The Divine Conspiracy of Predestined Conformity [Romans 8.28-30] (17 June 2012)

We are currently hearing messages on key passages from Paul’s letter to the Christians at Rome. Last week we saw how creation itself will be redeemed when the children of God are finally redeemed. We saw that God is not concerned only about humans, but about every part of his good and beautiful creation, which God himself has now subjected so that humans may learn obedience.

Today, we have a short passage, but one so rich, a whole series of messages could be given on them. I cannot do full justice to the richness of the text. But what I wish to do is reveal a conspiracy. It is contained in this passage. And it is one orchestrated by God. So let’s get to it.

Having spoken about creation groaning for its redemption and having told us how the Spirit helps us when we ourselves groan, Paul continues with the startling words, “We know.” We know. Not we believe. Not we think it might be so. Not it is highly likely that. Not the forecast is. 

No! Rather, we know! 

The Spirit living in the Christian gives such supreme confidence in the reality that Paul is about to describe that only the words, “We know” could capture it.

But what is it that we know? “All things work together for good toward those who love God.” What in the world does this mean? What does “all things” refer to? The majority view is that this refers to the circumstances of a Christian’s life, that everything that happens, whether good or bad, works in favor of the Christian. Another view, reflected in the NIV, is that God works in everything that happens in a Christian’s life so as to produce good through it. 

But if we consider the flow of the passage, and the fact that Paul has only just devoted quite bit of space to the groaning of creation, we will be led to understanding that “all things” refers to creation itself.

The Spirit helps us when we don’t know how to pray or what to pray for with regard to the redemption of creation. But because creation realizes that a Christian is someone who will be bodily redeemed, someone who loves God, someone for whom Jesus died, someone indwelt by the Spirit, creation itself is favorably inclined toward the Christian. Every part of creation works in tandem with every other part for the benefit of those who love God. We will shortly see what that benefit is.

Mind you, I am not saying that this does not happen in the context of the circumstances of our lives. To say that would be absurd, for we are benefited only through the circumstances of our lives. 

What I am saying is that it is not the case that creation is somehow working against us and that God is somehow turning the bad things that creation hurls at us into things that benefit us.

Rather, the bad things are hurled at us by the forces of evil and the humans who willfully or helplessly assist those forces. And God lifts the curse on creation for the sake of those who love him. Creation is now able to join God in benefiting those who love him and, in doing so, oppose the forces of evil. What the benefit is we will see shortly.

Now Paul moves on to one of the most controversial pair of verses. Paul mentions this string of ideas – foreknowledge, predestination, calling, justification, and glorification. 

The last three, namely calling, justification and glorification, can easily be seen as a temporal sequence. One first receives the call to believe the gospel and trust Jesus, whether over time in the context of a Christian home or over time in the witness of a Christian friend or even as a onetime invitation in say a crusade such a conducted by Billy Graham or by receiving a tract, etc.

Then, if one believes the gospel and trusts Jesus, one is justified and becomes a part of the people of God. And finally, as Paul wrote in the passage we discussed last week, we wait in hope for our glorification.

Because these three ideas easily fit into a temporal sequence, many Christians have tried to see the first two also as fitting the same sequence. So, it is claimed that a person would not even receive the invitation to believe the gospel and trust Jesus were it not for the fact that that person were predestined by God. 

And that person would have been predestined by God because God had foreknowledge that that person would come to faith in Jesus.

But that is nonsensical. It is illogical. It is circular reasoning. It makes no sense to say that God saw into the future, obtained the knowledge that I would come to faith in Jesus, and so predestined, called, justified and glorified me. 

It is like saying, “I saw that you would return the book I lent you and so I predestined you to receive the invitation to borrow the book, subsequent to which you accepted the invitation, borrowed the book, read it and then returned it.”

The issuing of the invitation cannot be made contingent on its being accepted, which is how this view sees it.

Many Christians would readily see the logical failure of this argument. And they would propose that when Paul speaks of God’s foreknowledge, he is speaking of God’s foreknowledge not of the person’s accepting the invitation to believe the gospel, but of the foreknowledge that God himself would predestine certain people to be called, to believe, and to be eventually glorified.

But this too is ridiculous! It is like saying, “I saw that I would have bacon for breakfast. And so I predestined myself to go to the nice little breakfast joint, called our my order, received the order and ate it with glorious gusto!

Both these views are hugely popular. A staunch Calvinist would endorse the second view, making everything the decision of God. A semi-Pelagian would endorse the first view, making God’s initial act contingent on human response. And both views are illogical.

But both these views fail because they have been taken out of the context within which they appear. They are easily seen as illogical or inconsistent because they are trying to do with the text something that Paul did not intend. If you try hammering nails with a screwdriver or cutting paper with a power drill, don’t complain that it appears to be laughable.

The key here is the clause that is the most important and which is conveniently ignored by both views. Paul writes, “Those whom he foreknew, he also predestined – and here it is – to be conformed to the image of his Son, so that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters.”

Paul is not talking about predestination to salvation. He is linking our present sufferings with which he began the passage we looked at last week to the glory which we anticipate.

Earlier in the letter Paul wrote, “We also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.”

Here Paul makes it more specific. The character that will be developed in a Christian by virtue of the sufferings he or she endures will be the character of Jesus. Paul is saying that every Christian is predestined to become like Jesus. And just as Jesus himself had to endure suffering, so also a Christian will endure suffering.

We make a category error when we view these verses as being directly spoken to individuals. Then we get into the logical inconsistencies of the semi-Pelagian and Calvinist views, either on the one had that God predestines to salvation those whom he foreknows will be saved or that God predestines to salvation those whom he foreknows he will save.

Rather, what Paul is saying here is that we Christians are not spared from sufferings. We endure every kind of suffering. We do so not because God predestined us to suffer or because God predestined our salvation. Rather we suffer because God has predestined, that is, decided beforehand, that everyone who is saved should become like Jesus. And the book of Hebrews tells us that Jesus learnt obedience through his sufferings.

Those whom God foreknows will come to faith in Jesus, he has predestined to remain not mere believers, but to become Christlike.

And now we can see what v. 28 means and what I meant when I spoke of the idea that creation is working for our benefit.

Creation is groaning. We saw that last week. And it groans because it awaits its own redemption, which is contingent on our redemption. And so creation colludes with God. All things, every part of creation, works together as a unit, a team, to benefit those who love God. 

But how does it do this? It does this by providing for us the environment within which our present sufferings will enable us to be conformed to the image of God’s Son because that is the goal set by God for those who love him, who have been called according to his purposes.

So what we see till now in chapter 8 is not an ivory tower description of the process of salvation. Rather we are given a glimpse into the creativeness of God. Outside the Christian life suffering is meaningless. But in the Christian life, suffering is the means by which we become more like the one we love. This is the Divine Conspiracy.

A Creative Redemption [Romans 8.18-27] (10 June 2012)

Humans are strange creatures. We are prone to focusing on our own condition to the exclusion of any others. We often ask, “Why me?” when faced with difficulty. But we do not ask, “Why them?” when we see others suffer. Mind you, I am not saying that asking, “Why me?” is bad. Rather such questions reveal that we anticipate a better place.

However, this narrow focus on ourselves blinds us often to what scripture has to say. We focus on the trees and lose sight of the forest. As an example, consider John 3.16. Almost any evangelical Christian would be able to quote this verse from memory. And often when we witness to non-believers we may use this verse. We proclaim individual salvation because it says, “whoever believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.” 

But perhaps we forget the big picture, which is at the start of the verse. “God loved the world in this manner.” Somehow eternal life to the one who believes is a result of God’s love for the world. And we easily ignore this because it does not directly concern us.

As many of you already know, we are studying the last book of the bible in our weekly Wednesday bible studies. Quite naturally, as I prepare for these studies, I encounter people writing about how things will end. Phrases like ‘the last days’ or ‘the great tribulation’ or ‘the battle of Armageddon’ appear from time to time. And one finds oneself drawn willy-nilly into speculations about how things will end.

The movie industry mints millions by fanning the paranoia and fear that lives in the hearts of humans. All they need to do is present a larger than life source of evil and odds that would make a hardened war veteran cry.

I think of movies like Star Wars for one cannot get more evil than a Sith Lord such as Senator Palpatine. I think of The Matrix for to fight against the illusions one was brought up with is certainly a tougher battle than any. 

But movies aren’t the only medium to strike this chord with people. You can think of books like The Lord of the Rings or the Harry Potter series. Immense evil, unthinkable odds and only a handful on the side of good. That just plucks at the heartstrings!

So what is it really that these movies or books are getting at? In my opinion, strange though it may seem, these stories are simply a symptom of what Paul writes about in our passage for today. So let us turn to our text.

Paul opens with a statement about suffering. Neither were the Christians at Rome who first heard this letter nor are we today unaware of suffering. It is something that pervades our lives. Loved ones are taken from us through illness or violence. Colleagues go behind our backs and make the workplace a tedious one to put up with. We read of murder and suicide, natural disasters and disasters created by humans. And students targeting exams in 2013 are aware of the suffering inflicted on them by Kapil Sibal.

And Paul encompasses all of this with his words ‘our present sufferings.’ But these, according to him, no matter how severe they may be, are insignificant compared to the glory we await, the glory that will be put on display in us when we ourselves are put on display as children of God.

But, lest we run amuck with this vision, he abruptly brings us back to the reality of the big picture. This glory that we await is something for which creation itself awaits. It is a strange thing for him to say. Why should creation wait for the glory to be revealed in us?

And Paul tells us, this is because creation itself is in a frustrating situation. Not by its own choice it finds its efforts yielding little fruit. In order to enable humans to truly obey God, God decided to place creation in this frustrating situation where everything is ruled by the sting of death.

I am reminded of the story The Little Prince. In the story we hear of the prince’s love for a flower on his little planet. But our experience is that a flower blooms and withers in a matter of days at most – not nearly long enough to love it. We may love the plant that produces the flowers and we may enjoy a particular flower when it blooms. But we do not grieve when it withers like we do when someone we love passes on. 

In the current state of affairs, creation is unloved. Unloved by humans who were created to tend to it and love it. And like anything created to be loved, it is in anguish because it is not loved.

And so creation waits for our glorification because that would mean we would once again be rendered able to care for it as we ought to.

Paul is setting our sufferings in the proper perspective, not the individual one, but the cosmic one. Our sufferings are a sign that something is very wrong with the way things are. And so we are not the only creatures who groan. We are not the only creatures who suffer. All of creation groans.

In our discussion of the doctrine of salvation and redemption, we hardly spare a breath for non-human entities. And that itself is a sign of how bad things are. It would be like parents not being worried if their child were starving. We jokingly talk about dog heaven and cat heaven without bothering to ask the question of what God’s responsibility toward them is.

Paul is ridding us of our anthropocentrism. He is telling us, “Yes, we suffer. But we suffer not apart from creation, but rather as a part of creation. Do not think that God is only concerned about humans, for all creation is groaning.”

Then Paul focuses on Christians. We groan because we are waiting for the redemption of our bodies. We have this hope not because we have actually seen someone with a redeemed body, but because the Spirit unsettles us.

We should avoid merging this image that Paul uses here with the image in John’s Gospel where the Spirit is more of a comforting, reassuring, strengthening presence. Here, we are brought to a state of dissatisfaction with the way things are as a direct result of the presence of the Spirit in our lives. 

Most people, even – perhaps especially – non-Christians, know that something is wrong. That is why we all, at some point or the other, say, “Why me?” Paul says, “All humans suffer.” We experience life, at many times, as though someone were playing a bizarre joke on us.

But Christians know something else as a result of the Spirit’s presence. We know that there is something far better to look forward to. 

But this knowledge is unsettling for we cannot escape the present condition of creation. Knowledge does not provide an escape. Knowledge only fuels a burning desire for things to be set right. We groan because we know that God intends for things to be set right, but that things are not set right yet.

And so we pray. Paul is not talking about praying for our daily needs or for God to heal someone who is sick or for God to give a couple a healthy baby. Those are necessary and important prayers. And we do know how to pray and what to pray for in these circumstances. 

But Paul is not focusing on the individual. His focus is cosmic. This is prayer for the redemption of all creation. It is prayer that would help bring about the cessation of groaning.

That is why he says that we do not know what to pray for. Our limited knowledge of God’s overarching plan is our weakness. And only God himself, by his Spirit, can lead us to those prayers that would bring about the end of groaning on the part of creation.

There have been historically two main ways of dealing with the world around us. The predominant way has been to deny that there is any intrinsic goodness in the world and to insist that our true destiny lies elsewhere. According to this view, the aim of human existence is to shake off the shackles of creation and exit to a realm of bliss and joy. Creation is seen as something that cannot be redeemed, but that must be destroyed. 

And unfortunately, this is how many of us Christians view creation. We believe that God will have to utterly do away with the world and universe as we know it. We see this kind of a majority view in The Chronicles of Narnia, where, in The Final Battle, Aslan destroys Narnia and takes the children and faithful Narnians away from that world.

But have we forgotten how our scriptures begin? God, after creating various things, declares that creation is good. If God is capable of redeeming the very humans who were the cause of creation’s groaning, is he so powerless that he cannot redeem creation itself?

Is he able to redeem those who willfully rebelled against him but can do nothing about the rest of creation which is in its current state because he made it so? The logical inconsistency is mind-boggling. 

We must remember that creation is not a display of God’s power. Rather it is an expression of his love. And love does not so easily part with the beloved. Love would rather die than see its beloved perish. We believe that easily about Jesus’ work as applicable to humans. But we stop there.

Paul, however, insists that creation is groaning because it waits for its own redemption. Creation waits in hope that God, who subjected it to futility, will not utterly forget and destroy it. 

And so we have a second, minority way of viewing creation. This is a holistic way, not an anthropocentric way. It insists that God is God not just of humans, but also of every part of creation and that God is deeply desirous of redeeming creation as well.

This is why the Harry Potter books struck a chord with so many young people. After taking them through seven books, after Voldemort is finally vanquished, J.K. Rowling ends with the simple words, “All was well.” Things were as they should be.

And this is why The Lord of the Rings strikes a chord. The Hobbits battle the forces of evil, not so that they can escape, but so that they can go back to the Shire they love. The story tells us that it is not okay for creation to become collateral damage in the process of our redemption. 

No! Rather, as Paul writes, “Creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.”

The Unifying Theme, The Faithfulness of Jesus [Romans 3.21-31] (15 April 2012)

I remember when I was in seminary, and we were interpreting John 16.33, the professor said that when Jesus says, “I have overcome the world” he clearly meant “I have overcome Satan.” After class, a classmate of mine was livid. He said, “So John 3.16 should mean God so loved Satan.”

In his “Preface to the Letter of St. Paul to the Romans”, Martin Luther, the great German reformer, wrote:

“This letter is truly the most important piece in the New Testament. It is purest Gospel. It is well worth a Christian’s while not only to memorize it word for word but also to occupy himself with it daily, as though it were the daily bread of the soul. It is impossible to read or to meditate on this letter too much or too well. The more one deals with it, the more precious it becomes and the better it tastes.”

After such a lofty beginning to the preface, Luther continues by telling the reader what various common words in the letter mean – words like law, sin, grace, etc. But the problem is that, like my classmate, Luther understood all these words in one-dimensional ways. To Luther, the word ‘law’ meant ‘Old Testament Law’ no matter what. And similarly with the other words.

So great was Luther’s influence on the later Christians, that his interpretation of Romans was taken as – pardon the pun – gospel truth till the middle of the 20th century when the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls made scholars look anew at these critical words. Unfortunately, this has not affected our translations.

So to begin with, I am going to ask you to close your bibles. You may open them later. But for now, as I read my translation of the passage, I request you to close you bibles and open your minds and hearts.

"But now, separate from legislation, the righteousness of God has been openly declared, being witnessed to by the Law and the Prophets, the righteousness of God through the faithfulness of Jesus Christ toward all who believe. For there is no distinction and given that all have sinned and are rendered deficient with respect to the glory of God, they are being declared righteous freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God exhibited for himself as the place of reconciliation through the faithfulness of his blood in order to declare his righteousness through the tolerance of previously committed sins. That time of the tolerance of God was an indication of his righteousness so that in the present he could be righteous and the one who declares righteous those who exist through the faithfulness of Jesus. Where then is boasting? It is excluded! By what sort of principle? Of works? No! Rather by the principle of faithfulness for we assert that a person is declared righteous by faith separate from legislation. Or is God only of the Jews and not of the Gentiles? Indeed also of the Gentiles! And since God is one he will declare righteous the circumcised because of faithfulness and the uncircumcised through faithfulness. Do we annul the Law through faithfulness? Ridiculous! Rather, we uphold the Law."

You may open your bibles!

Over the next few weeks, we will be going through key passages from Paul’s letter to the Romans. Some, if not many, of you will perhaps be familiar with what Evangelical Christians call ‘The Romans Road’ – a set of verses from this letter that walks one through the whole doctrine of salvation – who needs it and why, who provides it, how and on what terms, etc.

It is my task today to speak on a passage that contains the first verse of the Romans Road. Can anyone cite it for me?

In order to understand these letters, we normally have to answer many questions: When was it written? By whom? Under what circumstances? What is the social and cultural background of the recipients? And many more. But we do not have the time for all of that today.

But let us ask some questions about opinions: First, what according to you is the central concern of the letter? Second, how well organized is Paul’s presentation of his central concern?

On the issue of the second question, many Christians hold the view that Romans is as close to a systematic theology as Paul ever wrote. However, Romans is by far the most difficult of Paul’s letters to interpret. In fact, new Testament scholar, N.T. Wright has this to say about the letter:

"Romans is neither a systematic theology nor a summary of Paul's lifework, but it is by common consent his masterpiece. It dwarfs most of his other writings, an Alpine peak towering over hills and villages. Not all onlookers have viewed it in the same light or from the same angle, and their snapshots and paintings of it are sometimes remarkably unalike. Not all climbers have taken the same route up its sheer sides, and there is frequent disagreement on the best approach. What nobody doubts is that we are here dealing with a work of massive substance, presenting a formidable intellectual challenge while offering a breathtaking theological and spiritual vision."

Among the possible answers to the first question, the one about the central concern of the letter, are ‘justification by faith’ or ‘the doctrine of salvation’ or ‘life in the Spirit’. This cuts across denominations and traditions. Protestant, Roman Catholic, Orthodox and Pentecostal Christians would agree about these views.

So it might surprise you to hear me say that these are concerns that have arisen much later. For example, we might see ‘justification by faith’ as central only because for Martin Luther and John Calvin it was central. Or we might see ‘life in the Spirit’ as central only because for Charles Finney it was. But these are not the central concerns of the letter or of Paul.

What then is the central concern of Paul? Why, in other words, did he bother to write such a long letter? We do not have the time to discuss this thoroughly. But we can get a little glimmer if we look at the immediate context of the cherished verse from the Romans Road.

Did you catch those words when I read then? “Toward all who believe, for there is no distinction and given that all have sinned and are rendered deficient with respect to the glory of God, they are being declared righteous freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.”

Paul is saying, “Just because the Law was given to the Jews, does not mean that only the Jews have sinned. No! Jews and Gentiles have sinned. But God must have one way by which he will declare sinful humans righteous because God is one. And so all must be declared righteous by his grace through Jesus.”

This makes sense of the latter part of our passage where Paul explicitly mentions Jews and Gentiles. If it were not for the central concern that I will soon mention, the entire passage is disjointed, first speaking of all having sinned and ending with some random comments about Jews and Gentiles and the oneness of God.

But you see Paul was answering a deeper, more important question: Is God to be trusted? What do I mean? For most of the last twenty centuries, the Church has claimed that all the blessings given to Israel have been transferred to the Church. Towering figures like Augustine, Ambrose, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin, Moody, Hodge, Spurgeon, Clarke and others have held to this view.

And many of us have followed suit. To counter this, there has been the view that God made two covenants – one with Israel and one with the Church – and that a Jew benefits from one of them and a Christian from the other.

But neither of these views is what Paul espouses. Paul is in a quandary. If God is to be trusted, what happens to the promises made to Israel before Jesus showed up? We Christians tend to spiritualize them and apply them to Jesus or the Church in almost an ad hoc manner. But if our approach is right, then how can we trust God to not apply promises we think are for us to some other group? If he could simply annul promises to the Jews, then on what basis can we trust him not to annul promises made to us? So Paul must conclude that the promises made to Israel must still be valid. 

What happens then to the redemption that is in Jesus? Is it only for Gentiles? This would support the two covenant approach. 

But Paul would have none of this. He says that because God is one, his plan must have a unifying theme to it. And the unifying theme is – mind you – not faith in Jesus, but as I have translated, the faithfulness of Jesus.

We have a unique problem. Before I open that can of worms, let me mention something you have probably heard before. The Greek language had four words that are translated as ‘love’. Three of these appear in the New Testament. These are ‘storge’, ‘philia’ and ‘agape’. The fourth word, ‘eros’, does not appear in the New Testament. 

When we read our English bibles, we are unable to determine what word lies behind each occurrence of the word ‘love’. And some of us have probably heard a sermon or two on the interaction between Jesus and Peter by the sea after the resurrection, where Jesus asks Peter, “Do you love me?” using both ‘agape’ and ‘philia’.

And as I said, we have a problem. Hebrew has many words that are translated with the Greek word ‘pistis’. The more common ones are ‘aman’, ‘batah’, ‘mibtah’ and ‘yahal’. Key here is that ‘aman’ refers to ‘belief’ whereas the form ‘emunah’ refers to ‘faithfulness’. But both are translated with the word ‘pistis’.

So how do we know what is intended? Just as Hebrew modified ‘aman’ to ‘emunah’ and English modifies ‘faith’ to ‘faithfulness’, Greek also does something similar. And it is here that Christians, notably Martin Luther and his spiritual descendants, have not been careful.

Romans 1.17, which is a quote from Habakkuk 2.4 where the word ‘emunah’ is used, should be translated ‘the righteous by faithfulness shall live’. And this tells us that when Paul uses a particular construct – for those of you who love grammar, a genitive construct – he intends to use the word ‘pistis’ to mean ‘faithfulness’. 

And he does so in our passage seven times – in vv. 22, 25, 26, 27, twice in v. 30 and finally in v. 31. He uses another construct once in v. 28. 

Once we realize how all encompassing the idea of Jesus’ faithfulness is in this passage, we are able to make sense of v. 25, where Paul writes, “Whom God exhibited for himself as the covering of the ark of the covenant through the faithfulness of his blood.” Most translations use the phrase ‘mercy seat’ or ‘propitiation’ or ‘sacrifice of atonement’ to translate the Greek word ‘hilasterion’. 

However, ‘hilasterion’ referred to the lid that was placed on the ark of the covenant. But no sacrifice was offered on the ark! The altar of sacrifice in fact was not in the holy of holies. It was outside. We do injustice, and have done so since Martin Luther used the German word ‘Gnadenstuhl’ to translate ‘hilasterion’. The phrase ‘mercy seat’ is simply a cop out for it raises more questions than it answers. The ideas of sacrifice miss the point because as we have seen no sacrifice was ever linked to the ark of the covenant.

Rather, the ark of the covenant was where the tablets of the Law were kept. And God promised Moses that he would meet him between the seraphs on the lid. In a hugely metaphorical way, but hugely powerful way, Paul is saying that Jesus is now the locus of interaction between God and humans – both Jew and Gentile. Because of Jesus’ faithfulness humans and God are reconciled.

So now we are in a position to understand what Paul is writing in this passage. God is one. So his plan regarding Jews and Gentiles must have a unifying theme. And we know that Jews and Gentiles have sinned. Both are in need of God’s intervention. And because God is God of both Jews and Gentiles, he must be concerned about both and have a plan that includes both. God’s plan cannot be such that it accords preferential treatment to anyone. In other words, it cannot depend on any human or divine piece of legislation.

And so God redeems people on the basis of the faithfulness of Jesus and not on the basis of the works of Jews or Gentiles. Both Jews and Gentiles can only depend on the faithfulness of Jesus for through his death God has shown all humans the place where we are reconciled to God. This reconciliation is effected by the faithfulness of Jesus and is embraced and made real by an act of faith by both Jew and Gentile.

A Different Messiah [Matthew 22.41-46] (25 March 2012)

During the last three Sundays we have dealt with passages in which Jesus was questioned by different groups. First was the issue of paying the census tax to Caesar. Then was the issue of the resurrection. And finally last week was the matter of the greatest commandment. Today we have Jesus initiating a dialogue with the Pharisees.

The problem with today’s passage is not that Jesus deals with an Old Testament passage here. Rather, the force of what Jesus has done while dealing with this passage has all but obliterated what was done with the passage before Jesus came along. This came to mind when I was preparing for today’s message. 

And so we have a few things to ask ourselves. Why did Jesus choose this passage from the Old Testament? How was this passage interpreted among the Jews at that point? What is Jesus’ interpretation of the passage? And what is it about Jesus’ interpretation that actually silenced the groups that were trying to trap him? 

Before proceeding to answer these questions, we must set in order a couple of things. First, while Jesus probably knew and spoke Greek, given that he was a carpenter in Galilee, it is most likely that he spoke Aramaic while in Jerusalem. Also, while quoting from the Old Testament, he would have quoted from the Hebrew text rather than from the Greek Septuagint.

Second, we must avoid the view that, since Jesus stumped the various groups of interlocutors, these people must have been not very smart. Rather, we must realize that Jesus stumped these teachers of the Torah because he was exceptionally smart. In other words, he is like the good teacher who brings out treasures both old and new depending on whether the wineskins can accommodate the teaching or not.

So what does the Hebrew text say? 

Na-um YHWH la-Adoni: 
shev limini ad-asheet ow-beka ha-dom la-regleka

The poetic nature of the passage is evident in both the rhyme and rhythm. Let me repeat.

Na-um YHWH la-Adoni: 
shev limini ad-asheet ow-beka ha-dom la-regleka

In English we would translate the verse: 

The word of Yahweh to my Lord: 
Sit at my right till I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.

But we still have interpretation problems. And you may ask, “Why in the world is this important?” Why did Jesus bother with this passage? Remember, he is the one who brings it up.

In the 2nd century BC, angered when the Seleucid ruler Antiochus Epiphanes IV sacrificed a pig on the altar of the Temple at Jerusalem, the Jews revolted under the leadership of Judas Maccabeus and his brothers. When the Jews evicted the Seleucids from Jerusalem and its vicinity, the Maccabees set themselves up as rulers. But the Maccabees were priests in the Temple and had to justify their rule since they were not descended from David.

They found support in Psalm 110, which Jesus quotes here in our passage for today. Psalm 110.4 says, “The LORD has sworn and will not change his mind: ‘You are a priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek.’” This allowed the Maccabees to say that Yahweh’s plan was to have a priestly ruler.

The Jews accepted this for two reasons. First, they were honest with their scriptures. While speaking about Solomon in 2 Samuel 7, God promises that God will establish Solomon’s throne forever. But the Jews knew that something had gone wrong. Solomon’s throne, David’s throne, had not lasted more than a few centuries. Wave after wave of foreign invasions had finally resulted in the deportation of the last Davidic king to Babylon. And since that time there had been no throne of David, no throne of Solomon.

Second, Psalm 110 was an obscure scripture that no one knew what to do with until the Maccabees came to the picture. We find this hard to believe given that Psalm 110.1 is the most quoted Old Testament verse in the New Testament. But before the Maccabees, this psalm was an obscure one. So when the Maccabees interpreted the scripture in a certain way, the Jews were just glad to have an interpretation!

So how did they interpret it? They interpreted it as a regular prophecy one might find in any of the prophetic books. So they interpreted it this way:

The oracle of Yahweh: To my lord, (that is to Yahweh’s king,)

sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.

According to this view the words “my lord” refers to anyone whom Yahweh installs as king. Then apart from the fact that the psalm was written by David, there is no further need to keep David in the picture. 

According to the Maccabean view, the verse is not talking about a king descended from David, but any Jewish king who ruled from Jerusalem. And so the Maccabean rulers are also included in the interpretation.

When the Maccabean rulers soon became corrupt in just over a decade and themselves profaned the worship in the Temple, the Jews now had no way of critiquing their rule because they had already accepted the Maccabean interpretation of Psalm 110.1. Eventually, the Maccabees were removed from power by the Roman General Pompey in 63 BC, just a century after the Seleucids were driven out.

So for a period of about 150 years the Jews had no way of critiquing rulers like the Maccabees. And then came Jesus. What he did was twofold. First, he reinterpreted the Psalm. Second, he indicated the single most important factor about the reign of the true Messiah. And on both counts he excludes the Maccabean rulers. But he also critiques the then – and now – prevalent view of the reign of the Messiah.

So let us see how Jesus reinterpreted the psalm. Prior to the Maccabees, the psalm was ignored. Then for about 150 years the psalm was interpreted according to the template provided by the Maccabean rulers. Then Jesus reinterpreted the psalm and the interpretation he offered for this psalm is the interpretation it has held ever since. Even the Jews subsequently accepted this interpretation that they learnt from the Church even though they rejected Jesus as their Messiah. And this is why uncovering the earlier interpretation of the Maccabees is extremely difficult.

Jesus said that we should interpret the psalm not as a regular prophecy, but as a poem that is presenting a mystery. “Yahweh said to my lord, that is David’s lord, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.” According to this view, the words “my lord” refers to the Messiah, who alone could qualify as David’s lord. But this immediately presents a mystery in the first century, how can the Messiah be David’s son?

But the mystery is also unraveled if we listen carefully to Jesus. What Jesus is doing is saying, “We know that the Messiah is David’s descendant But this psalm indicates that David calls the Messiah ‘Lord’. Let us interpret the difficult passage – Psalm 110 – in light of the easier passage – 2 Samuel 7.”

So what does 2 Samuel 7 say? In that passage Yahweh promises David, “I will raise up your offspring to succeed you, your own flesh and blood, and I will establish his kingdom. He is the one who will build a house for my Name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be his father, and he will be my son.”

In other words, while the Messiah was expected to be David’s son, at a deeper level the Messiah would have a relationship with God so special that he would be God’s son.

This is much like the saying where Jesus says that those who do not hate their father and mother are not worthy of entering the kingdom of God. We know what he means there. He is telling us that our love for him must be so great, so intense, so all-encompassing that in comparison the love for our parents would seem to be completely missing.

In the same way, while the Messiah is David’s descendant, his son-ship to God is of such a nature that it would seem as though his son-ship to David were lacking.

While not discounting the importance of the biological descent of the Messiah, Jesus insists that the spiritual descent is more important. The Messiah is first and foremost God’s son as revealed in the promise to David. Indeed, if we look at the practices then prevalent in the Middle East we would realize that at the right hand of the king was where the crown prince sat.

It is because his son-ship to God takes precedence over his son-ship to David that the Messiah is asked to sit at God’s right hand. But more than this, it means that there is something inherently different between someone who is primarily David’s son and someone who is primarily God’s son.

And this brings us to the most important factor about the Messiah’s reign, something we so easily skip. After Jesus’ reinterpretation of Psalm 110 as a Messianic Psalm, we forget what the Psalm says. So let us go back to the Psalm and see what Jesus quotes: “Yahweh said to my lord” That was the riddle or mystery, which we have solved to indicate that Yahweh spoke to David’s lord, the Messiah. And Jesus continues, “Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.”

This is a critique of all views that insist that the Messiah is a military conqueror. Yahweh tells the Messiah, “Sit!” He does not say, “Fight at my right hand and both of us will make your enemies your footstool!” He says, “Sit!”

Jesus tells his audience and us that the true Messiah is asked to be passive while God orchestrates history to the point where all the enemies of the Messiah acknowledge his authority over them.

What Jesus has done is provided his audience with an interpretive tool by which they can critique any messianic claimant. If they follow Jesus’ scheme of things they will be able to see that Judas Maccabeus and his brothers did not fulfill Psalm 110 for two reasons. First, they were not descended from David. Second, and more importantly, they did not “sit at God’s right hand”. In the same way they could have dismissed every single of their messianic claimants because every one of them wanted to fight. In other words, Jesus is saying, “If your view of the Messiah includes a battle waged by him then you are expecting a false messiah.”

This critique holds true for us Christians too. As I prepare for the studies on the Revelation of Jesus Christ, I come across so many interpretations that are gory and reveal the thirst for blood that many Christians have. Jesus, according to many of these interpretations, will return and wage war against his enemies and the Antichrist and destroy them.

But according to Psalm 110 the Messiah does nothing to make his enemies submit. That is done by God and we don’t know how he will do it. In other words, Jesus will not return until God has brought Jesus’ enemies to the point where they will acknowledge his authority over them.

Do not conclude that I am saying that Jesus cannot return today. Neither you nor I know whether Jesus’ enemies are ready to submit to him or not. All I am saying is that he will return when God has brought his enemies to the point where they are ready to submit. That may be today. It may be many years from now. 

The chronological time is not the crucial issue – unlike so many people trying to predict the date when he will return. Rather, it is the momentous time that is crucial. He will return when God has fulfilled Psalm 110.1.

Our major creeds tell us that Jesus is right now seated at the right hand of God the Father. And that when he returns, it will be to judge rather than to fight. This current age is the time captured by the word ‘until’ in Psalm 110.1. Jesus is seated at the right hand of God and will continue doing that ‘until’ God has brought Jesus’ enemies to the point where they will acknowledge his supremacy.

Jesus will return when the time is ripe. His enemies will submit then. But he will not come to wage a conquest over his enemies. Indeed, in about 12 days we will observe the solemn day on which he was victorious over his enemies. If we are looking for a conquering Jesus to return, we are looking for a figment of our imagination and we then need to repent. The only Jesus who will return is the one who has already won when he hung on the cross.

To Find Ourselves With Jesus [Luke 23.46] (6 April 2012)

If you were to dramatize this word, or rather the fulfillment of this word, how would you do it? If you were given the reins in the production of a movie, how would you visualize what Jesus is promising this thief? You see, this is the only word among the seven that actually explicitly contains a promise.

And this is also the only word that contains grammatical and socio-cultural difficulties – one of each type. On the grammatical front is the possibility of two readings. First, Jesus could have said, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.” Second, Jesus could have said, “Truly I tell you today, you will be with me in paradise.” Just a matter of where to place a comma!

Was Jesus saying that the promise would have been fulfilled on that very day when the two of them hung from their respective crosses? Or was he simply asserting that he is making a promise on that very day? This is no idle difference because where God is concerned both the making and the fulfilling of the promise are important. This is why we observe Maundy Thursday and partake of communion – it was the occasion when Jesus made a promise to all his followers, that he would be present when we remember him. And this is why we are here to observe Good Friday – it was when Jesus fulfilled his promise of being the Son of Man who would give his life as a ransom for many.

On the socio-cultural front is the word ‘paradise’. Is paradise like the recent Idea advertisement in which Bacchhan the younger floats before some gates in the clouds? Is paradise a way of talking about heaven, the realm which is the abode of God? 

The word ‘paradise’ strictly refers to a garden. If you know a Muslim or Parsee named Firdaus, you have encountered the word ‘paradise’. Firdaus is the most beautiful garden in the afterlife.

Our difficulties are compounded by the fact that, apart from this passage, the word appears in the New Testament in only two other places – 2 Corinthians 12.4 and Revelation 2.7. In the first passage, Paul writes, “I know that this man was caught up to paradise and heard inexpressible things, things that no one is permitted to tell.” A verse before this Paul speaks of someone being caught up to the third heaven. 

In Revelation, to the church in Ephesus Jesus writes, “To the one who is victorious, I will give the right to eat from the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God.” This seems to indicate a garden, for where else would a tree grow?

If we are honest, we will have to say that neither of the verses really tells us what paradise is like. Paul’s use pulls us in the direction of heaven while Revelation pulls us in the direction of a garden.

So if we try to interpret this word in a grammatical or socio-cultural manner, we simply get bogged down with questions that cannot be resolved.

But if we interpret this word by placing ourselves in the shoes of the thief, we reach a different conclusion. If we were dying on a cross, what would be going through our minds? If I were a Jew dying on the cross, I would have thought of Deuteronomy 21.23, which says, “Anyone who is hung on a pole is under God’s curse.” What would have been at the forefront of his mind is the fact that he had done something that had resulted in his being in this accursed situation. What he would have been yearning for at that point is for the situation to be reversed, for the curse to be lifted.

And now we are in a position to see that no matter when the promise is fulfilled – on that day or at some point in the future – and no matter where – in an earthly garden or in the heavens – paradise was a place in which no accursed person would be found.

And so what Jesus does here is brilliant. The thief has just stated that Jesus is an innocent man by saying, “This man has done nothing wrong.” And so, when the thief turns to him, Jesus responds, “You will be with me in paradise.” 

The thief has just stated that Jesus is innocent, meaning that Jesus will go to the place where the righteous go. Jesus uses the word paradise as a means of affirming the thief’s faith. No matter how you imagined paradise to be, it was where all the righteous people would go. By declaring Jesus innocent, the thief had already declared that Jesus would go to paradise. 

Jesus does not introduce anything new in his use of the word paradise. He could have said ‘heaven’ or ‘in God’s kingdom’ or ‘in Abraham’s bosom’ or any of the numerous ways in which Jews referred to the place where the righteous go.

What is specific to Jesus is his words ‘with me’. To the dying man, the dying Jesus offers the assurance that he will be with Jesus. You see we can get bogged down by grammatical issues. We can debate what the nature of paradise is. 

But frankly, when you strip everything away, if we imagined the next world to be a garden, would we rejoice if we found ourselves in a garden, but without Jesus? If we imagined we would be in a throne room or in a palatial house or in a beautiful city with gold streets, would we be happy if we found ourselves in such an environment, but without Jesus?

It does not matter when it will happen – at the moment I die or many years after that. It does not matter where I find myself – in a garden or in a city. What matters eventually is that I find myself with Jesus.

To Whom Do We Belong? [Matthew 22.15-22] (4 March 2012)

Recently, I had the remarkable experience of dining in the dark. Absolute, pitch black darkness. Darkness of such depth that opening your eyes was actually painful to me as my pupils probably dilated beyond anything they had done before, trying in vain to capture the slightest bit of light so as to make the world around me visually comprehensible. And as I have thought about this experience, I have realized that I was, for that brief period, exposed to another world to which I previously had no access – the world in which the visually impaired live and move and have their being. It was a world I could not fathom before this experience.

A Roman in first century Judea was in a similar situation. He was surrounded by a world filled with Jews and Jewish hopes and throbbing with Jewish expectations. A world in which there were objections – violent at times and repeated – to what most peoples considered unobjectionable.

In his speech in Acts 5 Peter mentions a Judas the Galilean who opposed a tax. This was at or around the time when Jesus was born, when Joseph and the pregnant Mary went to Bethlehem to be registered. This was not the only occasion on which Jews revolted over the issue of taxation.

No other province of the Roman Empire ever had such an issue. And the questions we must ask ourselves are: Why were the Jews opposed to being taxed? And why did the Pharisees and Herodians ask Jesus about this? And what is the meaning of Jesus’ counter-question and his final answer?

Now let’s get this clear, we all are opposed to being taxed! If the Income Tax department were to announce that they were raising the tax exemption limit, I reckon there is not one person here who would complain. If they announced a reduction in the taxation rates across the board, there would be celebrations galore!

But some of the Jews were violently opposed to being taxed. Why? I must tell you that we have been misled. The New Testament has three different words that are often translated with the English word ‘tax’. In this case it is the word κῆνσος from which we get the word ‘census’. In fact, from the fact that this tax involved the payment of only one denarius, or a day’s wage for an average worker, we can conclude that this was not a way of filling the coffers of the Empire. Rather, it was an issue of counting the people. No one would give two denarii when only one was required. So by counting the denarii the Emperor would know the number of people.

Once we realize this, we can understand the Jewish sentiment by reading Exodus 30.12: “When you take a census of the Israelites to count them, each one must pay the LORD a ransom for his life at the time he is counted. Then no plague will come on them when you number them.”

The ransom was to be paid to God. However, in a Roman census, the money obviously went to Caesar, not God. Some Jews concluded that they were still under Roman oppression because Jews were paying the census money. And so whenever the Romans initiated a census, there was a Jewish revolt – no exceptions!

So we know now why some Jews were violently opposed to the census. They concluded that a census by a Gentile ruler violated the command in Exodus 30.12. There is more, but that will come out a little later. Now we have to ask ourselves why the Pharisees and Herodians asked Jesus about it.

We have to realize first that the Pharisees and Herodians were opposed to each other. The Pharisees did not like Roman rule and decried Herod’s Edomite heritage. The Herodians supported Herod’s rule and therefore Roman rule since Herod was a vassal king. 

A sharp person like Jesus quickly smelled something fishy when these two groups came together to interrogate him. But they asked him about the census. Why? 

What about Jesus would have led them to do this? We should not think of the account in Matthew 17, which was concerning the tax paid to the temple, which would have gone, therefore, to God. Thus far there is no explicit reference in Matthew’s Gospel to any taxes.

But we have a list of Jesus twelve apostles. And that list includes Simon the Zealot and Judas Iscariot. This indicates that Simon belonged to the group of Zealots, while Judas belonged to the group of Sicarii. Both were anti-Roman groups, violently opposed to Roman rule. 

The presence of these two among Jesus close followers would immediately have raised the issue about the census. Was Jesus sympathetic to the views of these two disciples and the seditious groups they were from? Were they with Jesus because Jesus held the same views about the census?

The Pharisees and Herodians come and ask Jesus a question. They address him as Rabbi, indicating that they expect him to take on a rabbi’s mantle and answer. Hence, the question must be about an issue of religious law.

“Is it right to pay the census or not?” they ask. If Jesus says, “Yes” then the Pharisees would say he is a Roman collaborator. And if he says, “No” then the Herodians would label him a dissenter, one who opposed Caesar’s rule.

Jesus asks them a counter question, which gets to the heart of his response. “Whose image is this and whose inscription?” The second commandment of the Ten Commandments prohibits making of images of God. However, the denarius then in use carried Tiberius Caesar’s bust profile and an inscription that read: “Tiberius Caesar, Worshipful Son of the God Augustus.” 

The image and inscription were other reasons for which some Jews were violently opposed to the census. It struck at the very roots of their faith at so many points.

When Jesus finally responds by saying, “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s” he has done the impossible. Stuck between a rock and a hard place, he has emerged having shattered both.

The Herodians cannot complain because Jesus has said, “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s” and according to them the coin belonged to Caesar. In fact, the coin would have been a constant reminder of Caesar’s rule over the Empire. So, from their perspective, Jesus has said that it is okay to pay the census. 

Unfortunately, this is how most Christian interpreters view what Jesus is saying. This is because we Gentiles try to understand Jesus as though he were a Gentile, when we know that he was Jewish.

But the Pharisees would have gotten two more levels of meaning. First, they would have realized that Jesus was saying, “This image and inscription strike at the very foundations of our faith. According to our faith, the whole world, the whole universe belongs to God. And so nothing belongs to Caesar. Caesar’s rule and God’s rule are exclusive. You cannot have both together. You either say that Caesar owns the coins and deny your faith in God or you say that God owns everything and deny Caesar the right to hold a census.”

Only this can account for the charge leveled against Jesus in Luke 23.2: “We have found this man subverting our nation. He opposes payment of taxes to Caesar and claims to be Messiah, a king.” The Pharisees understood what Jesus was saying and they used it against him when they brought him before Pilate. In fact, they twisted Jesus’ words and made it apply to all taxes and not just the census. But they could not have done this had Jesus not given them some ammunition to play with!

Second, the Pharisees would have understood that Jesus was alluding to the opening chapter of Scripture, in which humans are said to be the image of God. Looking at the coin Jesus asks, “Whose image is this?” And then he concludes, “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.” The obvious question, left unasked, is, “If this coin bears Caesar’s image, then where can we find God’s image?”

Then from the narrative in Genesis 1 we can conclude that all humans are the image of God. And so what Jesus is saying is, “If this coin, bearing Caesar’s image, can be considered to be the property of Caesar, then humans, bearing God’s image, are the property of God.”

In other words, the question originally asked has been rendered nonsensical because Caesar himself, being a human, belongs to God. How then is he appropriating for himself things that bear his image? Caesar, being human, belongs to God, and therefore possesses nothing.

Now it is important to step back and actually see the context once again. This passage is not about the taxes we are burdened with such as income tax or professional tax or sales tax or value added tax. It is blatantly incorrect to understand Jesus supporting the payment of taxes or opposing it based on this passage.

The passage is about a method of carrying out a numbering of the citizens of a nation. The most commonly used method was to collect a small piece of currency for the simple reason that you would never over count when you ask people to cough up money!

And frankly it is not about the money eventually. As we have seen the denarius was the daily wage of an average worker. It was not a huge prohibitive amount.

What this passage is about is simple: To whom do humans belong? Do humans belong to the king or the country or the government? 

According to Exodus 30, the census amount was paid when the person was counted, “a ransom for his life at the time he is counted.” Why? Simply because were it not for God’s provision, the person being counted could have been dead the day before or a week before! He is alive and ready to be counted not because of the king or the country or the government, but because of God.

The census practice is a simple step of faith by which the Jew proclaimed, “I am alive today by the grace of God.” The same practice was conducted by the ancient rulers by which they proclaimed, “Everyone numbered in this way belongs to me.”

The divergence of these two perspectives is like the difference between my daily experiences and the one I had when I dined in the dark. Unless experienced, neither can comprehend the other.

And hence, the Herodians withdraw thinking Jesus has said it is okay to pay the census money when Jesus has actually done the opposite. He has said, “Counting must be done by the owner. Humans belong to God. And so, only God can do the counting. Counting of humans as done by Caesar, is an affront to the reign of God.”

Give to God what belongs to God.

The Excluded Prophet [Matthew 3.13-17] (22 January 2012)

If ever there were a passage that requires an understanding not only of history, but also of geography, it is this one. But before we get to that, let us ask a simple question: What images play out in our minds when we read the accounts of Jesus’ baptism? 

Many movie directors have attempted to visualize this scene for us. Here are a couple of such visualizations. 

1. Baptism of Jesus
2. From Jesus of Nazareth
3. From Jesus

If we compare these visualizations with current Christian practice we would find a lot of overlap. And one would come away with the impression that the baptism administered by John was a ritual that looked very much like Christian baptism. 

But is this necessarily so? More to the point, is there evidence that this was so? 

Just to make a stark contrast, would you imagine that the prayers of a devout Hindu or Muslim were similar to your prayers? The word for prayer exists in every language, but we know that Christian prayer is quite different from Hindu and Muslim prayer. Indeed, even different from Jewish prayer. 

Further, a Christian fast differs from a Hindu or Muslim or Jewish fast. Just on Friday, Alice and I went to a place in Jayanagar that dishes out Maharashtrian food. And prominent on the menu were items to be eaten when one is fasting, something quite out of place within the Christian context. 

My point is simply this: The context within which a word appears determines its meaning. And this is true also of the words ‘baptism’ and ‘baptize’. We cannot assume that the mode of John’s baptism was the same as that practiced by Christians. And we will see that the mode of John’s baptism is critical to understand the puzzling fact that, though John’s baptism was a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, Jesus, whom we believe was sinless, nevertheless submitted to this baptism. 

The noun form ‘baptism’ is found only in Christian writings, so it is difficult to understand from it what John was doing. However, the verb ‘to baptize’ is common in Jewish writings by the time of Jesus. In the Septuagint, it appears only once, in 2 Kings 5 to describe Namaan’s act of immersing himself in the Jordan. 

This single occurrence, however, gave rise to a common Jewish use and the verb ‘to baptize’ appears in numerous Jewish writings. The main idea in these writings is that of a cleansing ritual. Like all the Jewish rituals, these were supposed to be done repeatedly, whenever one had done something that rendered a person unclean. 

Moreover, as in the Namaan passage, all occurrences are in the reflexive form. One performed this baptizing on oneself. 

These two aspects – repetition and self-administration – set the Jewish usage of the word apart from both John’s baptism and Christian baptism. Christian baptism and John’s baptism differed from Jewish baptism in that they were both administered only once and by someone else. 

However, the New Testament writings link baptism with cleansing, something that John does not do. In other words, we are talking of three different meanings for the verb ‘to baptize’ – the then common Jewish one, the one that would develop within the church, and the one meant by John. The first two – Jewish and Christian – differed from John’s in that they linked baptism with cleansing, while John linked it to the act of repentance. 

Further, Jewish and Christian baptism could be performed anywhere, but John seemed to have insisted on performing his baptism near the Jordan. The Gospel of John indicates that John administered his baptism while on the Eastern bank of the Jordan. So what did this area look like?

Click here for pictures

From these pictures, one thing is clear. The Jordan was quite a dirty river in the region around Jericho and Bethany. In other words, if John intended his baptism to be a cleansing ritual, he couldn’t have chosen a worse place! No one would have gone to the Jordan to become clean. That was precisely what Namaan objected to! 

So what in the world was John the Baptist doing? The key to this lies in the location he had chosen. He did not choose just any part of the Jordan, but the region right across from Jericho as we saw in the aerial view of the Jordan valley. 

This was an evocative location, filled with history and remembrance for the Jews and we dare not forget that John, his disciples, Jesus and his disciples were all Jews. What would these Jews have brought to mind? 

What else but their ancestors standing at the threshold of the promised land a millennium and a half earlier!? Something was happening here under the eye of John that was intended to bring to mind the end of the desert wanderings and the entry into the Promised Land. 

In a nutshell, the Exodus story was this: Israel was enslaved in a land of captivity. Under the guidance of Moses they were led out of Egypt and into the wilderness where they were tested for 40 years. At the end of the 40 years they find themselves at the Eastern bank of the Jordan, across from Jericho, waiting to enter the land God had promised Abraham. 

Now let us turn our focus back on John. The Gospel accounts of his ministry place him clearly in the wilderness region. And here he is at the Eastern bank of the Jordan. He has called Israel to come out of the land of enslavement to sin and to join him on the Eastern bank of the Jordan to prepare for the Kingdom of God, the ultimate Promised Land. 

This view of John’s baptism accounts for a number of things that are otherwise inexplicable. 

First, it accounts for why John’s ministry is a desert ministry. There is nothing really great about being in a desert unless it were pointing to a larger truth, in this case the Exodus and desert wanderings. 

Second, it account for why John located himself across from Jericho. At that time, Jericho was a village of insignificance in the first century. John could very well have located himself further North, nearer Galilee where Jesus would begin his own ministry. The only reason for choosing Jericho was once again to evoke the entrance in the Promised Land. 

Third, it accounts for why the dirtiness of the Jordan did not faze John. His was not a baptism of cleansing, which would require clean water. The idea here was not that of having water poured on you or of your being immersed in the water. Rather the idea was that you cross a body of water, like the Israelites crossed the Red Sea. And then you enter the desert. 

Fourth, it explains why the Gospel accounts indicate that when Jesus came through the water, he was led to the desert to be tempted for 40 days. If John’s baptism were simply like Christian baptism, this would be a mysterious thing. 

However, if John were re-enacting the Exodus and desert wanderings, this makes sense. Coming out of a land of enslavement and then being in the desert for a symbolic 40 days is as close to a re-enactment as one could get. In other words, we should treat the account of Jesus’ temptation as another aspect of his baptism by John rather than a separate occasion. 

Fifth, it explains why, contrary to Jewish baptism and the water rituals of every other religion, John’s baptism was not self-administered. The Israelites in Egypt needed a deliverer to take them out of Egypt and to herd them through the desert. They couldn’t do it themselves and so also John’s baptism required the hand of John. 

Sixth, it explains why, contrary to Jewish baptism and the water rituals of every other religion, John’s baptism was done only once on a person. If it were cleansing, it would have to be repeated again and again, like the Christian counterpart of confessing of sins. But if it were an enactment of the Exodus and desert wanderings then it needed to be done only once. In fact, it could not be done more than once. Entrance into the Promised Land is not a repeatable event. 

Seventh, it explains what is embarrassing if we pause to think of it. Which religious movement would begin with an account that its Guru was actually sanctioned by someone lesser than he? Krishna, in the Mahabharata, needs no human sanctioning. He arrives at the scene and is self-attested. The same is true of Ram in the Ramayana. And Mohammed too has no pre-cursor. But here we have Jesus coming to John right after John has declared openly that he is unworthy even to do a slaves work for Jesus. 

We are now in a position to understand what John was saying and therefore what was happening when Jesus was baptized. John calls the attention of his hearers to the fact that there are two non-repeatable baptisms. On the one hand, there is his baptism of repentance in water for the forgiveness of sins. On the other hand, there is the baptism in the Holy Spirit and fire, the baptism that Jesus administers. And this is why the Gospel of John clarifies that Jesus did not baptize people with water as the medium. 

Now we can understand the strange exchange between John and Jesus. This is what our passage says: 

John has made a distinction between the baptism he administers and the baptism Jesus administers. And he has already said that Jesus’ baptism is the superior one. When he says, “I need to be baptized by you” he does not mean that Jesus should immerse him in water or pour water over his head. Rather, he is saying that he wants to experience that wonderful Spirit baptism that Jesus administers. 

And when Jesus says, “It is proper for us to do this to fulfil all righteousness” what does he mean? The conventional view of John’s baptism that makes it like Christian baptism cannot account for this and we then have to speak of Jesus identifying with sinners. But if he was sinless, this baptism at John’s hand would have been a farce. 

But if John was like Moses leading the former slaves to the border of the Promised Land, then it makes sense. For Moses did not enter the Promised Land. Rather, the one who took the Israelites into the Promised Land was the one after whom Jesus himself was named – Joshua. 

What Jesus is saying is this, “You have begun a re-enactment of the Exodus and desert wanderings. You have taken on the role of Moses. But you know that you cannot enter the Promised Land. You must now hand over the mantle to the one who will complete this enactment – me. This is how you and I are related in God’s plan. You are like Moses. I am like Joshua. And while both you and I would love it if you could experience this wonderful Spirit baptism, you, like Moses, cannot experience it.” 

This is why later in his ministry, Jesus would say, “The law and the prophets were until John. Since then the good news of the Kingdom of God is being preached.” What else would we expect from the one who is to complete what John began and bring his people to that Promised Land which is the life in the Spirit?