Wrath and righteousness revealed in the Gospel?

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OK, try this:

For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith.” For [in it] the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth….  For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood through faithfulness. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who is of the faith of  Jesus.

Others have suggested that the wrath is revealed in the Gospel… but they have appealed to passages that don’t speak of God’s wrath revealed now, but rather promise it will be revealed later:

Do you suppose, O man—you who judge those who practice such things and yet do them yourself—that you will escape the judgment of God? Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance? But because of your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed.

That is still waiting in the future. It can’t be what Romans 1.18 is claiming.

They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them on that day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus.

Again, future. It is involved in the Gospel message but it is not identical to what Paul claims reveals God’s wrath from heaven.

Jesus on the cross revealed God’s wrath on sin. And it is revealed in the Gospel so that it reveals God’s righteousness.

Without Cause

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From Proverbs 3:

Do not plan evil against your neighbor,
who dwells trustingly beside you.
Do not contend with a man for no reason,
when he has done you no harm.
Do not envy a man of violence
and do not choose any of his ways,
for the devious person is an abomination to the Lord,
but the upright are in his confidence.

The first four lines seem pretty self-evident. But I wonder if this neighbor is himself the violent man you must not emulate even in trying to “fight fire with fire” against him. The statement is that “he has done you know harm,” but I wonder if Proverbs 24 is the same situation:

Be not a witness against your neighbor without cause,
and do not deceive with your lips.
Do not say, “I will do to him as he has done to me;
I will pay the man back for what he has done.”

“For no reason,” “he has done you know harm,” “without cause,” are all assertions made against what you want to believe. You think it is payback time and Solomon is telling you otherwise.

Who are “we” and when were we “saved” while “still sinners” and “weak”?

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For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.

This reads like a story of “our” conversion. It is as if Jesus’ death was the time that we came to faith and were justified.

But many had faith before Jesus died and many did not come to faith until long after. Some were, like Abraham, already justified in some way. Others were still under the wrath of God long after Jesus died.

So Paul is somehow personifying the human race in history and regarding Jesus’ death as an objective verdict on us all.

He likewise personifies the nation of Israel as a single Jew whom he questions in Romans 3.

And this means that he could identify with Israel in Romans 7. He has already set the precedent for this sort of rhetorical strategy.

The Promise of the Second Adam: A Sermon on Romans 5.12-21

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LIFE AND RULE THAT (WILL) FAR SURPASS DEATH AND SLAVERY: Romans 5.12-21

I’m sure all of us have heard the horrible news about the earthquake and the tsunami that has devastated Japan. When we hear about these awful and death-dealing natural disasters, as Christians we are reminded of the sin of Adam and how God cursed the ground in response to that sin. Our text today promises us that the curse on the earth is not the last word. Hear the word of the Lord.

[READ TEXT]

[SING PRAYER]

You may be seated.

The passage I read starts with a “therefore”

Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man…

Why “therefore”? Paul is making an observation based on the statement he has just made. So look at the preceding verses and see how they lead Paul into this discussion of Adam and Christ.

For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.

Now this passage is deceptively familiar, but remember Paul is not talking about a conversion experience you or I had. He is summing up the human races downward spiral of sin which he started describing in Romans 1.18ff when he wrote:

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth…

And he goes on to describe human culture, both Gentile and Jewish, as it descends from sin to sin. It was in the middle of that awful history that Jesus came and appeased the wrath of God and provided atonement for sin… “while we were still weak” “while we were still sinners” “Christ died for us”

And that means that now, since Christ has died for us to reconcile us to God, now much more “shall we be saved by his life”

So Paul now says, “Therefore” because what he has said means that Jesus’ victory is mightier than Adam’s defeat. Jesus’ salvation is mightier than Adam’s misery. The human race’s spiral into sin started with Adam and Jesus is going to far far outshine Adam’s darkness. So we read.:

sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned

From Adam and Eve onward sin has been a fact in human existence. We grow into it spontaneously. And we live in a world suffering under the curse of death because of sin. As Paul writes later in his letter to the Romans:

For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.

We see this futility in food shortages and natural disasters. We see it in hurricanes and flu outbreaks. Just the other night I watched a special about the influenza outbreak of 1918. I had never heard of that because there was seemingly an effort to forget it happened. But we lost more people to influenza that year than died in World War I. In fact, if you graph the life expectancy of Americans over the years you see it plunges down and then comes back up due to this flu epidemic. The curse on the world is real.

And we see it most directly in the universal fact of death.

— for sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law. Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come.

Adam and Christ are alike in that they both were covenant representatives whose actions affected the entire world. Paul points out that Adam was himself a kind of prophetic image of Jesus.

But Paul also writes about how the giving of the Law to Israel intensified sin. Paul here is building on something he wrote in Romans 3, “through the law comes knowledge of sin” and by “knowledge” I suspect he means intimate acquaintance, not simply intellectual knowledge. The law, Paul writes, rather than alleviating sin, intensified it.

Think about Adam and Eve. They were in a special garden sanctuary, in the land of Eden, where they used their privileged position to transgress God’s boundaries. People sinned after that, but it wasn’t until Moses that God again set up a special sanctuary.  The Tabernacle plans were given with the Law from Mount Sinai. As a result, Israel was enabled to commit transgression just like Adam did.

Paul makes it clear, by the way, that when he writes “sin is not counted where there is no law,” that he means it is not counted as much. He is being intentionally hyperbolic. As he writes just below, “the law came in to increase the trespass.” It did not create trespass but it increased it. The Law intensified sin and guilt.

But why give the Law if it is only going to increase trespass? Paul deals with that issue in more detail later in Romans, but he gives a short answer here if we read a little further. But first he contrasts Adam and Jesus:

But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if many died through one man’s trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man Jesus Christ abounded for many.

So here is the basic claim. From Jesus salvation as a free gift is going to spread and grow to leave a far greater mark on human history than Adam’s sin. It may not look like it yet. We may wonder how God is going to convert billions of people, but make no mistake that God’s long term agenda is to see the work of Christ produce results that far outstrip the horrible results of Adam’s sin.

And the free gift is not like the result of that one man’s sin. For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brought justification.

Now here is another parallelism. Not only does Paul compare Adam and Jesus, he also compares the sin of Adam to the sins that led Jesus to the cross. He contrasts “judgment following one trespass,” with “the free gift following many trespasses.” Adam’s sin brought condemnation. You would think that the many more sins would bring even greater condemnation. After all, that is what those sins deserved.

But it all turns out to have been God’s plan for grace and salvation! God was creating a Judgment Day not in order to condemn humanity further, but to deal with sin in a way that provides salvation. As Paul writes in Romans 8,

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.

When Israel rejected Jesus and chose Barabbas so that Jesus would be crucified, that climactic crime–the culmination of many transgressions in Israel’s history–turned out to be part of God’s plan for mercy. As Paul writes in Romans 11

So I ask, did they stumble in order that they might fall? By no means! Rather through their trespass salvation has come to the Nations, so as to make Israel jealous. Now if their trespass means riches for the world, and if their failure means riches for the Gentiles, how much more will their full inclusion mean!

Now the timing of this is debatable but I want you to see that it is clear that Israel’s sin of unbelief, which resulted in the crucifixion of Jesus, was part of God’s plan to provide atonement.

For just as you were at one time disobedient to God but now have received mercy because of their disobedience, so they too have now been disobedient in order that by the mercy shown to you they also may now receive mercy. For God has consigned all to disobedience, that he may have mercy on all.

So all this sin—all the trespass that was intensified by the giving of the Law to Israel, was all part of God’s plan to provide the means for judging sin. Jesus came in the fullness of time to stand in the place of the world and pay the penalty for sin.

That’s why over and over in Romans Paul deals with people who are outraged by his message and mock him saying “Let us do evil that good may come” Remember these words from Romans 3:

Then what advantage has the Jew? Or what is the value of circumcision? Much in every way. To begin with, the Jews were entrusted with the oracles of God. What if some were unfaithful? Does their faithlessness nullify the faithfulness of God? By no means! Let God be true though every one were a liar, as it is written,

“That you may be justified in your words,
and prevail when you are judged.”

But if our unrighteousness serves to show the righteousness of God, what shall we say? That God is unrighteous to inflict wrath on us? (I speak in a human way.) By no means! For then how could God judge the world? But if through my lie God’s truth abounds to his glory, why am I still being condemned as a sinner? And why not do evil that good may come?—as some people slanderously charge us with saying. Their condemnation is just.

You see, God had promised to bring salvation to the world through Israel and told Israel to be faithful to the covenant. Yet we find now that God used their unfaithfulness to keeps his promise to bring salvation to the whole world, Jesus and Gentile alike—to anyone who will place their faith in Jesus. So now we have a free gift that is greater than the condemnation resulting from Adam’s trespass. And it is a gift that, amazingly, was brought about through many trespasses.

For if, because of one man’s trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ.

Did you catch that? Paul writes that “death reigned” and you would expect him to say that now “life will reign” But he doesn’t. He  says that “death reigned” and now WE REIGN: “much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life.”

This is the promise of Daniel 7. The Son of Man (Son of Adam) is vindicated and that means the saints are given the kingdom.  Adam was given dominion but then reduced himself and us to slavery to sin. So now Jesus exalts us as rulers with him over the cosmos. Paul is telling his readers that the prophecy of Daniel is already true. It has been fulfilled.

Now maybe you don’t feel like a ruler. But that’s because you’re not looking with the eyes of faith. When God called Abraham he said he did so in order to give him a position of authority. In Genesis 18 we read, “The Lord said, Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do…” And what follows is the story of how Abraham interceded for Sodom and Gomorrah. The reason why we pray is because we are kings and queens. We are God’s counselors. We have access to God’s throne room.

But we can trust that there will be other tangible growing blessings as well as the Faith spreads. If we compare our world to the world of Paul’s day, in terms of disease and natural disasters I think we can see some pretty favorable changes. Maybe we’ll lose some ground in the near future, but God’s kingdom will not be stopped. That is what Paul tells us in Romans.

Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men. For as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous.

Now Paul has already made it clear that only believers benefit from Jesus work, but the point here is that he expects more believers than not. If it frustrates you that we don’t see more of these conversions in our own time, that is good. Pray for them. Work on being used to bring them about. We are given these great descriptions of what God expects and promises to bring about eventually in order to make us impatient to see them now. We should be motivated to share the Gospel.

And so Paul sums up.

Now the law came in to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, so that, as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Paul wrote at the beginning of Romans that he was called and “received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations” Romans is a book about the Great Commission. God is not content with a small remnant. He loves us but he wants us to be the seed of something much bigger. He has a vision of the whole world being more dramatically affected by the death and resurrection of Jesus than it was by the fall of Adam.

Remember his words through Isaiah the prophet in chapter 49 of that book:

Listen to me, O coastlands,
and give attention, you peoples from afar.
The Lord called me from the womb,
from the body of my mother he named my name.
He made my mouth like a sharp sword;
in the shadow of his hand he hid me;
he made me a polished arrow;
in his quiver he hid me away.
And he said to me, “You are my servant,
Israel, in whom I will be glorified.”
But I said, “I have labored in vain;
I have spent my strength for nothing and vanity;
yet surely my right is with the Lord,
and my recompense with my God.”

And now the Lord says,
he who formed me from the womb to be his servant,
to bring Jacob back to him;
and that Israel might be gathered to him—
for I am honored in the eyes of the Lord,
and my God has become my strength—
he says:
“It is too light a thing that you should be my servant
to raise up the tribes of Jacob
and to bring back the preserved of Israel;
I will make you as a light for the nations,
that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”

 

Righteous in passing over?

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Woodenly, it says, “to declare His righteousness on account of the passing-over of before-happened sins.” That still might mean “God had passed over sin, and therefore people thought Him unconcerned with sin; He finally has shown that He’s serious about sin by putting forth Jesus as an expiating sacrifice.”

Perhaps, but it might also be taken to mean something else: first, that the passing-over was itself righteous, that God demonstrated His righteousness in forbearing in the face of sin; and, second, that the fact that His forbearance was righteous all along is shown when Jesus is set forth as a hilsterion. Either way, we cannot know God’s righteousness without the cross. But the two interpretations of the passage give us quite distinct interpretations of what God was up to in the Old Testament: Was His forbearance unrighteous or righteous? Was it an act of mercy that had to be “corrected” by the cross, or an act of justice whose justice is only evident after the cross?

via Peter J. Leithart » Blog Archive » Righteousness and sin.

What was Paul’s Gospel? That all nations are in!

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From Galatians 3:

Know then that it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham. And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, “In you shall all the nations be blessed.”

From Ephesians 3:

For this reason I, Paul, a prisoner for Christ Jesus on behalf of you Gentiles— assuming that you have heard of the stewardship of God’s grace that was given to me for you, how the mystery was made known to me by revelation, as I have written briefly. When you read this, you can perceive my insight into the mystery of Christ, which was not made known to the sons of men in other generations as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit. This mystery is that the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel. Of this gospel I was made a minister according to the gift of God’s grace, which was given me by the working of his power.

Note that the Gospel can be defined more narrowly as “Jesus is Lord by his resurrection from the dead” and more broadly, “Jesus is thus king of all nations and all who entrust themselves to him belong to him and to one another as His kingdom.” Thus Romans 10 says:

But what does it say? “The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart” (that is, the word of faith that we proclaim); because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved. For the Scripture says, “Everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame.” For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; for the same Lord is Lord of all, bestowing his riches on all who call on him. For “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”

For more see, “The true Gospel v. the Galatian heretics.”

Study of “the Gospel” (repost from Dec 17, 2000)

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The church of the first century was a phenomenon that began in the region of Palestine and then spread all over the ancient Mediterranean world. So what began as a phenomenon distinctive of first-century Judaism worked its way through the pagan culture of the Roman Empire. With this in mind, let’s consider some of the terms we find in the “New Testament”–the ancient texts from the first century regarded by the Christian church as authoritative.

What is meant by the term gospel?

Gospel is a corruption of the Anglo-Saxon word godspell. It is used to translate the Greek word evangel which means “good news,” “glad tidings,” or “joyful message.” Since the New Testament was originally written in Greek, this has become an important word in Christian circles. Consider the following ancient texts:

Some uses of gospel in ancient Palestine:

And Jesus was going about in all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and healing every kind of disease and every kind of sickness among the people.

—Matthew 4.23 (c.f. 9.35)

And after John hade been taken into custody, Jesus came into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and trust the good news.

—Mark 1.14, 15

And the book of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him [Jesus]. And he opened the book and found the place [Isaiah 61.1, 2] where it was written: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He anointed me to preach the good newsto the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are downtrodden, to proclaim the favorable year of the Lord.”

—Luke 4.17-19

{Jesus said:] The Law and the Prophets were preached until John; since then the good news of the kingdom of God is preached, and everyone is forcing his way into it.

—Luke 16.16

Some uses of gospel among Gentiles:

For I am not ashamed of the good news, for it is the power of God for deliverance to everyone who trusts, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.

—Paul’s letter to the Romans 1.16

But I am afraid, lest as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, your minds should be led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ. For if one comes and preaches another Jesus whom we have not preached, or you receive a different spirit which you have not received, or a different good news which you have not accepted, you bear this beautifully.

—Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians 11.3, 4

I am amazed that you are so quickly deserting him who called you by the grace of Christ, for a different good news; which is really not another; only there are some who are disturbing you, and want to distort the good newsof Christ.

—Paul’s letter to the Galatians 1.6, 7

In him, you also, after listening to the message of truth, the good newsof your deliverance—having also trusted, you were sealed in him with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is given as a pledge of our inheritance, with a view to the liberation of God’s own possession for the praising of his glory.

—Paul’s letter to the Ephesians 1.13, 14

I thank my god in all my remembrance of you, always offering prayer with joy in my every prayer for you all, in view of your sharing in the proclamation of the good newsfrom the first day until now.

—Paul’s letter to the Philippians 1.3-5

And although you were formerly alienated and hostile in mind, engaged in evil deeds, ye he has now reconciled you in his fleshly body through death, in order to present you before him holy and blameless and beyond reproach—if indeed you continue in the faith [or continue trusting], firmly established and steadfast and not moved away from the hope of the good news that you have heard; which was proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and of which I, Paul, was made a minister.

—Paul’s letter to the Colossians 1.21-23

It was revealed to them [the Hebrew prophets] that they were not serving themselves, but you, in these things which have now been announced to you through those who preached the good news to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven—things into which angels long to look.

—Peter’s First letter 1.12

So what does the term gospel mean in the shared context of Palestinian Judaism and the pagan Roman Empire of the first century? The background in the Hebrew scriptures is revealed by the quote from Jesus given above from Luke 4.17-19. Here are a couple of other passages.

Isaiah 40.9

Get yourself up on a high mountain,
O Zion, bearer of good news.
Lift up your voice mightily,
O Jerusalem, bearer of good news;
Lift it up, do not fear.
Say to the cities of Judah,
“Here is your god!”

Isaiah 52.7

How lovely on the mountains
Are the feet of him who brings good news,
Who announces peace
And brings good news of happiness,
Who announces deliverance,
And says to Zion, “Your god reigns!”

Some context might be helpful in explaining both these Hebrew poems. They refer to a promised return from exile. Israel was conquered and deported by Babylon and then by their successor emperors. The temple (which was located in Jerusalem on Mount Zion), where Israel’s god resided, was destroyed. These political events had incredible religious implications for the Hebrews. After all, YHWH (the god of Israel whose name remains something of a mystery for translators) was the true king of Israel. The fact that he gave up his kingdom in Israel, and permitted his people, the Israelites, to be taken away from the land he had given them was a horrible thing. But eventually, it was prophesied, YHWH would again reveal his kingship. He would restore the Israelites to the land and would once again reside among his people in Jerusalem.

The above passages referred to a change in political fortunes–the return from exile. They were not only religious sayings, but political dynamite at the time of Jesus when Israel was suffering under pagan oppression in the form of the occupying Roman Empire and the puppet regime in Palestine that ruled on its behalf.

The popular pagan use of the term gospel had very similar connotations in the Roman world of the first century. Here’s an example of it from an inscription about the birthday of Augustus Caesar that was written about 9BC

The providence which has ordered the whole of our life, showing concern and zeal, has ordained the most perfect consummation for human life by giving to it Augustus, by filling him with virtue for doing the work of a benefactor among men, and by sending in him, as it were, a deliverer for us and those who come after us, to make war to cease, to create order everywhere . . .. ; the birthday of the god [Augustus] was the beginning for the world of the good news that have come to men through him.

Here we have a very similar (though contrary) use of the term gospel. In this case, a political ruler is given religious honors—made into a god.

What is meant by “Christ”?

Christ is not the last name of Jesus. Nor is it some sort of mysterious religious title. Christ simply means “anointed one.” Israelite Kings were installed into office by being anointed. Since YHWH was understood to be the one who chose kings to rule as his representatives, kings were believed to be anointed by the god of Israel (see for example Psalm 2). For Jesus to called Christ simply in first century Palestine, simply means that he is YHWH’s promised king for Israel. In a time when Israel was dominated by a foreign empire, this was a dangerous claim. Yet it was one made by several young men both before and after Jesus. Lots of Israelites would follow a leader who claimed to be God’s chosen liberator to defeat the pagans.

Thus, Jesus Christ simply means “King Jesus.” It means he has been “crowned” (anointed) by God. It is important to realize that this meaning was not lost when the church moved out into the gentile world. Consider Paul’s declaration to a mixed crowd of Jews and Gentiles in the city of Antioch, far away from Israel:

And then they [the Israelites] asked for a king, and God gave them Saul the son of Kish, a man of the tribe of Benjamin, for forty years. And after he removed him, he raised up David to be their king, concerning whom he also testified and said, “I have found David the son of Jesse, a man after my own heart, who will do my will.” From the offspring of this man [David], according to promise, God has brought to Israel a deliverer, Jesus.

—The Acts of the Apostles 13.22, 23

David was, according to the Hebrew scriptures, God’s chosen king. YHWH had promised that his descendants would rule forever. To point out Jesus as the descendant of David is to explicitly call him the promised king.

There are some who try to evade all this and say that, among the Gentiles, the term Christ did not mean “anointed one,” but was simply a mysterious title for a divine figure. But that is impossible. Consider Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians:

Now, he who establishes us with you in Christ and anointed [chrisas] us is God.

Why honor a defeated deliverer?

As mentioned earlier, there were plenty of Jews who offered themselves as YHWH’s promised king. Like Jesus, they were eventually killed by the Romans. In every case, the result was that their followers scattered and renounced these “christs” as pretenders to the throne. After all, to falsely claim to be YHWH’s promised king was an evil thing to do. And if anyone were truly YHWH’s king, then he would not be defeated, but would conquer the pagans and vindicate Israel.

All the sources we have state that Jesus’ followers expected him to go to Jerusalem and establish his kingdom, not get crucified. So why didn’t they scatter and renounce him afterwards?

The only answer is the one we are given by his followers. God raised him from the dead. He didn’t bother to merely defeat the Romans; Jesus defeated death itself.

Notice how all these themes (gospel, Christ, descendant of David, resurrection) come together:

Paul’s 2nd letter to Timothy (2.8):

Remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, descendant of David, according to my gospel.Paul’s letter to the Romans (1.1-4):
Paul a slave of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God; [the gospel] which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy Scriptures; [the gospel] concerning his son A. 1. who was born 2. through a descendant of David 3. according to the flesh, B. 1. who was ordained the son of God with power 2. through the resurrection from the dead 3.according to the Spirit of holiness, Jesus Christ our Lord.

Notice the parallelism. Jesus goes through death to a new life.

John’s letter to the seven churches in Asia (commonly called “Revelation”) (1.4,5a, 17b, 18):
John to the seven churches that are in Asia: Grace to you and peace, from him who is and who was and who is to come; and from the seven Spirits who are before his throne; and from the Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth. . . . And when I saw him, I fell at his feet as a dead man. And he laid his right hand upon me, saying, “Do not be afraid; I am the first and the last, and the living one; and I was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of death and of Hades.

Some things to think about & discuss:

1. There is no other reason than the resurrection why Jesus would have a continued following after he died.

2. If Jesus was raised from the dead, we have good reason to think that the god of Jesus was the true god—the maker of heaven and earth.

3. If Jesus was raised from the dead, then we have good reason to think that death is a curse, which needed to be conquered.

4. If Jesus has conquered death, does this not substantiate his claim to be the “ruler of the kings of the earth? (c.f. Rev 1.5a just above)

The emperor as the Messiah and king of kings

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Peter J. Leithart » Blog Archive » Justice and righteousness.

I think Peter is absolutely right about (among other things) the position of Gentile world-emperors and his perspective is confirmed by other lines of evidence.

Consider the term “king of kings” in the Bible. When did that term first get used in Scripture? Daniel used the title for Nebuchadnezzar (Daniel 2.37) and so did Ezekiel (Ezekiel 26.7). Ezra records it as the title used by Artaxerxes (Ezra 7.12).

David and Solomon were glorious but they fell short as types of Christ in this regard.

But there is more. Daniel describes Nebuchadnezzar as not only ruler over men but over animals:

You, O king, the king of kings, to whom the God of heaven has given the kingdom, the power, and the might, and the glory, and into whose hand he has given, wherever they dwell, the children of man, the beasts of the field, and the birds of the heavens, making you rule over them all

While the birds seem to be Daniel’s own insight he may have learned about the beasts from the prophet Jeremiah:

Now I have given all these lands into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, my servant, and I have given him also the beasts of the field to serve him (Jeremiah 27.6).

For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: I have put upon the neck of all these nations an iron yoke to serve Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, and they shall serve him, for I have given to him even the beasts of the field (Jeremiah 28.14)

Even though Daniel will later compare the empires to beasts (Daniel 7), the emperors are also types of the one like the son of man/Adam. They are new Adams given dominion like Adam was given. They are a new royal humanity.

Be careful of what you think will be a ladder to success

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Thus reads Proverbs 22.29-23.9:

Do you see a man skillful in his work?
He will stand before kings;
he will not stand before obscure men.
When you sit down to eat with a ruler,
observe carefully what is before you,
and put a knife to your throat
if you are given to appetite.
Do not desire his delicacies,
for they are deceptive food.
Do not toil to acquire wealth;
be discerning enough to desist.
When your eyes light on it, it is gone,
for suddenly it sprouts wings,
flying like an eagle toward heaven.
Do not eat the bread of a man who is stingy;
do not desire his delicacies,
for he is like one who is inwardly calculating.
“Eat and drink!” he says to you,
but his heart is not with you.
You will vomit up the morsels that you have eaten,
and waste your pleasant words.
Do not speak in the hearing of a fool,
for he will despise the good sense of your words.

This looks to me like an identifiable “unit”–a series of Proverbs on a single theme or topic.

29.29 begins with a promise that sounds like a blessing. It is indeed a blessing but one with temptations and challenges. 23.1-8 in my view is a simple chiasm that shows the danger of depending on kings as a path to riches:

When you sit down to eat with a ruler,
observe carefully what is before you,
and put a knife to your throat
if you are given to appetite.
Do not desire his delicacies,
for they are deceptive food.

Do not toil to acquire wealth;
be discerning enough to desist.
When your eyes light on it, it is gone,
for suddenly it sprouts wings,
flying like an eagle toward heaven.

Do not eat the bread of a man who is stingy;
do not desire his delicacies,
for he is like one who is inwardly calculating.
“Eat and drink!” he says to you,
but his heart is not with you.
You will vomit up the morsels that you have eaten,
and waste your pleasant words.

The ruler and the stingy man are the same person. And the middle portion shows the hopes and ambitions of the one sitting at his table. Hoping to get rich by getting rich friends is a vain hope. While it may happen to some people, it is not a reliable strategy for making one’s fortune. So be careful. Don’t expect to much.

The chiasm ends with a warning that flattery will not gain favor. The next verse (23.9) ends this section with a warning that your wisdom will not be appreciated either.

Jesus reproduced this wisdom in another situation:

He said also to the man who had invited him, “When you give a dinner or a banquet, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, lest they also invite you in return and you be repaid. But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the just.” (from Luke 14)

 

Messed up your underwear lately?

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OK, you know how everyone is claiming that real character comes from “the inside” and must be truly “from inside you” and “listen to your heart” and “be true to yourself” and all that?

Once that was messy diapers but now you would find it difficult to go in your pants even if someone offered you two hundred dollars to do so.

It was the most natural thing in the world to every single human being now reading this blog post to, at one time, let “poop happen.” No control. No concern. This was spontaneous human behavior unconstrained by outward, external imposition.

And now it is inside you, in your heart and in your mind. You have not only the ability to control your bowels, you have such a powerful impulse to do so that the idea of overriding that impulse seems almost beyond your reach.

You get trained and you change…. from the outside in and then from the inside out.

And this applies to much else.

A baby will play with his hands and feet and put them in his mouth because he perceives them as externalities. He doesn’t know how to control them at first. He’s not sure they are part of him.

By the time he is two, that stage is over. He has “brought” his limbs “into” his consciousness. Or he has “extended” his self into his hands and feet. They are part of him now. They are tools. He has dominion and from there he can do new things.

Or consider teaching a teenager to drive. Once you know how to drive you no longer think, “I need to slow down so I had better push the pedal on the left.” If you are thinking that way, then you don’t know how to drive yet. But when you do learn, the car is part of your body. You never need to think about the controls.

It is true of language. You can no more think of the individual letters in order and the sounds they make as you read this post, than you can drive by first thinking about what the controls for the car do. Language, both written and spoken, is experienced without noticing the different parts that, when you were young, you had to figure out.

This is called wisdom. The same principle applies to learning to listen before you speak or learning to restrain anger.

When a teen first gets in a car, the car’s power scares him. It bucks and jerks. Why is the engine so rough?

But it is not rough. You just don’t have control. The car couldn’t function without an engine and brakes. You need those things. But you need to know how to use them right. The same with your emotions. You have to learn to drive them or else they will drive you off the road.

Whoever restrains his words has knowledge,
and he who has a cool spirit is a man of understanding (Proverbs 17.27).

Whoever is slow to anger has great understanding,
but he who has a hasty temper exalts folly (Proverbs 14.29).

Good sense makes one slow to anger,
and it is his glory to overlook an offense (Proverbs 19.11).

The vexation of a fool is known at once,
but the prudent ignores an insult (Proverbs 12.16).

A fool gives full vent to his spirit,
but a wise man quietly holds it back (Proverbs 29.11).

These are habits of behavior. They are how you drive yourself in a way that glorifies God and keeps you out of unnecessary traffic jams. They are the habits that give you the time you need to reflect when reflection is called for.

It is all about how you train your body.