paul together with his new colleagues Aquila and Priscilla, and how they supported themselves as ordinary people while sharing the good news about Jesus in this major city.
Luke wrote two volumes, the Gospel of Luke and the Book of Acts. His second book, the Book of Acts emphasizes the mission to the nations—a crucial mission without which we would not have Gentile Christians today (though we might at least have Messianic Judaism). But before recounting the mission to Gentiles in Acts, Luke prepares his audience by recounting Jesus’s mission to other kinds of outsiders in his first volume, the Gospel of Luke.
If we want to be ready for mission in another location, we can start preparing by crossing cultural and other barriers closer to home.
Throughout Luke’s Gospel, Jesus ministers to those lacking status and power in his culture (such as the poor and non-elite women). Among those alienated from society, he reaches out to “sinners”—those marginalized by virtue of their behavior. His kingdom does not depend on human political or military power; he pursues the lowly, showing that God is not impressed with our worldly credentials. Yet Jesus not only ministers to the marginalized; he builds his new kingdom around them.
Scripture often reports that God is near the lowly but far from the proud (e.g., Matt 23:12; Luke 1:52; 14:11; 18:14; Jms 4:6; 1 Pet 5:5); he reveals himself in human weakness more than in what the world deems power (1 Cor 1:18-26; 2 Cor 12:9; 13:4). Jesus welcomes everyone, but it is those who recognize their desperate need of him who most welcome him. If we recognize our need to depend fully on God, we are blessed. If we do not, we need to spend more time among the broken and the lowly, learning from their hearts.
In Luke 7:36-50, he welcomes the controversial gift that one such marginalized person offers.
It was considered pious to invite a popular sage over for dinner, and Simon the Pharisee has invited Jesus for dinner (Luke 7:36). At banquets, guests typically reclined on large, backless couches (three or four diners per couch), their feet pointed away from the tables; sometimes outsiders might come watch. A woman of ignoble repute in the community (so 7:37) enters the house and begins washing Jesus’s feet, wiping them with her hair. Simon is offended: surely a prophet like Jesus would know this woman’s ill repute. Indeed, in his culture respectable married women (i.e., respectable adult women) covered their hair in public. Thus by wiping Jesus’s feet with her hair, as far as Simon was concerned, the woman put her sinfulness on display!
But Jesus is indeed a prophet—he knows what Simon is thinking. Jesus helps Simon to realize that those who recognize their need for forgiveness most are the most grateful to receive it. Then Jesus, though still addressing Simon, turns away from the table to finally face the woman. Washing Jesus’s feet, she has been outside the circle of couches; banqueters reclined on their left elbows and their feet pointed away from the tables (after all, who wants someone’s stinky feet in their face?)
Jesus reminds Simon that he offensively failed to provide Jesus with the most basic, expected courtesies in their culture. A host should provide a guest water for washing the feet (though a respectable host would not wash the guests’ feet himself, a more servile task). Likewise, one should give a light kiss of respect to a teacher; one might also provide oil for anointing. Simon has failed in all these courtesies expected of a host. Jesus might be a special guest, but for Simon, Jesus is not that significant, compared to Simon and his peers.
By contrast, this woman has provided Jesus all the honors that Simon failed to offer—displaying gratitude for her forgiven sins. By linking forgiveness to their treatment of himself, Jesus implies that he himself is the bearer of divine forgiveness. By honoring or dishonoring him people show their response to grace.
Meanwhile, other table guests recoil in horror from Jesus’s words: how can he forgive sins (7:49)? They do not recognize how central Jesus is to God’s plan. They do not understand his identity. And, like Simon, they are proud, more ready to judge Jesus than to learn from him. All because he welcomes sinners!
When we look down on others who received grace after we did (perhaps the incarcerated, or unwed mothers, or even someone who wronged us personally), we forget that we, too, can be saved only by grace. Of course, Jesus is not offering cheap forgiveness to those choosing to remain in sin; he forgives those who truly turn to him. Yet this woman was turning from being a “sinner” more readily than the Pharisee and most of his guests were willing to turn from sinful, religious pride. To be most ready for crossing cultural barriers in mission (the Book of Acts), we should begin crossing barriers near us, to experience and share God’s grace (his generous favor) to others around us.
That Jesus welcomes the woman’s gift—no matter what others think—reminds us of another theme in Luke-Acts: those who are initially objects of mission can become missionaries themselves. For the most part, Jesus chose as his first agents fishermen, a tax collector, and those of apparently nondescript professions rather than the more humanly obvious choices of priests or scribes. Peter, the “sinful man” (Luke 5:8); Paul the persecutor (Acts 9:13-15); and others become agents of Christ’s mission.
The Spirit empowering the apostles’ circle for mission at Pentecost (Acts 1:8) is also poured out on the Samaritans (Acts 8:17) and Gentiles (Acts 10:44-47) and all who are far off (Acts 2:38-39). Why? So all these groups can share in the apostolic mission of proclaiming Christ. Some who may begin as some sort of marginal minority within our circle of believers may be laying the foundations for future ministry. Cheryl Sanders, a pastor and professor of ethics at Howard University, has a valuable book called Ministry at the Margins: The Prophetic Mission of Women, Youth & the Poor. Her title catches one of the themes in Luke-Acts.
God does not usually start his activity where we expect or the way we expect. He does not need our wealth, status or power, because he does not want our pride. He often starts with the lowly and the marginal (Luke 1:51-53), pouring out his Spirit and surprising us with revival, just to remind us all that the power for his work comes from him and not from ourselves.
Craig Keener is author of commentaries on Matthew, John, Acts, Romans, 1-2 Corinthians, Galatians, and Revelation; his IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, has sold more than half a million copies.
As an interracially married minister, ordained in an African-American denomination but currently president of the Evangelical Theological Society, I want to share some of what the Bible teaches about ethnic conflict and reconciliation. This is just an overview (what I can do in half an hour), and I am skipping here my personal stories (again, staying at about half an hour). But my observations here draw on what I have been speaking about in my classes and public settings for some 30 years. Thirty years ago most people were not listening 🙁 but I am trying again today: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1PcBRqFph0
(If you want a one-minute video with just some thoughts about racial reconciliation, from my wife Médine, who is from Central Africa, and myself, a white guy from the U.S., see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqQSUfbNeU0)