A few years back my church’s small groups were going through a Bible study book that had us record “God-hunt sightings.” What qualified as a “God-hunt Sighting” was anytime in our day or week that we saw God at work. I always liked the term “God sighting.” When I taught a 10th grade class on God’s providential hand in Esther, I asked them to make “God-hunt Sightings” so they could see how God’s providential hand in their lives. This time around I’m going to use the term “God-hunt Sightings” slightly differently, and to differentiate, I’m going to shorten it to “God Sightings”. It’s not going to be God’s providence, although we could do that in the Gospel of John. Remember how I said the purpose of John was to portray Jesus Christ as the Son of God? Our goal for this Bible study of the book of John will be to see if John fulfills his purpose. So instead of “God Sightings” meaning God’s providential hand, we’re going to look for “God Sightings” in Jesus, or rather times we see the divine nature of God the Son in Jesus. So let’s begin!
Ah, but where do you begin? Where does one begin a story? Storytellers have started stories in all different places. Some start stories before the action takes place. In the first movie of the Back to the Future triology, Marty McFly merely goes on his day like a typical 80’s teenager: school and chores at Doc Brown’s house. Some other stories begin right in the middle of the action. Many movies of the Star Wars saga start in the middle of a fight. Episode One starts with negotiation talks gone violent; Episode Three begins with a battle in the Clone War; Episode Five begin with the Rebels desperately trying to defend their base on a frozen planet. Some even start after the action. These books, movies or TV series rely on flashbacks to tell the story in full. Think about Disney’s The Emperor’s New Groove. The movie begins with a sad llama, who seems to be very human-like, crawling in the rain. Why is the llama crawling through the rain? Why is the llama sad? How did it get there? These questions are answered through flashbacks full of action, but by this point, the action has passed. Stories can start at many different points, and where the story starts may even reflect the message the storyteller is getting across.
Let’s get back to the Bible. We have 4 Gospel books, 4 Gospel authors, and 4 different starts to the Gospel narrative. Let’s start with Mark, since his Gospel account came first. Remember Mark is writing to the Romans, who want an action packed story. So Mark starts right away with an adult Jesus preaching his authoritative message performing powerful miracles. Sure, there are quick blurbs on John the Baptist, as well as the baptism and temptation of Jesus, but they are literally short blurbs, quickly thrown in just to set a little background information. Matthew has, in a way, 2 starts. The first start goes all the way back to Abraham, and traces Jesus from Abraham through David (and ultimately tracing Jesus as a fulfillment of the Abrahamic Covenant and David Covenant). The second start is in a more immediate context, with the announcement of Christ’s birth to both Mary and Joseph, followed by the birth itself. Luke wants begin further back than the birth or the annunciation of the birth of Jesus, but he doesn’t want his start go back as far as Matthew did (although he will put in his genealogy later, but we’ll talk about that later). So Luke believes the best way to begin an “orderly account” is to begin with annunciation and miraculous birth of the Preparer of the Christ, and how it interlinked with the annunciation and miraculous birth of the Christ. So where is John going to begin his Gospel narrative? In the beginning!
“In the beginning…” How would you complete that? Well, alright, most of you know this is a Bible study on John and have read John 1 to know where I’m going with this and how to complete, so never mind on how you would complete it. But if I were to do a Bible version of Jay Leno’s “Jay-walking” (if you don’t know what that is, go look it up on YouTube) among Christians in church, how do you think they would complete that phrase? Most of them probably would complete it, “In the beginning…God created the heavens and the earth.” There’s nothing wrong with that. It would be right. In fact, I bet if you were a 1st Century Jewish Christian, you would complete the phrase in the same exact way. Both of you are quoting Genesis 1:1, which both of you can recognize from learning it so young. So that is why John chose to begin his Gospel with those 3 words: “In the beginning.” He knew his Jewish Christian audience would immediately be thinking about Genesis and the Creation story. He wants his reader in that mindset. But read closely, and you’ll realize he’s actually bringing you further back than this. I won’t do this for every verse in John, but the important verse I really want to zoom in on and focus on I will put in this devotional commentary. So let’s take a close look.
John 1:1,2-
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning.”
John’s beginning is not with a birth or the announcement of a birth. It doesn’t begin with someone preparing the way. It doesn’t begin with a Patriarch, like Abraham or David. It doesn’t begin with the fall of man and the need for a Savior. It doesn’t even begin with the creation of the earth. It begins with the Word. From further reading of this chapter, the reader understand that this Word is Jesus. Jesus is the Word incarnate. Look at the doctrine we get from these 2 verses alone. First of all, it explicitly states Jesus is God. That should be good enough alone, but in case you want more, you can find out more in these 2 verses alone. Second, Jesus was with God. This means that despite Jesus being God, He’s not the exact same as Yahweh because He is God and He is with God. Already we have signs of trinity. Third, these verses state Jesus was present at the beginning. Remember, we’ve already said this beginning is before creation. So this verse shows us Jesus is as eternally past, eternally present and eternally future as Yahweh is. Already in two verses, John has de-bunked many incorrect beliefs about Jesus that could have floating around in his time. Jesus was 100% God. While Jesus was a man, He was not just a man. He was God. Jesus did not have a beginning. He is as eternal as His father is. While Jesus is God, He is also with God. So much correct theology standing in the face of bad doctrine. So we have our first God sighting within the first 2 verses of John. I’m going to make a list of these God Sightings we have in John 1, but I encourage you to make your own list to hold on to.
God Sightings in John 1
1. Jesus explicitly stated as God, and is seen with God in the beginning (vs. 1-2)
Before I go on, if you’re still not convinced with the first passage, think about it as a genealogy and compare it to the other genealogies of the other Gospels. You’re probably thinking, “You’re crazy. Only Matthew and Luke has genealogy.” No, as a matter of fact, all of them have genealogies, and they all point back to how the author is portraying Jesus. Matthew’s genealogy goes back to Abraham, tracing it through all the kings of Israel/Judah, especially Jesus. This is important to the Jewish reader of Matthew because it will prove Jesus is the Messiah through the Patriarchs who were promised the blessed seed of the covenant, which is the Messiah. Luke traces the genealogy all the way back to Adam. This not only shows the Adamic and Noahic Covenant on top of the Abrahamic and Davidic Covenant, but it also shows Luke’s Greek Gentile audience that Jesus isn’t just for Jews, but for everyone because he’s just as human as the Gentiles are (and Luke does show us Jesus is the Son of God because he reminds us Adam is technically the Son of God too). What about Mark and John? Well, you’re right Mark doesn’t have a genealogy, but it’s not like Mark forgot it. Remember Mark is trying to display a servant to his Roman audience. Does anyone care about a servant’s lineage? No. A servant/slave (the Greek word is the same) is considered property of the master, and thus has no lineage. So there’s no need for a lineage for the servant Jesus. But there is indeed a genealogy in John, and it’s right there in the first 2 verses. It’s a simple as this: God -->Jesus. God is the Father of Jesus. Jesus is the Son of God. But remember that “God the Father” and “Son of God” are not just title. Both are equally God and one in the same. So if it’s easier, replace the word “God” with “Yahweh.” Yahweh --> Jesus. Yahweh is the Father of Jesus, and Jesus is the Son of Yahweh.” John uses this simple genealogy to show his Christian audience Jesus is God.
We’ve seen how John has used the phrase “In the beginning” to get his audience, mainly the Jewish Christian audience thinking about the beginning of the world. And he even brought us back further with before the beginning. But he’s not trying fool us or deceive us. He really wants to bring us back to the “In the beginning” that we know of: The Creation. And it will only take another 2 verses to do so. Let’s look at John 1:3,4.
John 1:3,4-
“Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men.”
This is a Sunday School you were probably asked as early as preschool and it deserves a Sunday School answer. The question: “Who created the earth and everything in it?” The answer: “God.” Now let’s ask any Preschooler who has been well-raised in the church the question, “Is Jesus God?” and the church-raised Preschooler would probably be able to answer, “Yes.” Now put those 2 answers together, and you’ll probably get a true claim that you probably don’t think about a lot. It’s as simple as, “If X=Y, and Y=Z, then X=Z.” If we believe God created the world, and we believe Jesus is God, then we must believe that Jesus created the world. When we usually think about the creator of the universe, we uses think about Yahweh, or the Father, not Jesus. But it’s true, Jesus created the world. It’s not just a conclusion or an assumption out of logic. The Bible clearly defends Jesus as the creator of the universe. If you don’t know this out of memory, I would write the next sentence down, for it is important doctrine. There are 3 chapters in the New Testament that state Jesus as the creator of the universe: John 1, Colossians 1, Hebrews 1 (some would add Romans 1 as a 4th chapter, but that one takes a little bit of interpretation). But for John, simply stating Jesus as the creator is not enough. He also clearly states that Jesus is giver of life. No man can have life, whether it be physical life or spiritual life, without Him, God the Son. So we have our 2nd God Sighting, and that’s 2 God Sightings in 4 verses alone.
God Sightings in John 1
1. Jesus explicitly stated as God, and is seen with God in the beginning (vs. 1-2)
2. Jesus is the creator of the universe, and Jesus gives life (vs. 3-4)
One way to do storytelling is to give a summary of everything that is going to happen in the introduction, and in the body, show all it all plays out, with all the details. William Shakespeare does this in several of his plays. It would seem as if John does this in his introduction as well. From reading John 1:5-14, it seem like John is starting his Gospel in the same way. John 1:5-14 spells out how the narrative of the book will turn out. It will start with John the Baptist preparing the way for Jesus. Despite John’s preparations, the world did not recognize him, nor did it receive him. And we’ll see throughout the book of John people rejecting Jesus. But let’s get back to our immediate God Sightings.
John 1:15-34 zooms in and focuses on one character. It’s not Jesus, but rather it’s John the Baptist. You might remember in my John Introduction that I said the baptism of Jesus is not told in the book of John. So why have John the Baptist if we’re not going to talk about the baptism of Jesus? John (I hope you don’t get confused, but understand when I just say “John,” I mean John the son of Zebedee, the brother of James, the first cousin and disciples of Jesus) has an interesting way of telling us about John the Baptist. It’s almost like he talks about John the Baptist without Jesus. We’ll see John the Baptist before Jesus, preaching, teaching and answering questions. Then we see John the Baptist after Jesus, giving his testimony about Christ. Let me point out some key information. In John 1:19-28, priests and Levites are coming down to the Jordan River near Bethany to find out who this John the Baptist thinks he is and what authority John the Baptist thinks he can preach with. When they ask John the Baptist who he is, notice his answers get shorter every time: “I am not the Christ”…”I am not”…”No.” While John the Baptist has a very important role in preparing Christ’s arrival, John the Baptist is not interested in talking about himself. He much more rather talk about the Christ. His answers in verses 23 and 26 are very humble. He knows the importance of his position, but he humbly accepts his position.
John’s story telling gets interesting in John 1:29-34. Remember, there is no baptism story in John, but we get the before and after. In verses 29 to 30, John the Baptist sees Jesus coming and immediately recognizes who it is. But by the time we get to verse 31, all the action already happened. It’s almost like John the Baptist is saying to reader, “Aw man, you just missed it! It was so amazing!” and then John the Baptist goes on to describe what happened. Why doesn’t John just tell the story of the baptism of Jesus instead of John having someone tell the story after it happened? Because John is not focusing on the event itself, but rather the testimony that came from it. In fact, for the rest of the chapter, John is going to show the interactions between Jesus and people, and how each person testifies after meeting Jesus. The first one is John the Baptist. What is John the Baptist’s testimony? Not only does John the Baptist verify everything he said before Jesus was baptized, but then some more. In verse 29, John the Baptist calls Jesus “the Lamb of God,” recognizing Jesus as the ultimate sacrifice for our sins. In verse 30, John the Baptist calls Jesus “a man who comes after me [who] has surpassed me.” The Gospels tell us in both Matthew 11:11 and Luke 7:28 that John the Baptist is greater than any of the Patriarchs, Prophets or Kings of the Old Testament. For someone to come after John the Baptist to be greater, it’s got to be the ultimate Patriarch, Prophet and King, and that would be Jesus (this verse even hints at “messiah.”). Verses 32 and 33 acknowledge Jesus as the one with the greater baptism. But the key part of the testimony is last in verse 34, for it’s the whole reason John is writing the book. In verse 34, John the Baptist explicit calls Jesus the Son of God. With that, John the Baptist gives us our next God Sighting
God Sightings in John 1
1. Jesus explicitly stated as God, and is seen with God in the beginning (vs. 1-2)
2. Jesus is the creator of the universe, and Jesus gives life (vs. 3-4)
3. John the Baptist’s testimony: Lamb of God and Son of God (vs. 15-35)
John 1:35 overlaps the stories a bit. In verse 35, we are still with John the Baptist, declaring Jesus is the messiah. This time, John the Baptist is standing with two of John the Baptist’s disciples, probably Andrew and John (the son of Zebedee, the brother of James, the cousin of Jesus, the author of this book). And it is like John the Baptist is saying to them, “Look, the Messiah is here. What are doing still doing following me? Follow him!” And so in John 1:37, when the book of John tells us that the two disciples “followed” Jesus, it has a double meaning. First, it is to be taken literally, as these 2 men went from walking behind John the Baptist to walking behind Jesus. Second, it is to be taken figuratively, as on this day the 2 men ceased to be John the Baptist’s disciples and they became disciples of Jesus. In John 1:38, when Jesus turns to talk to James and John, the 2 men call him, “Rabbi,” which simply translated to teacher, but means much more than our heads can wrap around. A Rabbi was a teacher, but he was greater and higher than the typical teacher. A rabbi was a master teacher, so much that disciples (which disciples are students with greater dedication) would call their rabbi “master” as much as they would call him “teacher.” Rabbis were watched carefully and listened to carefully, for their knowledge and wisdom was known to be great. John and Andrew calling Jesus Rabbi is a strong testimony to Jesus being the Son of God. John the Baptist’s testimony that Jesus was the Son of God and the Lamb of God was all the convincing these 2 brothers needed to follow Jesus. And between John the Baptist’s testimony and just walking behind Jesus, they already recognized Jesus was a Rabbi, without Jesus needing credentials from anyone else. So I believe James and John’s Testimony is good enough for a God Sighting.
God Sightings in John 1
1. Jesus explicitly stated as God, and is seen with God in the beginning (vs. 1-2)
2. Jesus is the creator of the universe, and Jesus gives life (vs. 3-4)
3. John the Baptist’s testimony: Lamb of God and Son of God (vs. 15-35)
4. Andrew and John’s testimony: Rabbi (vs.35-39)
In John 1:40, we meet a new character: Andrew. Andrew is simply described as the brother of Simon Peter. From the New Testament, we know that Zebedee, the father of James and John, and John (yes, another John!), the father of Simon Peter and Andrew, worked together in the fishing business, in some kind of combined business. So obviously the 4 worked together fishing on a daily basis. It wouldn’t surprise me if one son of John got one son of Zebedee (or vice versa) interested in this John the Baptist, and then each brother got the other brother interested in John the Baptist. Well, the same is about to happen for Jesus. When Andrew gets back from spending a day with Jesus, the first thing he does is run to his brother Simon and excitedly declare, “We have found the messiah!” and he drags Simon to Jesus. At the first meeting, Jesus renames Simon to Peter, basically calling Peter to be his disciple. But let’s take a step back with Andrew. All Andrew needs is a testimony from John the Baptist to follow Jesus, and after spending one day with Jesus, combined with John the Baptist’s testimony, it’s enough for Andrew to believe Jesus is the Messiah. Andrew believes it so much that he drags his brother to Peter to go meet Jesus. And all Peter needs is his brother’s word to believe Jesus is the messiah. Andrew has a strong testimony for Jesus: messiah. Messiah is a Hebrew term. The Greek equivalent is Christ. No matter which word you choose, this person was suppose to be the one promised by God to save the people from sin and from evil. The children of Israel had been waiting over 2,000 years for this man, and now he’s finally come. If you remember our theme verse, John 20:31, John tells the reader he wrote this book to prove that Jesus is not only the Son of God, but also the Christ. Also remember how I said that the Jews believed that both titles went hand-in-hand. The messiah was to be the Son of God. So Andrew’s testimony, backed up by the reaction from Peter, is our next God Sighting in Jesus.
God Sightings in John 1
1. Jesus explicitly stated as God, and is seen with God in the beginning (vs. 1-2)
2. Jesus is the creator of the universe, and Jesus gives life (vs. 3-4)
3. John the Baptist’s testimony: Lamb of God and Son of God (vs. 15-35)
4. Andrew and John’s testimony: Rabbi (vs.35-39)
5. Andrew’s testimony: Messiah (vs. 40-42)
Philip, our next character, is introduced in John 1:43. The meeting is simple. Jesus walks by Philip, Jesus says, “Follow me,” and Philip follows. And before you know it, Philip also has a strong a testimony: “the one Moses wrote about in the Law, and about whom the prophets also wrote.” The Bible doesn’t exactly say how Philip came to this conclusion. It could have been through the authority that Jesus called Philip by. Maybe, just like John and Andrew, after spending the day with Jesus, Philip could just tell. Perhaps it was through talking to John, James, Andrew and Simon Peter that Philip came to faith. Either way, Philip is sure this is the man the Moses talked about and the prophets talked about. It’s hard to pin down exactly what prophets Philip was talking about. Maybe it was the suffering servant in Isaiah. Maybe it was the Ancient of Days in Daniel. Perhaps it was the ruler in Micah or the king in Zechariah. It could have been all of these or it could have been none of these. Since we don’t know exactly, let’s focus less on the prophets and more on the one we know of the Lawgiver: Moses. It takes place in Deuteronomy. In Deuteronomy, the Israelites’ time of wandering is almost up, which also means the life of Moses is almost up. So for his last instruction, Moses is re-instructing the Law which he has already given (hence the book name Deuteronomy, meaning “Second Law”). In Deuteronomy 18:18,19, Moses foretells of a prophet that will be like him. Moses was a ruler, judge, Lawgiver, law-enforcer, priest and all around leader to the Israelite people. The prophet Moses foretells of will be like all of these things, clearly making him the Messiah. Since Deuteronomy, Israel has been waiting for this prophet. Philip recognizes Jesus is the fulfillment of the prophecy of Moses, and he’s got to tell everybody.
Before we check off Philip’s testimony on our list, let’s see the reaction of the testimony, just in case it’s significant to his testimony. Philip is so excited he tells Nathanael. Nathanael does not receive his friend’s testimony as willingly as everyone else. His reaction comes with skepticism. He yells, “Nazareth! What good could come from there?!” Although Galilee is north of Judea, the people of Galilee were like the “southerners” of Israel. They even had an accent to go along with it. And if Nathanael was told that the Messiah was coming from Nazareth, the epitome of the Galilean stereotype, it was like Nathanel was being told that his Messiah was a redneck, a hick! Nathanael would have nothing to do with that. But Jesus was about to turn that.
In verses 48 and 49 of John 1, Jesus reveals to Nathanael that He saw him before Nathanael knew Jesus or even before Philip knew Jesus. How can this be? Two words: Omnipresence and omniscience. Omnipresence is being all places at all times. Omniscience is being all-knowing. Jews and Christians alike ascribe omnipresence and omniscience to God. When Jesus shows he is omnipresent and omniscience by knowing where Nathanael is, He has proved to Nathanael, as well as the reader, that He is God. But to Nathanael He is not just God the Son or the Son of God, but also a Rabbi and the king of Israel.
Let me close with the closing verse of the chapter, John 1:51.
God Sightings in John 1
1. Jesus explicitly stated as God, and is seen with God in the beginning (vs. 1-2)
2. Jesus is the creator of the universe, and Jesus gives life (vs. 3-4)
3. John the Baptist’s testimony: Lamb of God and Son of God (vs. 15-35)
4. Andrew and John’s testimony: Rabbi (vs.35-39)
5. Andrew’s testimony: Messiah (vs. 40-42)
6. Philip’s testimony: The One Moses and the Prophets foretold (vs. 43-46)
7. Nathanael’s testimony: Rabbi, Son of God, King of Israel (vs. 46-49)
John 1:51-
He then added, “I tell you the truth, you shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.”
There’s a couple interesting points to point out. First, you might note your Bible has a footnote connected to the word “you” that says, “The Greek [you] is plural.” I never understood that…until I took Greek and now I get it! While English has a second person, the word “you,” for both singular and plural, the word “you” in Greek changes, based on whether it is singular or plural. The difference between the singular version of “you” and the plural version of “you” is, as the Southerners would say, “you and you all (y’all).” Why is this significant? If Jesus was simply talking to Nathanael, the singular form of you would be in there. But instead, we have a plural form. He must be talking to more than one. In the immediate context, it’s most likely his small crowd of followers: James, John, Andrew, Simon Peter and Philip. But maybe he’s almost addressing us, the reader, directly. And he viritually says, “This is nothing. You’re going to see greater things than this.” And he uses a certain term that sticks out: Son of Man. In Bible terms, as well as our terms, it is a reminder of the humanity of Jesus. But “Son of Man” has links to a lot of apocryphal works. The Old Testament prophets, like Daniel, give the title “Son of Man” to the Messiah in the end times. This is the first time in John we hear the term “Son of Man,” and it’s Jesus himself using that term. With such strong links to eschatological works in the Old Testament, I believe that Jesus has given us a self-testimony that He is God. If that’s not enough proof, I believe heaven opening and angels ascending and descending would be. So our list moves up to 8 God Sightings.
God Sightings in John 1
1. Jesus explicitly stated as God, and is seen with God in the beginning (vs. 1-2)
2. Jesus is the creator of the universe, and Jesus gives life (vs. 3-4)
3. John the Baptist’s testimony: Lamb of God and Son of God (vs. 15-35)
4. Andrew and John’s testimony: Rabbi (vs.35-39)
5. Andrew’s testimony: Messiah (vs. 40-42)
6. Philip’s testimony: The One Moses and the Prophets foretold (vs. 43-46)
7. Nathanael’s testimony: Rabbi, Son of God, King of Israel (vs. 46-49)
8. Jesus gives a self-testimony: Son of Man (vs. 50-51)
So 51 verses later, we have 8 God Sightings, or 8 times/ways we can see Jesus as God the Son. 6 of which are explicitly spoken testimonies, but if you really think about it, John is writing this book, and this Gospel book is the closest we’ll get to a 1st person testimony, so the first 2 God Sightings could be considered a testimony from John. So far, not only does Jesus Himself declare He is God, but John the Baptist, John, Andrew, Philip and Nathanael all claim Jesus is God. By the end of the first chapter alone, John already has a convincing argument that Jesus is indeed God the Son, and someone might already believe by just reading only the first chapter of John. But we can’t quit now, we got 20 more chapters to go! Stay tuned for John 2 to see how Jesus continues to reveal himself as God.
Tuesday, January 03, 2012
Monday, January 02, 2012
John 0: An Introduction
In accordance with my New Year’s Resolution, this post will officially begin my devotional commentary on the Gospel of John. But we’re not going to dive into the chapters just yet. Consider this a “prequel,” or better stated, an introduction. I believe it is appropriate to go over the background information to set the scene. Yeah, it’s not absolutely necessary to know all these facts, but to quote the title of a Gordon D. Fee and Douglas Stuart book on Bible Hermeneutics, if we really want to read the Bible for all its worth, the background information can really open up our eyes to smaller details we may not have noticed. We can learn a lot more about our God and apply the Scriptures for a deeper use then.
When I would teach Bible class, I would tell my students to discover the background information, we must be like good reporters and ask the right questions. You know what I’m talking about. Those question words, like, who, whom, what, where, when, why and how. You might have noticed I included in another word: whom. And technically, the difference between “who” and “whom” is the subject and the object. But the difference is important. Let me make it short and simple for you
WHO = AUTHOR of the book
WHOM = AUDIENCE, the original one, the first readers of the book
WHEN = THE DATE the book was written
WHERE = THE LOCATION of where the book was written and where it takes place
WHAT = HISTORICAL OCCASION, or what happened to cause the author to write
WHY = THE PURPOSE of the author writing to the audience
HOW = THE STRUCTURE, which could be an outline or writing methods
All 7 pieces are key to understanding the basic background information for any book of the Bible. For the Gospels, there needs to be another key aspect to look at. There’s no question word that would cover it, but if there is a non-question word, it would be PORTRAYAL, which is how the Gospel book portrays the character of Jesus. It could technically be a combination of the purpose and the structure, for the portrayal will be seen in both of them. We’ll talk more about it when we get to it. So which one shall we start off with? Well, if you remember your elementary English/Literature class, the setting of the story is where and when it happened. So let’s start with the setting, since the setting will place the characters in context.
THE LOCATION WHERE the Gospel of John was written was most likely Ephesus, but other scholars have suggested Alexandria and Antioch. But what’s more important than where the book was written is where the stories in the book take place. Most of the synoptic books simply show a steady path from Galilee to Samaria, to Judea, and then more specifically Jerusalem for the Passion Week. But John’s Gospel is not as simple as that. John has Jesus all over the place. For example, on top of having Jesus in Galilee, Samaria and Judea, he has Jesus in areas east of the Jordan River, such as Perea and Decapolis. And sometimes he’ll even be more specific on locations than the other Gospel writers are. Where Matthew, Mark, or Luke will just say what region Jesus is in, John will give the specific town. John will also spend more time in some regions that the other Gospel writers have. Whereas the synoptic gospel writers show Jesus mostly in Galilee, John has Jesus mostly in Judea, or more specifically, Jerusalem.
THE DATE WHEN the Gospel of John was written was between 85 to 95 A.D. Some scholars have tried to place the Gospel of John before 70 A.D. because one would assume that John would mention the Destruction of the Temple or the Fall of Jerusalem if the book was written after these events. While John does not explicitly mention these events, it doesn’t necessarily mean they didn’t happen. Someone could argue that they did happen because John does focus a lot on the time that Jesus and His Disciples were in Jerusalem, and John also includes much dialogue about the temple. John may not explicitly record, “And this was in fulfillment of the prophecy that the temple would be destroyed and the city would fall,” but mentioning both the city and the temple implicitly gives almost a spooky irony to its fate. So it has to be after 70 A.D. It can’t be later than 95 A.D. because John is believed to have died in 98 A.D. But let’s not linger any more on the debate of the date, but instead accept 85-95 AD as the date, and discuss its importance.
The date does have great significance. Being written in the late 80s or early 90s, the Gospel of John is the last Gospel to be written. It is safe to say that Matthew and Luke have been written for at least 5 years and Mark for at least 20 years. Each of those gospels have been floating around to several churches in the Roman Empire. So John is well aware that the Christians in these churches know well the more famous stories of Jesus, like the feeding of the 5,000 and the calming of the storm. So instead of repeating them in synoptic gospel like Matthew, Mark and Luke did, John will write a supplemental gospel. What is a supplemental gospel? For that, we must talk about how John structured his Gospel book. But we don’t have quite enough information yet. The structure won’t make any sense until we know whom the audience was, what was the historical occasion that caused John to write was, or why John chose the purpose He did. But before we get to that, let’s talk about this John man whose name I keep throwing around.
THE AUTHOR WHO wrote the book was John, just like the title of the book tells us. But there are quite a few Johns. No, this is not John, also known as Mark. If you read the post I made in December, we already talked about him. No, this is not John, the father of Peter. No, this is not the John in Acts 4:8 who is in the family of the high priests. And this is definitely not John the Baptist, the son of Zechariah, the second cousin of Jesus. This is John, the son of Zebedee, the first cousin of Jesus. And with that last statement, you got two facts about his family history. Let me throw in a third: his brother was James (and there’s 4 men named James in the Bible, but that’s a different discussion for a different day). John started out his life in the family trade of fishing with his father Zebedee and his brother James. Everyone knows John and James were disciples of Jesus, but not everyone remembers that John and James were first disciples of John the Baptist. Being disciples of John the Baptist, they were probably baptized by John the Baptist and they probably listened carefully to his preaching about repentance and the coming Messiah. Yet their following wasn’t too serious, as it seems like they followed him on the side and stayed focus on their job trade. This seems also true of being disciples to Jesus. When John points the two of them out to Jesus Christ in John 1, they follow him a bit and even acknowledged Jesus as a Rabbi, but then they went back to fishing. It wasn’t until Matthew 4 that Jesus needs to call them to follow to get through their thick skulls to stay with him longer. John, along with his brother James and Peter, were among the 3 disciples in the inner circle of disciples, who were the closest of Jesus, perhaps because they were the first ones called to be disciples. They got to see special events, like the raising of Jairus’s daughter, the transfiguration, and they got to be closer to Jesus in Gethsemane. John seems to go a bit further in and say he was the closest of even the three of them, calling himself in his Gospel book, “the disciple whom Jesus loved.” A lot of people have brought criticism towards John and the inspiration of this book, claiming it’s falsely representing Jesus showing favoritism. But all 4 Gospels clearly show Jesus had the inner group of Peter, James and John, and no one criticizes those books for that. Instead, I like to say that really shows us the humanity side of the inspiration of the Scriptures. Remember, the Scriptures were written by men just as much as they were written by God, and it can be seen through the different books and different authors. The title is merely showing John’s flavor in his writing. We’ll talk more about that “flavor” in the structure, but let’s go back to the inner circle of 3. This inner circle of 3 will stay tight until the end. When we see John in Acts, he’ll always be with Peter. From Acts, John will go on to write this Gospel book, 3 epistles, and he’ll write the apocalyptic book of Revelation when he exiled to Patmos. There are other small details I could go through, but we’ll hit them when we actually read through the book.
THE AUDIENCE WHOM John originally intended was Christians. Yes, Christians. Not a certain gender, race, ethnic group, culture or religion, but Christians This is interesting because John is considered a evangelistic book, or a good book to use to evangelize, or share the gospel message. While I do believe this is true, I do believe this book is more intended for discipleship reasons. Many of the reasons I will talk about in the structure, but one reason I will hit on I already mentioned in the date. This Gospel book was one of the last Gospel books written. John assumes that the reader has already read or heard about the stories of Jesus from that book. So John also assumes (and some would say this is a big assumption) that through reading or hearing those stories, you have made a decision to follow Jesus and have become a Christian (seriously, John believes the gospel message is so powerful it will do that). Once again, John knows the reader knows the popular stories. So he will leave most of them out (unless they pertain to his message) and put in new stories, which will only be beneficial for someone who wants to continue and advance his or her faith. Now if you remember, Matthew is written to Jews, Mark is written to Romans, and Luke is written to Greeks. John is well aware that the converts to Christianity are not only Jews, but Roman, Greek and other Gentiles. So John is going to reach out to those 3 main groups in the same way the synoptic authors did. We’ll talk more about that in the structure, but first you have to wonder, “Why would John write a Gospel for Christians if they already know the stories of Jesus, the gospel message, and they are already saved?” That will be answered next, in the historical occasion.
THE HISTORICAL OCCASION is WHAT was happening in that setting that caused the author (John) to write his book. The best way to explain this is to use Family Guy (who would ever think Family Guy could be used in a commentary, devotional or Bible introduction?) In an episode of Family Guy, Peter Griffin invents his own religion of Happy Days-ism, where the Fonz is worshipped. The rest of the Griffin family tries to get Peter to stop, but only the dog Brian is successful. How is he successful? To loosely quote him, he tells Peter, “Whenever a new religion becomes popular, copycats always follow,” and he brings in copycats to take Peter’s congregation away (for example, Brian brings in Gavin McCloud to lead the parishioners to Love Boat-ism). Well, it was true 2000 years earlier. Even though Christianity was still a minority and still facing persecution, it was growing in popularity. With growth like that, copycats jumped on board to make Christian-like cults to get people to join. The biggest one was Gnosticism, a cult which name comes from the Greek word gnosko, which means “to know.” Gnosticism combined two popular beliefs systems of the day: Christianity and Greek philosophy. The popular Greek philosophy of the day was that the body was bad, but the spirit/soul was good. Let me simplify that for you. Body = Bad, Soul/Spirit = Good. So the goal in Gnosticism was to free your soul from your body. Your first reaction might be, “Well, that’s easy, just commit suicide!” which might be followed by your second reaction, “Well, that’s stupid, a religion that convinces you to commit suicide.” But it’s not that easy, and they thought up a way that wasn’t stupid to them. You had to find a way to free your soul from your body while your body was alive. You couldn’t just commit suicide, for if you died before you figured out how to free your soul, your soul would be eternally stuck in your body. After all, a dead body is useless for anything, so there’s no way your spirit could find a way out. So how do you free your soul from your body? By learning a secret knowledge (hence the name Gnosticism). This where the Christianity side of Gnosticism steps in. The Gnostics believed that Jesus knew this secret knowledge. Jesus learned this secret knowledge and taught His disciples this secret knowledge. Now, of course, if you ask them, Jesus taught the secret knowledge, well, in secret, to his disciples. And the synoptic Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke only record the public teachings of Jesus. So if you want to use those books to learn the secret knowledge, you have read into the text deeper. You have to take everything Jesus says as a metaphor, with some kind of symbolic meaning (in Bible hermeneutics, we call this the allegorical approach to the Scriptures). Some Gnostics were even going as far writing their own gospels, claiming that they were from people close to Jesus, like Thomas, Judas and Mary, who heard this secret knowledge being taught by Jesus when they were in secret meetings. But the real kicker is what they claimed about Jesus and His being. To be the ultimate example to humans on how to use this secret knowledge to free your soul from your body, Jesus was only human. They believed that Jesus was not God at all, but just a human. Furthermore, they believe when Jesus died on the cross, He freed his soul from his body. Therefore, they believe it was only in spirit Jesus raised from the dead. You can already see two big contradictions from true Christianity. Christianity believes Jesus is fully God and fully man, while Gnosticism believes Jesus was only a man who ultimately achieved perfection by being a body-less spirit on earth. Christianity believes Christ’s resurrection was a bodily one, but Gnosticism says it was only a spirit resurrection. The differences are huge, and they are confusing the people. Some Christians are having doubts, while other Christians are going to Gnosticism, believing it’s the true faith. A Christian’s faith is not meant to be an unsteady one. John doesn’t want Christians to convert to Gnosticism. In fact, he wants Christians to avoid Gnosticism. John doesn’t want Christians to be shaky or unsteady in their beliefs. He doesn’t want them to doubt or question their faith. He wants to believe. After all, the word “believe” appears 98 times in the book. John has to take down Gnosticism.
THE PURPOSE is WHY John wrote the book. You’re probably thinking, “He just explained it! John had to take down Gnosticism. That’s why he wrote it.” Yes, John did have to take down Gnosticism, and he did use this book to do it, but last time I checked, I’m pretty sure Gnosticism doesn’t exist anymore, and if does, it’s a very small minority that has no power in the world (although some people still insist on reading the Bible allegorically, as they did). So what’s the purpose for the Gospel of John today? When an author writes a book of the Bible, he’s not only thinking about his immediate audience, but also thinking about a bigger, grander audience. So he needs to express a truth that’s meaningful to them, too. So what truth is John going to teach us that will applicable everywhere for all time, and will also take down Gnosticism?
When it comes to 4 Gospels, we need to look out for an important piece that we wouldn’t look at with other books of the Bible. Have you ever wondered, “Why do we have 4 Gospel accounts? Wouldn’t it just be better with 1? After all, if there are 4 Gospel accounts, we have to worry about contradictions. If there was only 1 Gospel account, we wouldn’t have to worry about this.” The reason there are 4 Gospel accounts is to show 4 perspectives of Jesus. Each Gospel has a different perspective, and each perspective is a perspective for a different people group. Matthew is a perspective for Jews, Mark is a perspective for Romans, and Luke is a perspective for Greeks. Each different perspective gives us a different portrayal of Jesus, yet each portrayal is a true one. Matthew portrays Jesus as the Messiah for the Jews. Luke portrays Jesus as the Perfect [Son of] Man for the Greeks. Mark portrays Jesus as a suffering servant to show the upside kingdom to the Romans. So what’s John going to portray Jesus as? For the portrayal is an important part of the purpose. Lucky for us, John gives us a verse we can call a “theme verse” for our purpose and our portrayal of Jesus. It’s John 20:31.
John 20:31-
“But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.”
Ah, there it is. It doesn’t get any more explicit than that. While in I do strongly believe in the inspiration of the Bible, I don’t think we should simply say, “Well, the Bible says that’s the purpose, and since the Bible is God’s Word, God is saying that’s the purpose. End of discussion.” Let’s look into why it’s right in saying this is the purpose. Some key words and key phrases I see in this verse is “Believe,” “Christ” and “Son of God.” Let’s start with the last one and go backwards.
As we talked about in the historical occasion, it was of the utmost importance John portrays Jesus as the Son of God. The Gnostic’s powerful voice was claiming Jesus was not God, and it was throwing true followers of Jesus into confusion, causing some to doubt and even lose faith. John had to stop this destruction the Gnostic doctrine was causing. I may have listed this key phrase last, but it’s definitely not least. Actually, I think it’s the most important. Why? Tell me, what do you think of when you hear the phrase “Son of God”? I bet you pay more attention to the word “son” than the word “God.” You might think this is nitpicky, but it’s not. When the Bible says Jesus is the Son of God, it’s also saying Jesus is God the Son. That’s not just a re-ordering of the words, but it has a big implication, in both the ancient context and the modern context. Let’s start with the older context, the ancient context. In the polytheistic religions of the ancient world, gods could indeed have children. They could have children either with goddesses or human women. If the god had a child with a human woman, the son would still be considered a god (or daughter a goddess), but it was a demigod, or half-god, half-human. This god was considered 50% divine and 50% human. All its strengths would be credited to its divinity, but all its weaknesses would be blamed on its humanity. I wouldn’t be surprised if at first people were claiming Jesus was 50% god and 50% man, and the apostles had to go around correcting that, teaching that Jesus was 100% God and 100% man. A god could also have a child through a goddess, and in that case, it would be considered 100% god, but still it would be considered a lesser god, or a minor god, nowhere near the glory and majesty of his parents. I think that’s the one that modern day people would struggle with the most. This past Christmas season, I was in church and we singing the famous Christmas carol “Come All Ye Faithful.” While singing, I noticed the line, “Son of God, begotten, not created.” At first chuckled a bit, thinking to myself, “Way to make sure you’re theologically covered on all sides,” but after thinking more, I realized we don’t always realize this. We do sometimes think Jesus was birthed from God. This is theological mess. First, it says that Jesus is not as eternal as God the Father, which means he does have a beginning, and would ultimately deny Him His deity. But Jesus is eternal, both eternally past and eternally future. Second, if Jesus was just God’s offspring and not God himself, it would mean God the creator has not been on earth since the creation. It would almost sound like God thought of Himself as so holy that he did not want to deal with sinful man. So God sent down the next best thing: His Son Jesus. No, that’s not true either. Jesus was God incarnate, walking on earth, among the people He created, no matter how sinful. Jesus was not a lesser God, or a minor God, but was God just as much as His Father. We have to remember that when we see “Son of God” we must also see “God the Son.” Simply put: Son of God = God the Son. Maybe another way to put it is the relationship between Yahweh and Jesus was the same relationship between a Father and Son. But both are the same God, the One God, the Only God. (John 1:14,18).
The second word is “Christ.” I’m not going to dwell on this one too long because I’ll talk more about it in the structure (yeah, I know I keep saying that, but I seriously am!). All you have to know is John was a Jew, so John knew how to communicate to Jews. Also, I wouldn’t be surprised if a majority of Christians at this point in time were Jews, so it would make sense that John is trying to connect to a majority of Christians. This will be helpful to remember when critics will claim that John is being anti-Semitic in calling out the Jews as the enemies of Jesus. Why would a Jew who is writing to Jews call Jews evil? Another thing I will note is that I believe a careful inspection of Old Testament prophecies will reveal that the Messiah, or the Christ, was to be divine in nature. So proving Jesus is the Christ is also proving Jesus is the Son of God.
And then there’s the word “believe.” In that verse alone, 2 forms of the root word “believe” appears twice: “believe” and “believing.” If we were to count up all the times the noun “belief” and the verb “believe” are used in the 21 chapters of John, we’d have 98 occurrences. Obviously we can see the action John is calling us to: believe. If you’re still following me so far, you’re probably wondering, “How can you call this a discipleship book and not an evangelistic book? Aren’t Christians already believing?” Well, I’m not denying that this book can be used as an evangelistic tool. In fact, by the end of this, I’ll show you how to use it as an evangelistic tool. But I don’t think it’s any more evangelistic that the other Gospel accounts. As you were thinking, I’ll repeat it again. We clearly established Christians as the audience. And you’re right, Christians do already believe. But I learned something while reading the Holman Concise Bible Commentary. According to the Holman Concise Bible Commentary, the first Greek form most commonly translated, “you may believe” can also be translated “you may continue to believe.” I do believe this would make sense in light of the historical occasion. Many Christians, although they still believe Jesus was the perfect man who died for their sins and rose again, are giving up believing on a divine Jesus being God. John clearly is presenting evidence to show that it is logical and rational to believe Jesus is God. So the Christians can continue believing Jesus is God. They don’t have to doubt. With that in mind, we can write out a purpose with all the information above in one statement.
John wrote the book of John to persuade Christians to continue believing Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God.
THE STRUCTURE is HOW John wrote the book to get his message or his purpose across. Short review: The message or the purpose John is trying to get across is that Christians need to believe that Jesus is the Son God AKA God the Son.
Let’s start with what I promised you first all the way back at the date. John is supplemental Gospel, unlike Matthew, Mark and Luke, which are synoptic Gospel. What’s the difference? The difference is in the name. The word synoptic is the adjective forms of synopsis, which is a synonym of the word summary. The Gospel books of Matthew, Mark and Luke simply summarize the stories of Jesus, which are picked and chosen based on how they will answer the purpose of the Gospel book. Through these summaries, the author assumes the reader will be able to pick up the message the author is trying to convey. John’s Gospel is not like this. John’s Gospel is a supplemental Gospel. You might know the word supplemental if you have ever had a book with supplemental pages in it. You might know that the supplemental pages give extra information or extra detail to the book. Well, that’s exactly what John is trying to do. Remember when we talked about the date and the audience, I told you John assumes that the reader has already read the other Gospel accounts and is well acquainted with the stories, especially the popular ones, like Jesus feeding the 5,000 or Jesus calming the storm. So first, John will leave at many stories that the synoptic Gospels have in them. For example, John leaves out many important stories, such as the birth, baptism, temptation, and transfiguration of Jesus. Another good example is John only has 7 miracles, and from the other gospel accounts (and John 20:30!), we know Jesus performed more than 7 miracles (it also could be noted that none of these 7 miracles are casting out demons). Second, John will use the space he made omitting stories to put in new stories. In fact, 85% of John is unique and cannot be found in any other Gospel narrative. Third, in both new stories and old stories, John will give more details. For example, John will not only tell us about the Feeding of 5,000, but will tell you what resulted after the feeding of the 5,000. Another good example is the Lord’s Supper. Each synoptic Gospel author will only have 1 chapter on that Maundy Thursday, and it mostly talks about the Passover meal. John will spend 5 chapters in the Upper Room where the Last Supper is taking place, making sure to carefully record every word of Christ’s last instructions before He dies.
Speaking of detail, you’ll find John, writing a supplemental gospel, will be more keen on details. He will give names that previously weren’t given. From John, we learn the man whose ear got cut off by Peter was named Malchus. On that note, it will seem that John will “pick on people” by zeroing them out in certain stories. For example, where the synoptic gospels all the disciples doubted the resurrected Jesus, John’s Gospel will point out Thomas as the doubter. Another good example is when the woman poured perfume on the feet of Jesus. The synoptic gospels that tell this story will say all the disciples will indignant about this move. Yet John only records Judas Iscariot complaining about it. This is no reason to say the Gospel accounts contradict one another. For the first example, all the disciples did doubt Jesus rose from the dead, but one by one, each disciple came to faith, and Thomas was the last one to do so. For the second example, all the disciples were indignant about the woman pouring the perfume on the feet of Jesus, but they kept their thoughts to themselves or they grumbled to one another quietly; only Judas Iscariot had to guts to speak what was on everyone’s mind. If anything, John is using a good story writing device: character development. By pinning certain action to certain people, instead of a group of people, we can see if the disciple is static or if he dynamically changes, and if he does change, does he change for the better or for the worse? And it’s not all bad. For example, in the feeding of the 5,000, Andrew is credited for finding the boy with 2 fishes and 5 loaves. And the ultimate example is when John calls himself the “disciple whom Jesus loved.” Once again, this is not to show John lifting himself above the other disciples. It is merely tells us that Jesus had an inner circle of 3 disciples, and of those 3, John might have been the closest. And once again, it’s all for the purpose of character development. Reading John, we can see the relationship John had with Jesus. And if it really is John trying to lift himself above the other disciples, it’s John’s humanity in writing the Scriptures
Another note to make on the structure goes back to the audience whom John wrote his book to. Remember John wrote to Christians. Being Christian does not hold you to a certain race, nationality or ethnic group. Actually, the Christian audience is made up of people of all kinds of tribes and nations. But if I had to pick the top 3, I would say it’s probably the Jews, the Romans and the Greeks (and yes, in that order). That list of 3 should sound familiar. Oh yeah! It’s the 3 audiences the other 3 Gospels are written to. Matthew is written to Jews, Mark is written to Romans, and Luke is written to Greeks. Each of those Gospel authors knew their audience and knew how to structure their book to appease to each audience. Matthew used Old Testament Scriptures for the Jews. Mark used miracles to appease to the Romans. Luke used parables to attract the Greeks. John is well aware Christians from all 3 of these groups are reading his book. So he uses similar pieces for his Gospel. For the Jews, John uses Old Testament Scriptures. For the Romans, John remembers to include 7 miracles. When it comes to the Greeks, John does not use parables as Luke does (in fact, there are no parables in John), but uses long discourses and lectures of logic and reasoning, which would also attract the Greek thinkers. John’s Gospel appeals to Jewish Christians, Roman Christians and Greek Christians, and all of them get the message that Jesus is the Christ and the Son of God.
One last note on the structure. When John narrates his book, he’s not doing it from the third person, as the synoptic Gospel writers will. John will do it from his perspective. Thus, John will include his own commentary in the narration of the book. Besides the books of 1 & 2 Chronicles, this is the only God-inspired commentary we have.
Let me close by showing you how to use this Gospel book as an evangelistic tool, just as I promised, but I’m showing it to not just for the sake of showing you, but to outline how my devotional commentary will go. Here’s what you do to evangelize to someone the gospel using the book of John. First, give the person a copy of the book of John. Next, have the person read through the book of John. Then, have the person answer these 3 questions…
1. Who does Jesus claim He is?
2. Who does those pro-Jesus, or for Jesus, claim Jesus is?
3. Who does those anti-Jesus, or against Jesus, claim Jesus is?
Now as you can guess, based on what we talked about the purpose, the answer is “The Son of God.” But truthfully, there are only a couple explicit instances of where this happens. So what you would need to do is give a hint. For a hint, give them two verses from the Bible. No, not John 3:16 and John 20:31. That’s not a hint; that’s giving away the answer. Instead, give them Exodus 3:13-14.
Exodus 3:13-14-
13 Moses said to God, “Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ Then what shall I tell them?” 14 God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I AM has sent me to you.’ ”
Now you’re probably thinking to yourself, “Why are we giving them a couple verses from Exodus? They’re not even from the same testament!” Note what God says his name is: “I AM.” In the book of John, Jesus makes 7 I AM statements. And when Jesus makes those 7 I AM statements, the Jewish audience is immediately thinking about this Exodus passage and is making the connection. Every time Jesus says “I am,” He is making the claim He is God. I hope you will join me in finding all these claims.
When I would teach Bible class, I would tell my students to discover the background information, we must be like good reporters and ask the right questions. You know what I’m talking about. Those question words, like, who, whom, what, where, when, why and how. You might have noticed I included in another word: whom. And technically, the difference between “who” and “whom” is the subject and the object. But the difference is important. Let me make it short and simple for you
WHO = AUTHOR of the book
WHOM = AUDIENCE, the original one, the first readers of the book
WHEN = THE DATE the book was written
WHERE = THE LOCATION of where the book was written and where it takes place
WHAT = HISTORICAL OCCASION, or what happened to cause the author to write
WHY = THE PURPOSE of the author writing to the audience
HOW = THE STRUCTURE, which could be an outline or writing methods
All 7 pieces are key to understanding the basic background information for any book of the Bible. For the Gospels, there needs to be another key aspect to look at. There’s no question word that would cover it, but if there is a non-question word, it would be PORTRAYAL, which is how the Gospel book portrays the character of Jesus. It could technically be a combination of the purpose and the structure, for the portrayal will be seen in both of them. We’ll talk more about it when we get to it. So which one shall we start off with? Well, if you remember your elementary English/Literature class, the setting of the story is where and when it happened. So let’s start with the setting, since the setting will place the characters in context.
THE LOCATION WHERE the Gospel of John was written was most likely Ephesus, but other scholars have suggested Alexandria and Antioch. But what’s more important than where the book was written is where the stories in the book take place. Most of the synoptic books simply show a steady path from Galilee to Samaria, to Judea, and then more specifically Jerusalem for the Passion Week. But John’s Gospel is not as simple as that. John has Jesus all over the place. For example, on top of having Jesus in Galilee, Samaria and Judea, he has Jesus in areas east of the Jordan River, such as Perea and Decapolis. And sometimes he’ll even be more specific on locations than the other Gospel writers are. Where Matthew, Mark, or Luke will just say what region Jesus is in, John will give the specific town. John will also spend more time in some regions that the other Gospel writers have. Whereas the synoptic gospel writers show Jesus mostly in Galilee, John has Jesus mostly in Judea, or more specifically, Jerusalem.
THE DATE WHEN the Gospel of John was written was between 85 to 95 A.D. Some scholars have tried to place the Gospel of John before 70 A.D. because one would assume that John would mention the Destruction of the Temple or the Fall of Jerusalem if the book was written after these events. While John does not explicitly mention these events, it doesn’t necessarily mean they didn’t happen. Someone could argue that they did happen because John does focus a lot on the time that Jesus and His Disciples were in Jerusalem, and John also includes much dialogue about the temple. John may not explicitly record, “And this was in fulfillment of the prophecy that the temple would be destroyed and the city would fall,” but mentioning both the city and the temple implicitly gives almost a spooky irony to its fate. So it has to be after 70 A.D. It can’t be later than 95 A.D. because John is believed to have died in 98 A.D. But let’s not linger any more on the debate of the date, but instead accept 85-95 AD as the date, and discuss its importance.
The date does have great significance. Being written in the late 80s or early 90s, the Gospel of John is the last Gospel to be written. It is safe to say that Matthew and Luke have been written for at least 5 years and Mark for at least 20 years. Each of those gospels have been floating around to several churches in the Roman Empire. So John is well aware that the Christians in these churches know well the more famous stories of Jesus, like the feeding of the 5,000 and the calming of the storm. So instead of repeating them in synoptic gospel like Matthew, Mark and Luke did, John will write a supplemental gospel. What is a supplemental gospel? For that, we must talk about how John structured his Gospel book. But we don’t have quite enough information yet. The structure won’t make any sense until we know whom the audience was, what was the historical occasion that caused John to write was, or why John chose the purpose He did. But before we get to that, let’s talk about this John man whose name I keep throwing around.
THE AUTHOR WHO wrote the book was John, just like the title of the book tells us. But there are quite a few Johns. No, this is not John, also known as Mark. If you read the post I made in December, we already talked about him. No, this is not John, the father of Peter. No, this is not the John in Acts 4:8 who is in the family of the high priests. And this is definitely not John the Baptist, the son of Zechariah, the second cousin of Jesus. This is John, the son of Zebedee, the first cousin of Jesus. And with that last statement, you got two facts about his family history. Let me throw in a third: his brother was James (and there’s 4 men named James in the Bible, but that’s a different discussion for a different day). John started out his life in the family trade of fishing with his father Zebedee and his brother James. Everyone knows John and James were disciples of Jesus, but not everyone remembers that John and James were first disciples of John the Baptist. Being disciples of John the Baptist, they were probably baptized by John the Baptist and they probably listened carefully to his preaching about repentance and the coming Messiah. Yet their following wasn’t too serious, as it seems like they followed him on the side and stayed focus on their job trade. This seems also true of being disciples to Jesus. When John points the two of them out to Jesus Christ in John 1, they follow him a bit and even acknowledged Jesus as a Rabbi, but then they went back to fishing. It wasn’t until Matthew 4 that Jesus needs to call them to follow to get through their thick skulls to stay with him longer. John, along with his brother James and Peter, were among the 3 disciples in the inner circle of disciples, who were the closest of Jesus, perhaps because they were the first ones called to be disciples. They got to see special events, like the raising of Jairus’s daughter, the transfiguration, and they got to be closer to Jesus in Gethsemane. John seems to go a bit further in and say he was the closest of even the three of them, calling himself in his Gospel book, “the disciple whom Jesus loved.” A lot of people have brought criticism towards John and the inspiration of this book, claiming it’s falsely representing Jesus showing favoritism. But all 4 Gospels clearly show Jesus had the inner group of Peter, James and John, and no one criticizes those books for that. Instead, I like to say that really shows us the humanity side of the inspiration of the Scriptures. Remember, the Scriptures were written by men just as much as they were written by God, and it can be seen through the different books and different authors. The title is merely showing John’s flavor in his writing. We’ll talk more about that “flavor” in the structure, but let’s go back to the inner circle of 3. This inner circle of 3 will stay tight until the end. When we see John in Acts, he’ll always be with Peter. From Acts, John will go on to write this Gospel book, 3 epistles, and he’ll write the apocalyptic book of Revelation when he exiled to Patmos. There are other small details I could go through, but we’ll hit them when we actually read through the book.
THE AUDIENCE WHOM John originally intended was Christians. Yes, Christians. Not a certain gender, race, ethnic group, culture or religion, but Christians This is interesting because John is considered a evangelistic book, or a good book to use to evangelize, or share the gospel message. While I do believe this is true, I do believe this book is more intended for discipleship reasons. Many of the reasons I will talk about in the structure, but one reason I will hit on I already mentioned in the date. This Gospel book was one of the last Gospel books written. John assumes that the reader has already read or heard about the stories of Jesus from that book. So John also assumes (and some would say this is a big assumption) that through reading or hearing those stories, you have made a decision to follow Jesus and have become a Christian (seriously, John believes the gospel message is so powerful it will do that). Once again, John knows the reader knows the popular stories. So he will leave most of them out (unless they pertain to his message) and put in new stories, which will only be beneficial for someone who wants to continue and advance his or her faith. Now if you remember, Matthew is written to Jews, Mark is written to Romans, and Luke is written to Greeks. John is well aware that the converts to Christianity are not only Jews, but Roman, Greek and other Gentiles. So John is going to reach out to those 3 main groups in the same way the synoptic authors did. We’ll talk more about that in the structure, but first you have to wonder, “Why would John write a Gospel for Christians if they already know the stories of Jesus, the gospel message, and they are already saved?” That will be answered next, in the historical occasion.
THE HISTORICAL OCCASION is WHAT was happening in that setting that caused the author (John) to write his book. The best way to explain this is to use Family Guy (who would ever think Family Guy could be used in a commentary, devotional or Bible introduction?) In an episode of Family Guy, Peter Griffin invents his own religion of Happy Days-ism, where the Fonz is worshipped. The rest of the Griffin family tries to get Peter to stop, but only the dog Brian is successful. How is he successful? To loosely quote him, he tells Peter, “Whenever a new religion becomes popular, copycats always follow,” and he brings in copycats to take Peter’s congregation away (for example, Brian brings in Gavin McCloud to lead the parishioners to Love Boat-ism). Well, it was true 2000 years earlier. Even though Christianity was still a minority and still facing persecution, it was growing in popularity. With growth like that, copycats jumped on board to make Christian-like cults to get people to join. The biggest one was Gnosticism, a cult which name comes from the Greek word gnosko, which means “to know.” Gnosticism combined two popular beliefs systems of the day: Christianity and Greek philosophy. The popular Greek philosophy of the day was that the body was bad, but the spirit/soul was good. Let me simplify that for you. Body = Bad, Soul/Spirit = Good. So the goal in Gnosticism was to free your soul from your body. Your first reaction might be, “Well, that’s easy, just commit suicide!” which might be followed by your second reaction, “Well, that’s stupid, a religion that convinces you to commit suicide.” But it’s not that easy, and they thought up a way that wasn’t stupid to them. You had to find a way to free your soul from your body while your body was alive. You couldn’t just commit suicide, for if you died before you figured out how to free your soul, your soul would be eternally stuck in your body. After all, a dead body is useless for anything, so there’s no way your spirit could find a way out. So how do you free your soul from your body? By learning a secret knowledge (hence the name Gnosticism). This where the Christianity side of Gnosticism steps in. The Gnostics believed that Jesus knew this secret knowledge. Jesus learned this secret knowledge and taught His disciples this secret knowledge. Now, of course, if you ask them, Jesus taught the secret knowledge, well, in secret, to his disciples. And the synoptic Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke only record the public teachings of Jesus. So if you want to use those books to learn the secret knowledge, you have read into the text deeper. You have to take everything Jesus says as a metaphor, with some kind of symbolic meaning (in Bible hermeneutics, we call this the allegorical approach to the Scriptures). Some Gnostics were even going as far writing their own gospels, claiming that they were from people close to Jesus, like Thomas, Judas and Mary, who heard this secret knowledge being taught by Jesus when they were in secret meetings. But the real kicker is what they claimed about Jesus and His being. To be the ultimate example to humans on how to use this secret knowledge to free your soul from your body, Jesus was only human. They believed that Jesus was not God at all, but just a human. Furthermore, they believe when Jesus died on the cross, He freed his soul from his body. Therefore, they believe it was only in spirit Jesus raised from the dead. You can already see two big contradictions from true Christianity. Christianity believes Jesus is fully God and fully man, while Gnosticism believes Jesus was only a man who ultimately achieved perfection by being a body-less spirit on earth. Christianity believes Christ’s resurrection was a bodily one, but Gnosticism says it was only a spirit resurrection. The differences are huge, and they are confusing the people. Some Christians are having doubts, while other Christians are going to Gnosticism, believing it’s the true faith. A Christian’s faith is not meant to be an unsteady one. John doesn’t want Christians to convert to Gnosticism. In fact, he wants Christians to avoid Gnosticism. John doesn’t want Christians to be shaky or unsteady in their beliefs. He doesn’t want them to doubt or question their faith. He wants to believe. After all, the word “believe” appears 98 times in the book. John has to take down Gnosticism.
THE PURPOSE is WHY John wrote the book. You’re probably thinking, “He just explained it! John had to take down Gnosticism. That’s why he wrote it.” Yes, John did have to take down Gnosticism, and he did use this book to do it, but last time I checked, I’m pretty sure Gnosticism doesn’t exist anymore, and if does, it’s a very small minority that has no power in the world (although some people still insist on reading the Bible allegorically, as they did). So what’s the purpose for the Gospel of John today? When an author writes a book of the Bible, he’s not only thinking about his immediate audience, but also thinking about a bigger, grander audience. So he needs to express a truth that’s meaningful to them, too. So what truth is John going to teach us that will applicable everywhere for all time, and will also take down Gnosticism?
When it comes to 4 Gospels, we need to look out for an important piece that we wouldn’t look at with other books of the Bible. Have you ever wondered, “Why do we have 4 Gospel accounts? Wouldn’t it just be better with 1? After all, if there are 4 Gospel accounts, we have to worry about contradictions. If there was only 1 Gospel account, we wouldn’t have to worry about this.” The reason there are 4 Gospel accounts is to show 4 perspectives of Jesus. Each Gospel has a different perspective, and each perspective is a perspective for a different people group. Matthew is a perspective for Jews, Mark is a perspective for Romans, and Luke is a perspective for Greeks. Each different perspective gives us a different portrayal of Jesus, yet each portrayal is a true one. Matthew portrays Jesus as the Messiah for the Jews. Luke portrays Jesus as the Perfect [Son of] Man for the Greeks. Mark portrays Jesus as a suffering servant to show the upside kingdom to the Romans. So what’s John going to portray Jesus as? For the portrayal is an important part of the purpose. Lucky for us, John gives us a verse we can call a “theme verse” for our purpose and our portrayal of Jesus. It’s John 20:31.
John 20:31-
“But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.”
Ah, there it is. It doesn’t get any more explicit than that. While in I do strongly believe in the inspiration of the Bible, I don’t think we should simply say, “Well, the Bible says that’s the purpose, and since the Bible is God’s Word, God is saying that’s the purpose. End of discussion.” Let’s look into why it’s right in saying this is the purpose. Some key words and key phrases I see in this verse is “Believe,” “Christ” and “Son of God.” Let’s start with the last one and go backwards.
As we talked about in the historical occasion, it was of the utmost importance John portrays Jesus as the Son of God. The Gnostic’s powerful voice was claiming Jesus was not God, and it was throwing true followers of Jesus into confusion, causing some to doubt and even lose faith. John had to stop this destruction the Gnostic doctrine was causing. I may have listed this key phrase last, but it’s definitely not least. Actually, I think it’s the most important. Why? Tell me, what do you think of when you hear the phrase “Son of God”? I bet you pay more attention to the word “son” than the word “God.” You might think this is nitpicky, but it’s not. When the Bible says Jesus is the Son of God, it’s also saying Jesus is God the Son. That’s not just a re-ordering of the words, but it has a big implication, in both the ancient context and the modern context. Let’s start with the older context, the ancient context. In the polytheistic religions of the ancient world, gods could indeed have children. They could have children either with goddesses or human women. If the god had a child with a human woman, the son would still be considered a god (or daughter a goddess), but it was a demigod, or half-god, half-human. This god was considered 50% divine and 50% human. All its strengths would be credited to its divinity, but all its weaknesses would be blamed on its humanity. I wouldn’t be surprised if at first people were claiming Jesus was 50% god and 50% man, and the apostles had to go around correcting that, teaching that Jesus was 100% God and 100% man. A god could also have a child through a goddess, and in that case, it would be considered 100% god, but still it would be considered a lesser god, or a minor god, nowhere near the glory and majesty of his parents. I think that’s the one that modern day people would struggle with the most. This past Christmas season, I was in church and we singing the famous Christmas carol “Come All Ye Faithful.” While singing, I noticed the line, “Son of God, begotten, not created.” At first chuckled a bit, thinking to myself, “Way to make sure you’re theologically covered on all sides,” but after thinking more, I realized we don’t always realize this. We do sometimes think Jesus was birthed from God. This is theological mess. First, it says that Jesus is not as eternal as God the Father, which means he does have a beginning, and would ultimately deny Him His deity. But Jesus is eternal, both eternally past and eternally future. Second, if Jesus was just God’s offspring and not God himself, it would mean God the creator has not been on earth since the creation. It would almost sound like God thought of Himself as so holy that he did not want to deal with sinful man. So God sent down the next best thing: His Son Jesus. No, that’s not true either. Jesus was God incarnate, walking on earth, among the people He created, no matter how sinful. Jesus was not a lesser God, or a minor God, but was God just as much as His Father. We have to remember that when we see “Son of God” we must also see “God the Son.” Simply put: Son of God = God the Son. Maybe another way to put it is the relationship between Yahweh and Jesus was the same relationship between a Father and Son. But both are the same God, the One God, the Only God. (John 1:14,18).
The second word is “Christ.” I’m not going to dwell on this one too long because I’ll talk more about it in the structure (yeah, I know I keep saying that, but I seriously am!). All you have to know is John was a Jew, so John knew how to communicate to Jews. Also, I wouldn’t be surprised if a majority of Christians at this point in time were Jews, so it would make sense that John is trying to connect to a majority of Christians. This will be helpful to remember when critics will claim that John is being anti-Semitic in calling out the Jews as the enemies of Jesus. Why would a Jew who is writing to Jews call Jews evil? Another thing I will note is that I believe a careful inspection of Old Testament prophecies will reveal that the Messiah, or the Christ, was to be divine in nature. So proving Jesus is the Christ is also proving Jesus is the Son of God.
And then there’s the word “believe.” In that verse alone, 2 forms of the root word “believe” appears twice: “believe” and “believing.” If we were to count up all the times the noun “belief” and the verb “believe” are used in the 21 chapters of John, we’d have 98 occurrences. Obviously we can see the action John is calling us to: believe. If you’re still following me so far, you’re probably wondering, “How can you call this a discipleship book and not an evangelistic book? Aren’t Christians already believing?” Well, I’m not denying that this book can be used as an evangelistic tool. In fact, by the end of this, I’ll show you how to use it as an evangelistic tool. But I don’t think it’s any more evangelistic that the other Gospel accounts. As you were thinking, I’ll repeat it again. We clearly established Christians as the audience. And you’re right, Christians do already believe. But I learned something while reading the Holman Concise Bible Commentary. According to the Holman Concise Bible Commentary, the first Greek form most commonly translated, “you may believe” can also be translated “you may continue to believe.” I do believe this would make sense in light of the historical occasion. Many Christians, although they still believe Jesus was the perfect man who died for their sins and rose again, are giving up believing on a divine Jesus being God. John clearly is presenting evidence to show that it is logical and rational to believe Jesus is God. So the Christians can continue believing Jesus is God. They don’t have to doubt. With that in mind, we can write out a purpose with all the information above in one statement.
John wrote the book of John to persuade Christians to continue believing Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God.
THE STRUCTURE is HOW John wrote the book to get his message or his purpose across. Short review: The message or the purpose John is trying to get across is that Christians need to believe that Jesus is the Son God AKA God the Son.
Let’s start with what I promised you first all the way back at the date. John is supplemental Gospel, unlike Matthew, Mark and Luke, which are synoptic Gospel. What’s the difference? The difference is in the name. The word synoptic is the adjective forms of synopsis, which is a synonym of the word summary. The Gospel books of Matthew, Mark and Luke simply summarize the stories of Jesus, which are picked and chosen based on how they will answer the purpose of the Gospel book. Through these summaries, the author assumes the reader will be able to pick up the message the author is trying to convey. John’s Gospel is not like this. John’s Gospel is a supplemental Gospel. You might know the word supplemental if you have ever had a book with supplemental pages in it. You might know that the supplemental pages give extra information or extra detail to the book. Well, that’s exactly what John is trying to do. Remember when we talked about the date and the audience, I told you John assumes that the reader has already read the other Gospel accounts and is well acquainted with the stories, especially the popular ones, like Jesus feeding the 5,000 or Jesus calming the storm. So first, John will leave at many stories that the synoptic Gospels have in them. For example, John leaves out many important stories, such as the birth, baptism, temptation, and transfiguration of Jesus. Another good example is John only has 7 miracles, and from the other gospel accounts (and John 20:30!), we know Jesus performed more than 7 miracles (it also could be noted that none of these 7 miracles are casting out demons). Second, John will use the space he made omitting stories to put in new stories. In fact, 85% of John is unique and cannot be found in any other Gospel narrative. Third, in both new stories and old stories, John will give more details. For example, John will not only tell us about the Feeding of 5,000, but will tell you what resulted after the feeding of the 5,000. Another good example is the Lord’s Supper. Each synoptic Gospel author will only have 1 chapter on that Maundy Thursday, and it mostly talks about the Passover meal. John will spend 5 chapters in the Upper Room where the Last Supper is taking place, making sure to carefully record every word of Christ’s last instructions before He dies.
Speaking of detail, you’ll find John, writing a supplemental gospel, will be more keen on details. He will give names that previously weren’t given. From John, we learn the man whose ear got cut off by Peter was named Malchus. On that note, it will seem that John will “pick on people” by zeroing them out in certain stories. For example, where the synoptic gospels all the disciples doubted the resurrected Jesus, John’s Gospel will point out Thomas as the doubter. Another good example is when the woman poured perfume on the feet of Jesus. The synoptic gospels that tell this story will say all the disciples will indignant about this move. Yet John only records Judas Iscariot complaining about it. This is no reason to say the Gospel accounts contradict one another. For the first example, all the disciples did doubt Jesus rose from the dead, but one by one, each disciple came to faith, and Thomas was the last one to do so. For the second example, all the disciples were indignant about the woman pouring the perfume on the feet of Jesus, but they kept their thoughts to themselves or they grumbled to one another quietly; only Judas Iscariot had to guts to speak what was on everyone’s mind. If anything, John is using a good story writing device: character development. By pinning certain action to certain people, instead of a group of people, we can see if the disciple is static or if he dynamically changes, and if he does change, does he change for the better or for the worse? And it’s not all bad. For example, in the feeding of the 5,000, Andrew is credited for finding the boy with 2 fishes and 5 loaves. And the ultimate example is when John calls himself the “disciple whom Jesus loved.” Once again, this is not to show John lifting himself above the other disciples. It is merely tells us that Jesus had an inner circle of 3 disciples, and of those 3, John might have been the closest. And once again, it’s all for the purpose of character development. Reading John, we can see the relationship John had with Jesus. And if it really is John trying to lift himself above the other disciples, it’s John’s humanity in writing the Scriptures
Another note to make on the structure goes back to the audience whom John wrote his book to. Remember John wrote to Christians. Being Christian does not hold you to a certain race, nationality or ethnic group. Actually, the Christian audience is made up of people of all kinds of tribes and nations. But if I had to pick the top 3, I would say it’s probably the Jews, the Romans and the Greeks (and yes, in that order). That list of 3 should sound familiar. Oh yeah! It’s the 3 audiences the other 3 Gospels are written to. Matthew is written to Jews, Mark is written to Romans, and Luke is written to Greeks. Each of those Gospel authors knew their audience and knew how to structure their book to appease to each audience. Matthew used Old Testament Scriptures for the Jews. Mark used miracles to appease to the Romans. Luke used parables to attract the Greeks. John is well aware Christians from all 3 of these groups are reading his book. So he uses similar pieces for his Gospel. For the Jews, John uses Old Testament Scriptures. For the Romans, John remembers to include 7 miracles. When it comes to the Greeks, John does not use parables as Luke does (in fact, there are no parables in John), but uses long discourses and lectures of logic and reasoning, which would also attract the Greek thinkers. John’s Gospel appeals to Jewish Christians, Roman Christians and Greek Christians, and all of them get the message that Jesus is the Christ and the Son of God.
One last note on the structure. When John narrates his book, he’s not doing it from the third person, as the synoptic Gospel writers will. John will do it from his perspective. Thus, John will include his own commentary in the narration of the book. Besides the books of 1 & 2 Chronicles, this is the only God-inspired commentary we have.
Let me close by showing you how to use this Gospel book as an evangelistic tool, just as I promised, but I’m showing it to not just for the sake of showing you, but to outline how my devotional commentary will go. Here’s what you do to evangelize to someone the gospel using the book of John. First, give the person a copy of the book of John. Next, have the person read through the book of John. Then, have the person answer these 3 questions…
1. Who does Jesus claim He is?
2. Who does those pro-Jesus, or for Jesus, claim Jesus is?
3. Who does those anti-Jesus, or against Jesus, claim Jesus is?
Now as you can guess, based on what we talked about the purpose, the answer is “The Son of God.” But truthfully, there are only a couple explicit instances of where this happens. So what you would need to do is give a hint. For a hint, give them two verses from the Bible. No, not John 3:16 and John 20:31. That’s not a hint; that’s giving away the answer. Instead, give them Exodus 3:13-14.
Exodus 3:13-14-
13 Moses said to God, “Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ Then what shall I tell them?” 14 God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I AM has sent me to you.’ ”
Now you’re probably thinking to yourself, “Why are we giving them a couple verses from Exodus? They’re not even from the same testament!” Note what God says his name is: “I AM.” In the book of John, Jesus makes 7 I AM statements. And when Jesus makes those 7 I AM statements, the Jewish audience is immediately thinking about this Exodus passage and is making the connection. Every time Jesus says “I am,” He is making the claim He is God. I hope you will join me in finding all these claims.
Sunday, January 01, 2012
New Year's Resolution...A Real One
I was never one for New Year's Resolutions. I always joke, "My New Year's Resolution is to not make any resolutions this year." If I did, it was more like a goal for Bible Quizzing. But this year, with little to no involvement in quizzing, I thought I would make a real New Year's Resolution. And there might be another reason.
During my lunch breaks at work, when I got too tired of studying Greek over and over, I would read a book. I was reading The Naked Anabaptist, but I for a short time misplaced the book, so I moved onto Dr. Foster's famous book The Celebration of Disciplines, a book on spiritual disciplines. I was amazed on how spiritually disciplined Dr. Foster was. He was so disciplined, some people would probably claim it's impossible, without seeing him practice them in action. But that's not what I reflected on the most. I merely reflected on the general subject of "spiritual discipline," or even more on the phrase "spiritual discipline."
See, I had no problem with the spritual part. I was being spiritual. I read my Bible. I prayed. I went to church. But it was the discipled part that I was struggling with. I prayed when it was convenient. I read my Bible in the spare time of my spare time, when I had nothing else to do. I went to church only if I was naturally up Sunday morning and had nothing to do in the early afternoon. Nothing was regular, and when nothing was regular, it seemed to be as if my faith was on the side. Well, I can't say I was pleased with myself. Actually, the opposite was true. I was unhappy and miserable with myself. While the irregular Bible study, prayer and church fellowship might be fine for a spiritually newborn Christian, it's not okay for someone who has been a Christian for some time, and especially not okay for someone who has been through 4 years of Bible college. It was like a professional portrait artist settling on drawing stick people. That's just not right. And something had to be done. That's where my New Year's Resolution will come into the picture.
But first, some of this lack of spiritual discipline just couldn't wait until 2012. It was the church part. This came especially crucial with meeting with my small group less and less. I need that Christian fellowship, some people to meet with and worship with, some people to talk about the Lord, as well as listening. So I made it my priority that the week I moved out to Dover, the next Sunday I would start going to church out here as well. And so far, so good. I've been faithfully attending Stony Brook Mennonite Church. I'm still not as involved as I would like to be, and maybe that could be my New Year's Resolution when it comes to Church Fellowship. But it seems like the congregation has embraced me there at least. I think for my New Year's Resolution when it comes to church, I'm going to start going to Sunday School.
Now that we got the communal discipline out of there, now onto the more inward disciplines. The first one was the Bible reading. My eyes became open to this one when I realized that I was once again behind on quizzing questions, as I was last year. I had 9 months to finish one chapter, or 51 verses, worth of questions, and I only got half way there. But I realized what might have been my problem was relativeness. The last time I full did a chapter worth of questions (actually it was 2 chapters) is when I got to be the quiz coach for Conestoga. Since I used my questions for my quizzers, I strived to get them done for them. But last year, only doing timekeeping and not having a team of my own, there was no urge to write the quizzing questions. And this year, with not even having a role in the staff, there's no rush to complete this set. But when I was at work, to keep my mind from not being bored to death doing menial tasks, I would think about the theological implications of what little I was reading in the Bible. And I would have good thoughts. So when I had a little spare time back at my apartment, I would type of these ideas on a Word documents, and I kind of liked it. You might have seen one. I called it "Mark: A Story About A Suffering Servant." I hope you liked it as much as I did. It motivated me to read my Bible more, and study my Bible more.
So I've decided for part of my New Year's Resolution is to follow along with quizzing in John, and write a devotional commentary on it. Now I have to be smart and reasonable with this goal. Halfway through January I'm going to begin taking 2 Grad courses, so I can't overwhelm myself. So for January, I will write a devotional commentary, 1 chapter, 1 week. When I hit February and March, I'm going to switch to a couple chapters per week, but still with the same amount of reading and studying. That will get me to April. We'll see how effective it is, and how on task I can stay, and we'll go from there.
But I know I don't want to go to a reading schedules. Whether it has been Read the Bible in a Year, Half a Year, 3 months, whatever, never a fan of it. Why? Well, if a reading schedule could speak, this would the conversation you'd be having with it...
Reading schedule: "Today, please read John 1."
You: "Ok, got it."
*You read John 1*
Reading schedule: "You read John 1 today?"
You: "Yes, but I really didn't get it. Nothing made sense"
Reading schedule: "Tough luck, we got to stick to the schedule. Move on to John 2 tomorrow."
See, I never thought that made any sense. What's the point of reading it if you're not going to understand it or get anything out of it, or even vaguely remember it? Then it's no more than a chore, or a good luck charm ("If I read the Bible, I'll get blessed!"). The call to read and study the Bible is to serve as a mirror where we can reflect on ourselves. And if that reflection takes a while, so be it. I remember once spending one week on one verse alone! I did not get it at first, and I had to read it over and over, as well as just step back and reflect on it. And once I did that for a week, I got it and I came out a better man. I want my Bible study to be one that makes a better man, for not only my sake, but the sake of the people around me.
The other spiritual discipline I want to work on is prayer. I don't know why I let this one go. My God desires to meet with me and talk with me. It is such a privilege that a holy God would want to meet with a sinner like me! Why would I give it up? So My New Year's Resolution is as simple as this: I will pray at least once a day. And just in general, I will pray more. Once again, I don't want to be held down by a schedule and I want to allow room to be spontaneous. So maybe prayer will come twice a day, or three times, or more! But it will definitely happen at least once.
So here's the official list of 2012 New Year's Resolution, with what I mentioned above, as well some other things I would like to have:
2012 New Year's Resolution
During my lunch breaks at work, when I got too tired of studying Greek over and over, I would read a book. I was reading The Naked Anabaptist, but I for a short time misplaced the book, so I moved onto Dr. Foster's famous book The Celebration of Disciplines, a book on spiritual disciplines. I was amazed on how spiritually disciplined Dr. Foster was. He was so disciplined, some people would probably claim it's impossible, without seeing him practice them in action. But that's not what I reflected on the most. I merely reflected on the general subject of "spiritual discipline," or even more on the phrase "spiritual discipline."
See, I had no problem with the spritual part. I was being spiritual. I read my Bible. I prayed. I went to church. But it was the discipled part that I was struggling with. I prayed when it was convenient. I read my Bible in the spare time of my spare time, when I had nothing else to do. I went to church only if I was naturally up Sunday morning and had nothing to do in the early afternoon. Nothing was regular, and when nothing was regular, it seemed to be as if my faith was on the side. Well, I can't say I was pleased with myself. Actually, the opposite was true. I was unhappy and miserable with myself. While the irregular Bible study, prayer and church fellowship might be fine for a spiritually newborn Christian, it's not okay for someone who has been a Christian for some time, and especially not okay for someone who has been through 4 years of Bible college. It was like a professional portrait artist settling on drawing stick people. That's just not right. And something had to be done. That's where my New Year's Resolution will come into the picture.
But first, some of this lack of spiritual discipline just couldn't wait until 2012. It was the church part. This came especially crucial with meeting with my small group less and less. I need that Christian fellowship, some people to meet with and worship with, some people to talk about the Lord, as well as listening. So I made it my priority that the week I moved out to Dover, the next Sunday I would start going to church out here as well. And so far, so good. I've been faithfully attending Stony Brook Mennonite Church. I'm still not as involved as I would like to be, and maybe that could be my New Year's Resolution when it comes to Church Fellowship. But it seems like the congregation has embraced me there at least. I think for my New Year's Resolution when it comes to church, I'm going to start going to Sunday School.
Now that we got the communal discipline out of there, now onto the more inward disciplines. The first one was the Bible reading. My eyes became open to this one when I realized that I was once again behind on quizzing questions, as I was last year. I had 9 months to finish one chapter, or 51 verses, worth of questions, and I only got half way there. But I realized what might have been my problem was relativeness. The last time I full did a chapter worth of questions (actually it was 2 chapters) is when I got to be the quiz coach for Conestoga. Since I used my questions for my quizzers, I strived to get them done for them. But last year, only doing timekeeping and not having a team of my own, there was no urge to write the quizzing questions. And this year, with not even having a role in the staff, there's no rush to complete this set. But when I was at work, to keep my mind from not being bored to death doing menial tasks, I would think about the theological implications of what little I was reading in the Bible. And I would have good thoughts. So when I had a little spare time back at my apartment, I would type of these ideas on a Word documents, and I kind of liked it. You might have seen one. I called it "Mark: A Story About A Suffering Servant." I hope you liked it as much as I did. It motivated me to read my Bible more, and study my Bible more.
So I've decided for part of my New Year's Resolution is to follow along with quizzing in John, and write a devotional commentary on it. Now I have to be smart and reasonable with this goal. Halfway through January I'm going to begin taking 2 Grad courses, so I can't overwhelm myself. So for January, I will write a devotional commentary, 1 chapter, 1 week. When I hit February and March, I'm going to switch to a couple chapters per week, but still with the same amount of reading and studying. That will get me to April. We'll see how effective it is, and how on task I can stay, and we'll go from there.
But I know I don't want to go to a reading schedules. Whether it has been Read the Bible in a Year, Half a Year, 3 months, whatever, never a fan of it. Why? Well, if a reading schedule could speak, this would the conversation you'd be having with it...
Reading schedule: "Today, please read John 1."
You: "Ok, got it."
*You read John 1*
Reading schedule: "You read John 1 today?"
You: "Yes, but I really didn't get it. Nothing made sense"
Reading schedule: "Tough luck, we got to stick to the schedule. Move on to John 2 tomorrow."
See, I never thought that made any sense. What's the point of reading it if you're not going to understand it or get anything out of it, or even vaguely remember it? Then it's no more than a chore, or a good luck charm ("If I read the Bible, I'll get blessed!"). The call to read and study the Bible is to serve as a mirror where we can reflect on ourselves. And if that reflection takes a while, so be it. I remember once spending one week on one verse alone! I did not get it at first, and I had to read it over and over, as well as just step back and reflect on it. And once I did that for a week, I got it and I came out a better man. I want my Bible study to be one that makes a better man, for not only my sake, but the sake of the people around me.
The other spiritual discipline I want to work on is prayer. I don't know why I let this one go. My God desires to meet with me and talk with me. It is such a privilege that a holy God would want to meet with a sinner like me! Why would I give it up? So My New Year's Resolution is as simple as this: I will pray at least once a day. And just in general, I will pray more. Once again, I don't want to be held down by a schedule and I want to allow room to be spontaneous. So maybe prayer will come twice a day, or three times, or more! But it will definitely happen at least once.
So here's the official list of 2012 New Year's Resolution, with what I mentioned above, as well some other things I would like to have:
2012 New Year's Resolution
- Read a couple chapters of the Bible once a day
- Write a devotional commentary once a week from January to March
- Pray at least once a day, but allow room to be spontaneous for more
- Continue to go to church weekly, and eventually add Sunday School to it.
- Talk more openly to my girlfriend
- have more fun in life!!!!!!!!!!!!!
- Complete hard vocals on all Rock Band games
- Learn to play a real guitar. Really
- take voice lessons so i can seranade my girlfriend :) (she wrote that one)
- Keep my 4.0 GPA strong in grad school.
Monday, December 26, 2011
Mark: A Story About a Suffering Servant
Before the fall, the group of guys in my small group got to together to decide what book we should study for the fall and the spring preceding it. We had done an Old Testament book before, so we were looking for a New Testament book to study. I threw out the book of John as a possibility. My reason (beside it being next year’s material for quizzing) was that I realized most of the Gospel stories I knew from heart were from the synoptic Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, and that I did not know too many details of the supplementary Gospel of John. All the guys liked this idea, but one of them thought that the 21 chapters of John would be enough to cover only about 21 weeks, not 36 weeks. He suggested that, since John is the last Gospel (in both position in the New Testament and date written), we should start our Gospel study with Mark, the shortest and earliest written Gospel. At first, I wasn’t as on board with this idea. I had studied the book of Mark intensely for quizzing in 2003 and I was pretty sure I knew about it. But everyone else was on board with it, so I went along with it. And I’m glad I did. The last time I took a good look at Mark was when I was in 8th grade. Since then, I have gone through 4 semesters of Bible class at a Mennonite High School, and 4 years of Bible college. Both experiences have greatly improved my Bible study skills. With those skills, I noticed things about Mark I did not notice before in 8th grade. Sadly, my small group was unable to complete our Bible study on Mark, for reasons that will within the confidentiality borders of my small group. But I have stayed true to reading Mark, and I would like to share what I have learned.
Mark is indeed the shortest Gospel account, only 16 chapters long. Mark is also a synoptic gospel, meaning it is just summarizing the events of the life and ministry of Jesus. Both of these make sense if we take into consideration the date the book of Mark was written. The book Mark was written somewhere between 55 and 66 AD, making it the first Gospel account written down. Before this book was written, the only New Testament Scriptures out there were epistles from Paul and perhaps a few general epistles. Stories about Jesus were simply passed down by oral tradition, by word of mouth. With that in mind, it was important to get something written down about Jesus. So when Mark wrote his gospel, he wasn’t into details. Mark wanted, as the famous saying goes, “just the facts,” and it’s apparently throughout this short gospel. Take the temptation of Jesus’ for example. Matthew and Luke go into great detail about what happened during those 40 days of temptation. Mark simply says, “Jesus was tempted, and when he passed the temptations, angels served him.”
Let’s talk a little bit more about the man Mark. Most of what we know from Mark does not come from the book of Mark, but mostly from the book of Acts. Mark was a companion of Paul and Barnabas on a missionary. Mark, however, was an unreliable man, as he left part way through. Thus, when Barnabas wanted to bring along Mark again for the next missionary trip, Paul and Barnabas got in a fight over whether taking Mark was a good idea. Paul and Barnabas split, but Barnabas stayed faithful to Mark, bringing Mark with him to wherever he ministered. I could go on and tell you more about Mark, such as his mother’s name was Mary, he was a cousin to Barnabas, or that he was like a son to Peter, but none of that would really help our understanding of how the man Mark connects to the book Mark. What do think might help, I would have to take from traditional interpretations and modern interpretations. In Mark 14:51-52, Mark inserts a little story about a man wearing nothing but a linen cloth flees naked when Jesus is arrested. One might think, “That’s an odd tidbit to insert in this story. Why does Mark do it when no other Gospel writer mention it?” Some people have suggested that Mark is talking about himself, that the man running away naked is Mark. This would place Mark at the arrest. Why do I find this significant? Jesus did call 12 disciples, but these 12 disciples were not the only ones following Jesus around. There was a larger group of people who regularly followed Jesus wherever he would go. The number cut down greatly in John 6:66, and by the time we get to the book of Acts, we find out the number of Christ’s followers post-resurrection numbered around 120. I would be surprised, and I do believe, Mark was probably one of these 120 followers of Jesus, who might have witnessed Jesus speaking and performing miracles when Jesus was in the public sector. In fact, a tradition dating back to the 500s AD would not only verify me, but would also say that Mark was one of the 72 Jesus sent out to minister in Luke 10. Now to be fair and represent the other side, some scholars say there is no proof for any of this, since the earliest proof of Mark’s appearances is in Acts. They would say most of Mark’s information about Jesus and his ministry from what Peter witnessed. I do agree that Mark did get a lot of information from Peter, as a lot of the book of Mark tells stories about the closeness in the relationship between Jesus and Peter that only Peter could talk about. But if I were to add one last piece to that, and I know this argument is weak because it is merely from logic, but don’t you think God would want the first Gospel account to come from someone who witnessed Jesus more directly? One more key feature I will note is Mark’s name, or rather his full name. His full name is John Mark. John is a Jewish name. Mark is a Roman name. Thus, one can conclude Mark most likely is both Jewish and Roman, just like Paul. The other option would be Mark is from a Jewish family that were slaves to a Roman family and his family took on the last name of his Roman masters. Either way, Mark has Roman ties.
So naturally the audience for the book of Mark is Romans. Let me remind you about the Roman people, although you may not need a lot of reminding if you simply remember what you learned about them in middle school or high school (or maybe even college). The Romans are the power of the western world. They have conquered all the land around the Mediterranean Sea, including the remnants of the Egyptian and Greek Empire, the Germanic tribes and the Anglo-Saxans (English, Welsh, Scottish, etc.). Remember that Israel/Judah is not an independent, free nation. The land belongs to the Romans, ruled by the half-Jew and half-Roman King Herod, overseen by Roman Governor Pontius Pilate. In fact, all the ethnic groups the Romans have conquered have rulers that have been put in place by the greater Roman government. The Roman government has allowed the people to keep their religions, culture, traditions and holidays (as long as they are not against the Romans), but they have to submit to the Roman government and they have to pay taxes. The Romans know they have authority and they exercise it over the people they conquer. So with that mind, what do you think the most important thing is to the Romans? Power and authority. In fact, in their minds, power = authority. Actually, I can throw a third word in there: strength. Power comes in strength. Authority comes in strength. Power = strength = authority. It’s obvious if you think about it. Think about when you learned about the Caesars in history class, or even think back to reading Julius Caesar in English or Literature class. If your father was the Caesar, you were not guaranteed to be the next emperor, even if you were the firstborn son. When Julius Caesar was assinated, both Brutus and Cassius fought Julius Caesar’s son Octavius/Augustus to be the next emperor of Rome. If you wanted to be the next emperor of Rome, you had to fight for it. You had to gain followers by proving your strength, and then fight off any opposition. The last man standing, the strongest man, became the emperor. So if Mark wants to win any Romans over to Christianity, he’s got to show Jesus has strength, power and authority, to show Jesus is worth following, and that is emperor/king material.
Now usually at this part I would state the purpose of the book of Mark, and then show you through an outline of the book how Mark answers the purpose. But I’m not going to do that this time, so you can see how great of a story Mark’s gospel account is. Instead, I’m going to highlight some parts of Mark’s Gospel narrative that will eventually point to Mark’s purpose. As I go through them, and as you may be led to actually read them, think of yourself as a Roman person during the height of the Roman empire, reading this story. You’re looking for Jesus to be strong, powerful and authoritative. If you are a Roman, what are you thinking as you read this narrative? What are you feeling, or how are you emotionally reacting to parts of this Gospel account?
Mark wastes no time showing the authority and power Jesus has. At first, Jesus displays his authority simply by teaching. His message is simple: repent and receive the good news that the kingdom of God is here! As simple as this message is, it has captivated everyone who hears. His words alone have authority. But actions speak louder than words, so we need some action to verify these words. Mark wastes no time showing exciting action in his gospel story. As soon as Mark 1:21-27, Jesus begins preaching and a man with a demon comes to Jesus, and Jesus drives the demon out of the man. The people see the power behind the message Jesus is preaching and they make that connection from words to action immediately. Also in chapter 1, Mark records Jesus getting rid of a fever in Simon Peter’s mother-in-law and a man with leprosy, as well as many other sickness and demon possessions. Already with the first chapter, the Roman reader sees that Jesus has the power and strength to cure people of any sickness and even cast out demons. The demon possession would stick out, showing Jesus has power over the spiritual realm.
Mark chapter 2 opens with the famous story of Jesus healing the paralyzed man on a mat. Here, the authority of Jesus is shown twice, when Jesus first forgives the man’s sins, and then gives him the power to walk. Jesus poses the question, “Which is easier to say: to the paralyzed man, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or ‘Get up, take your mat and walk’?” The one bear testimony to the other. Since the paralyzed man can walk, the observers and readers know the man’s sins are forgiven. Jesus is shown to have power over both physical ailments and the spiritual ailment of sin. After this incident of forgiving sins, the Pharisees and Sadducees are looking at Jesus in a different light. They are questioning him more, and it’s not always to learn more. Some of them are trying to trap him, accuse him, or bring judgment down on him. The rest of chapter 2 is the Pharisees and Sadducees questioning Jesus in both his teaching and actions. Yet none of these questions or accusations phase Jesus. He knows what he is teaching is right and fully stands behind it as right. Furthermore, when Jesus is questioned about Old Testament teachings, like fasting and the Sabbath he shows that he has authority above both of those practices. Once again, Jesus is a teacher with authority. This slides right into chapter 3, and in chapter 3, the reader starts to see the results. All this power and strength is attracting a crowd. People are literally coming from all over to see Jesus. There are so many people Jesus is being crowded and pushed around. From this large crowd, Jesus picks out 12 to be his inner circle, his disciples, who will follow his every move and learn from him. Jesus has a large following, which shows his authority. Even his family is starting to pay closer attention to him.
A majority of Mark chapter 4 is Jesus speaking in parables. Once again, this shows the authority of Jesus in His teaching. It takes great wisdom to teach a parable with perfect meaning; only a smart teacher could do this. Jesus demonstrates he knows what he is teaching by teaching with various stories. But the big sign of strength comes at the conclusion of the chapter, with the famous story of Jesus calming the story. In addition to power, strength and authority over sickness, injury, demon possession and sin, we can add nature to the list. Chapter 5 adds another key element to the list. After another demon exorcism is performed, Jesus brings the daughter of Jairus, the synagogue leader, back to life. Now Jesus has strength and power over sickness, injury, sin, demons and death! Chapter 6 continues to show Christ’s power over nature by walking on water and splitting up food to feed over 5,000 men, not including women and children! But maybe more intriguing is that when Jesus sends out his 12 disciples, they have the same power and authority Jesus has. A Roman reader might be attracted by this: following Jesus gives you power!
This will repeat from chapter 7 to chapter 10, with more miracles showing the power of Jesus, speficially with blindness, deafness and muteness. This is no coincidence that there is so many miracles in the book of Mark. If Mark is trying to show great strength and power, there is no greater strength and power than a miracle, and Mark shows that Jesus just doesn’t do a few miracles, but many miracles. If there is something I would point out with the miracles in this section, as well as the miracles in the first seven chapters. If you read through it, you might see the word “immediately” a lot. The book of Mark uses the word “immediately” more than any other book of the Bible. “Immediately” is one of the most repeated words in the book of Mark. Mark is saying something here. It’s not like Jesus laid hands on the sick and they eventually got better or progressively got better. Immediately, instantly, Jesus brought full healing. Now that’s power!
Now remember I encouraged you to read through this book as a Roman reader. So far, what’s your response to Jesus as a Roman reader after reading the first 10 chapters of Mark? What are you thinking? What are you feeling? A Roman reader, you’d probably be thinking, “Wow, this Jesus guy is so strong and so powerful! He has power over physical nature as well as the spiritual realm. This man would be the perfect leader. He fed people numbering over 5,000 and over 4,000, so he could solve world hunger. He healed the sick, the blind, the deaf, the mute, and the lepers. He’s better than any doctor, so we’d never need a doctor again. He can even heal us spiritually of our sin. No one opposing him can stand up to him. No one is stronger or more powerful than he is!” Now if I asked the Roman reader, “How do you think the last 6 chapters will end the story?” After a little bit of pondering, the Roman might have a few predictions. Perhaps Jesus, with his following, will kick the Romans out of Judah and reclaim Jerusalem for the Jews. Maybe Jesus will also kick the Romans out Galilee, Samaria and Idumea as well to reunite Israel as one. Or maybe even march up to Rome and claim himself the next Roman emperor! It wouldn’t be too far-fetched in the Roman mind. After all, that’s what all the Roman emperors did. Once they proved their strength and power, and once they got a large following, they would march up to Rome with their followers and claim the throne for themselves. Well, let’s see how it turns out (and remember, this is the only Gospel narrative that the 1st century Roman has).
Chapter 11 is looking good for the uprising. Jesus enters Jerusalem like a king, with a parade and people cheering. The shouts of the people crying, “Blessing is the coming of the kingdom of our father David’ even has the Jewish people thinking the same as the Roman Christian: here comes the new kingdom and the reign of a new king. But what’s got the Roman reader excited is when Jesus clears out the temple. It shows Jesus moving to action in order to do what is right. Jesus is using his strength and power to also show authority. Even the cursing of the fig tree demonstrates the authority of Jesus. Jesus won’t put up crap with anyone or anything that disagrees with him. At the end of chapter 11, his authority is brought into full question. While the chief priests, teachers of the law and elders fail to recognize it, Jesus hints that his power is greater than any earthly power. His power is from above. So far, so good for uprising.
But then comes chapter 14, and it all goes downhill from there. Starting in verse 32, we see a tired, troubled, distressed, depressed Jesus minding his own business and then comes trouble. In 14:43, Judas leads a mob of people with swords and clubs. They have not come to peacefully ask Jesus questions. They have come to arrest him. Once again, remember your imagining yourself as the Roman reader. You, as a Roman, are probably thinking along the same lines of Simon the Zealot. You’re thinking, “Now’s your chance, Jesus! Tell all your disciples to get their swords and clubs and fight! Use your divine power to call down nature, angels or demons to attack your foes! We’ll first take down the Jewish leaders that oppose you, then we’ll take down the Roman leaders that oppose and you’ll be the next king of the Jews!” But that’s not what Jesus does. In fact, when a disciple (other Gospel accounts credit it to Peter) does attempt to fight back with violence, Jesus rebukes both sides for even entertaining the thought.
In Literature terms, we call this point the climax. In Literature, the climax is when the dramatic tension is at the highest and the story dramatically changes from this point out. Clearly Mark 14:43-51 is the climax of the book of Mark. The building tension in the first 13 chapters of Mark show that as Jesus builds his authority by displaying his strength and power, opposition tries to flex its power and authority to lower the power and authority of Jesus. The more Jesus rises up, the more the religious leaders are trying to push Jesus down. This all happens with the first 13 chapters, and by chapter 14, someone has got to come out on time. Like I said, in the Roman mindset, the Roman reader is expecting Jesus the one to come out on top. After all, Jesus has clearly demonstrated He is the more powerful one. But the story changes as Jesus no longer is the more powerful one. His enemies are, and to make matters worse, it looks like Jesus is the weakest.
How does Jesus look like the weakest? It gets worse from here. Jesus is brought before the Sanhedrin, and even though Jesus is right, he is declared guilty and beaten. He is handed over to Pilate. Pilate questions Jesus, but Jesus remains silent. Since Jesus does not defend himself, he is flogged then sentenced to death. Soldiers then mock him and torture him. Then he is crucified. Chapter 15 ends with Jesus, clearly dead, buried in a tomb. The Roman reader sits there, eyes wide, jaw dropped, in utter shock. No, it’s not over the way Jesus was treated. Those methods were common methods that Romans used on foreign criminals. Any Roman was use to that. The Roman reader is shocked because after seeing Jesus display his strength, his power and his authority, he doesn’t use any of it. In fact, it makes Jesus look the opposite: weak and powerless. Jesus submits to the mocking, the false accusations, the spitting, the beatings, the flogging and all the other kinds of torturing. Finally, the ultimate submission is when Jesus gives up his life on one of the most painful execution devices in the history of man. If I was a Roman reader, I might want to close this book (or scroll, I guess) in disgust after reading chapter 15. I don’t want to even glance at Mark chapter 16 (besides the fact that the second half of chapter 16 might have been written a couple centuries later). I’m guessing that Mark 16 is some kind of epilogue that concludes the book by saying the Roman leaders then executed the 12 disciples, thus ending the Christianity movement. As a Roman, I’m starting to believe this book is just Roman propaganda to show that not even a religious terrorist can thwart the Roman Empire. Well, let’s play along and pretend this is the case. After reading those 15 chapters of Mark, I slam the book shut, mad at how it ended, and walk away.
But I just can’t get my mind of this book. As a Roman, it baffles me why someone with so much strength and so much power would willingly not use it and get pushed. If he wanted to, he could have called his disciples and followers to defend him, and they would have defended him to the death. If he wanted to, he could have called down legions of angels to counter attack. Or even by his own strength, he could have taken them on single handedly. Yet he didn’t choose any of those options. Why didn’t he? This is puzzling your Roman mind so much that you can’t concentrate and you’re scatterbrained. The Jesus in chapters 14 and 15 does not seem like the same Jesus the 13 chapters before…or does it?
Now you’re Roman mind is thinking back to those first 13 chapters. You’re thinking not about the miracles themselves, but why Jesus performed the miracles. Did He do it to show how strong He was? No. Did He do it to display his power? No. Jesus seems very humble over the experiences. Did Jesus do it to exercise his authority over people? No. The more you think about it, while Jesus gave a general calling to follow him and receive the gospel message, people came to him on their own. So why did he perform his miracles? He was serving the people. He did it for the people in need, not himself. At the most, you could say he did it to win people over to his cause, the kingdom of God, but really that’s for the people’s benefit as much as his own. Every time Jesus healed, he healed to serve the people. And when you think about it, Jesus technically submitted his power to the people to serve them. Think about it. Think about Jesus feeding the 5,000 in Mark 6. In Mark 6:30-32, Jesus and his disciples are trying to run away from the crowd to get some rest. But when Jesus sees how lost they are and how desperate they are for him, he denies himself the rest to serve the people in teaching them. In Mark 5, Jesus is on his way to heal the daughter of Jairus, the synagogue ruler. When another comes along who needs healing just as much as the little girl, Jesus stops to minister to her. Yet Jesus keeps his promise to Jairus, even it takes raising her from death. Both times Jesus submits. Time after time in the Mark Gospel, Jesus is pulled out of his way to heal someone, but Jesus never complains. Every time, he submits. His strength is not meant to be used to gain power for himself for selfish reasons. His strength is suppose to be used to help others.
And it all finally hits you when you remember two important passages: Mark 10:42-45 and Mark 8:34-38. Good old Roman you quickly skimmed over those parts because it seemed like boring teaching and you wanted to get back to action. Yet Christ’s words recorded in Mark 10:42-45 and Mark 8:34-38 linger in your head over and over. Let’s take a careful look over these 2 passages specifically. We’ll go in that order, even though it’s not in chronological order.
Mark 10:42-45-
42 Jesus called them together and said, “You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. 43 Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, 44 and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all. 45 For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
We’re starting out with these verse because most scholars acknowledge theses verses (more specifically, verse 45) as the theme verse of the book. It would make sense, considering it’s so explicit to the point. It is almost like Jesus is talking directly to the Roman reader. If I may paraphrase, it’s like he’s saying, “I know how your Gentile (or Roman) culture works. You think that being high and powerful means you’re the greatest. But that’s not the way to go, especially if you’re Christians. Rather, if you want to be lord and master, be the servant and the slave. If you want to be strong, be weak. If you want to be powerful, be powerless.” Why? Because Jesus did. As verse 45 clearly states, Jesus did not come to rule in authority, but to be a servant and a slave to the people. The reader can see how Jesus was a servant and a slave to the people up to this point, and as (s)he finishes reading, it is still evident Jesus is being a servant and slave.
See, when it comes to the 4 Gospel books of the Bible, with every book, the reader has to ask the question, “How is Jesus being portrayed in this book?” In Matthew, Jesus is portrayed as the Messiah. In Luke, Jesus is portrayed as the Perfect [Son of] Man. In John, Jesus is portrayed about as the Son of God. So what about Mark? How is Mark portraying Jesus? In the book of Mark, Jesus is portrayed as the suffering servant. How did we get suffering servant? Mark chapters 1 to 13 show the servant part, as Jesus serves the people in need. Mark chapters 14 and 15 show the suffering part, as Jesus is willing to go through whatever pain it takes to pay the ransom of sin. The follow-up question everyone must ask is, “So what does that mean in light of the audience?” because that will reveal the purpose. So why does Mark need to show Romans that Jesus is a suffering servant? I thought we’d want to Jesus as a strong, powerful, authoritative leader, like they want. Well, the book does do that. Jesus does have that. But Jesus is also setting an example, and the example is that even if we have those powers, they are not to be used for selfish gain. Instead, they are to be used in servanthood towards others. So this leads us to our second passage, the application passage. But before we go on, let me conclude this first passage with an explicit, written out purpose for the book of Mark.
Mark wrote the book of Mark to persuade the Romans that Christians are not to seek after strength, power or authority, but are called to submit as suffering servants, just like Jesus did.
Mark 8:34-38-
34 Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. 35 For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it. 36 What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul? 37 Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul? 38 If anyone is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when he comes in his Father’s glory with the holy angels.”
Mark 10:45 might be the theme verse to cover all the book of Mark, but if I had to pick out a key verse for application of this book, it would be Mark 8:34-38. This drives it home to us. But first, let me connect back to Mark 10:45. Jesus never asked us to do anything he didn’t do on earth. While on earth, Jesus was a suffering servant. While on earth, Jesus gave up his life to pay the ransom for our sins. And now in Mark 8:34-38, Jesus directly calls us to do the same. Jesus did deny himself. It was never about himself while Jesus was on earth. It was about His Father first, then the people. Jesus literally took up the cross, giving up his life for us. Now we’re called to do the same. We are called to deny ourselves. To deny ourselves means to deny your dreams, your ambitions, your pride, your self-worth. It means it’s no longer about the self, but rather it’s all about God. Taking up your cross means to be willing to take up whatever suffering Jesus took, whether it be lighter or heavier. It could mean rejection from society, being mocked, being ridiculed. It could even mean real persecution and martyrdom. Finally, following him means giving up everything in your life and giving your life to God. This might seem extreme, but Jesus provides good reason. It’s the true way to save your soul. Trying to save your soul by your own strength, your own power or your own authority will just cause you to lose it. Even trying to save your soul through worldly strength, power and authority will cause you to lose it, too. Jesus calls us to give up all strength, all power and all authority and give it to him. And then we will truly find out being under his strength, power and authority is so much better.
And now if you’re still thinking you’re a Roman, and you’re still thinking like a Roman, you finally understand that Jesus was has power and authority, not in his strength over physical nature, the spiritual realm or over death and disease, but rather because he served His Father God and the people out of love. Jesus did stay true until the end. But wait, it’s not the end, is it? You forgot all about chapter 16! Maybe chapter 16 isn’t as bad as you think. You’re now ready to sit down and read it.
Interesting enough, Mark chapter 16 opens with women wondering who will be strong enough to roll away the heavy stone (there it is again, strength). But when they get there, they find the stone rolled away, and a really shiny man wearing really shiny white clothes. He reports that Jesus is not here, but has risen! They are given orders to tell Peter and the disciples to go to Galilee and meet Jesus there. Verse 8 concludes with the women running away, telling no one, out fear. Now this is where the debate enters. The earliest manuscripts we can find of Mark 16:9-20 do not appear until a couple centuries after Mark has written. Some scholars have questioned this, and have suggested the rest of Mark may have been added a couple centuries after first manuscript by summing up the other 3 Gospels. I can understand their argument, but I would disagree only because of the abrupt ending if Mark 16:8 was the true ending. If it is the true ending, Mark ends with the women running away scared, not mentioning a peep. If the story were to end this way, then the disciples never hear Jesus rose from the dead, and thus no one goes up to Galilee to see the resurrected Jesus. But we know different from the other Gospel accounts. I do believe Mark 16:9-20 is the original ending, despite not finding an older manuscript. It gives full closure to Mark’s story by giving other appearances of the risen Jesus. It is consistant with Mark’s writing as some of the accounts of the alive Jesus are quick, short summaries. But more importantly, we need Mark 16:9-20 to show the Roman reader the really grand conclusion to the book. Jesus tells the disciples to go continue the ministry He started, and if they do, the signs and miracles will accompany them. After that, Jesus raises into heaven, and he is seated at the right hand of the Father, which means Jesus is the one in charge, Jesus truly has authority and power. And sure enough, the disciples do go preach the simple gospel message of Jesus Christ, and they got the power Jesus has.
I hope you did read this whole thing, despite it being long. But this does show you that while some people would not suggest the Bible as a good storyteller, I would sharply disagree. Mark knew how to tell the true story of Jesus Christ in an exciting way that would grip his intended audience. But more importantly, I hope you got the moral of the story that Mark was trying to preach. I hope you too are persuaded to be a suffering servant, just like Jesus was.
Mark is indeed the shortest Gospel account, only 16 chapters long. Mark is also a synoptic gospel, meaning it is just summarizing the events of the life and ministry of Jesus. Both of these make sense if we take into consideration the date the book of Mark was written. The book Mark was written somewhere between 55 and 66 AD, making it the first Gospel account written down. Before this book was written, the only New Testament Scriptures out there were epistles from Paul and perhaps a few general epistles. Stories about Jesus were simply passed down by oral tradition, by word of mouth. With that in mind, it was important to get something written down about Jesus. So when Mark wrote his gospel, he wasn’t into details. Mark wanted, as the famous saying goes, “just the facts,” and it’s apparently throughout this short gospel. Take the temptation of Jesus’ for example. Matthew and Luke go into great detail about what happened during those 40 days of temptation. Mark simply says, “Jesus was tempted, and when he passed the temptations, angels served him.”
Let’s talk a little bit more about the man Mark. Most of what we know from Mark does not come from the book of Mark, but mostly from the book of Acts. Mark was a companion of Paul and Barnabas on a missionary. Mark, however, was an unreliable man, as he left part way through. Thus, when Barnabas wanted to bring along Mark again for the next missionary trip, Paul and Barnabas got in a fight over whether taking Mark was a good idea. Paul and Barnabas split, but Barnabas stayed faithful to Mark, bringing Mark with him to wherever he ministered. I could go on and tell you more about Mark, such as his mother’s name was Mary, he was a cousin to Barnabas, or that he was like a son to Peter, but none of that would really help our understanding of how the man Mark connects to the book Mark. What do think might help, I would have to take from traditional interpretations and modern interpretations. In Mark 14:51-52, Mark inserts a little story about a man wearing nothing but a linen cloth flees naked when Jesus is arrested. One might think, “That’s an odd tidbit to insert in this story. Why does Mark do it when no other Gospel writer mention it?” Some people have suggested that Mark is talking about himself, that the man running away naked is Mark. This would place Mark at the arrest. Why do I find this significant? Jesus did call 12 disciples, but these 12 disciples were not the only ones following Jesus around. There was a larger group of people who regularly followed Jesus wherever he would go. The number cut down greatly in John 6:66, and by the time we get to the book of Acts, we find out the number of Christ’s followers post-resurrection numbered around 120. I would be surprised, and I do believe, Mark was probably one of these 120 followers of Jesus, who might have witnessed Jesus speaking and performing miracles when Jesus was in the public sector. In fact, a tradition dating back to the 500s AD would not only verify me, but would also say that Mark was one of the 72 Jesus sent out to minister in Luke 10. Now to be fair and represent the other side, some scholars say there is no proof for any of this, since the earliest proof of Mark’s appearances is in Acts. They would say most of Mark’s information about Jesus and his ministry from what Peter witnessed. I do agree that Mark did get a lot of information from Peter, as a lot of the book of Mark tells stories about the closeness in the relationship between Jesus and Peter that only Peter could talk about. But if I were to add one last piece to that, and I know this argument is weak because it is merely from logic, but don’t you think God would want the first Gospel account to come from someone who witnessed Jesus more directly? One more key feature I will note is Mark’s name, or rather his full name. His full name is John Mark. John is a Jewish name. Mark is a Roman name. Thus, one can conclude Mark most likely is both Jewish and Roman, just like Paul. The other option would be Mark is from a Jewish family that were slaves to a Roman family and his family took on the last name of his Roman masters. Either way, Mark has Roman ties.
So naturally the audience for the book of Mark is Romans. Let me remind you about the Roman people, although you may not need a lot of reminding if you simply remember what you learned about them in middle school or high school (or maybe even college). The Romans are the power of the western world. They have conquered all the land around the Mediterranean Sea, including the remnants of the Egyptian and Greek Empire, the Germanic tribes and the Anglo-Saxans (English, Welsh, Scottish, etc.). Remember that Israel/Judah is not an independent, free nation. The land belongs to the Romans, ruled by the half-Jew and half-Roman King Herod, overseen by Roman Governor Pontius Pilate. In fact, all the ethnic groups the Romans have conquered have rulers that have been put in place by the greater Roman government. The Roman government has allowed the people to keep their religions, culture, traditions and holidays (as long as they are not against the Romans), but they have to submit to the Roman government and they have to pay taxes. The Romans know they have authority and they exercise it over the people they conquer. So with that mind, what do you think the most important thing is to the Romans? Power and authority. In fact, in their minds, power = authority. Actually, I can throw a third word in there: strength. Power comes in strength. Authority comes in strength. Power = strength = authority. It’s obvious if you think about it. Think about when you learned about the Caesars in history class, or even think back to reading Julius Caesar in English or Literature class. If your father was the Caesar, you were not guaranteed to be the next emperor, even if you were the firstborn son. When Julius Caesar was assinated, both Brutus and Cassius fought Julius Caesar’s son Octavius/Augustus to be the next emperor of Rome. If you wanted to be the next emperor of Rome, you had to fight for it. You had to gain followers by proving your strength, and then fight off any opposition. The last man standing, the strongest man, became the emperor. So if Mark wants to win any Romans over to Christianity, he’s got to show Jesus has strength, power and authority, to show Jesus is worth following, and that is emperor/king material.
Now usually at this part I would state the purpose of the book of Mark, and then show you through an outline of the book how Mark answers the purpose. But I’m not going to do that this time, so you can see how great of a story Mark’s gospel account is. Instead, I’m going to highlight some parts of Mark’s Gospel narrative that will eventually point to Mark’s purpose. As I go through them, and as you may be led to actually read them, think of yourself as a Roman person during the height of the Roman empire, reading this story. You’re looking for Jesus to be strong, powerful and authoritative. If you are a Roman, what are you thinking as you read this narrative? What are you feeling, or how are you emotionally reacting to parts of this Gospel account?
Mark wastes no time showing the authority and power Jesus has. At first, Jesus displays his authority simply by teaching. His message is simple: repent and receive the good news that the kingdom of God is here! As simple as this message is, it has captivated everyone who hears. His words alone have authority. But actions speak louder than words, so we need some action to verify these words. Mark wastes no time showing exciting action in his gospel story. As soon as Mark 1:21-27, Jesus begins preaching and a man with a demon comes to Jesus, and Jesus drives the demon out of the man. The people see the power behind the message Jesus is preaching and they make that connection from words to action immediately. Also in chapter 1, Mark records Jesus getting rid of a fever in Simon Peter’s mother-in-law and a man with leprosy, as well as many other sickness and demon possessions. Already with the first chapter, the Roman reader sees that Jesus has the power and strength to cure people of any sickness and even cast out demons. The demon possession would stick out, showing Jesus has power over the spiritual realm.
Mark chapter 2 opens with the famous story of Jesus healing the paralyzed man on a mat. Here, the authority of Jesus is shown twice, when Jesus first forgives the man’s sins, and then gives him the power to walk. Jesus poses the question, “Which is easier to say: to the paralyzed man, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or ‘Get up, take your mat and walk’?” The one bear testimony to the other. Since the paralyzed man can walk, the observers and readers know the man’s sins are forgiven. Jesus is shown to have power over both physical ailments and the spiritual ailment of sin. After this incident of forgiving sins, the Pharisees and Sadducees are looking at Jesus in a different light. They are questioning him more, and it’s not always to learn more. Some of them are trying to trap him, accuse him, or bring judgment down on him. The rest of chapter 2 is the Pharisees and Sadducees questioning Jesus in both his teaching and actions. Yet none of these questions or accusations phase Jesus. He knows what he is teaching is right and fully stands behind it as right. Furthermore, when Jesus is questioned about Old Testament teachings, like fasting and the Sabbath he shows that he has authority above both of those practices. Once again, Jesus is a teacher with authority. This slides right into chapter 3, and in chapter 3, the reader starts to see the results. All this power and strength is attracting a crowd. People are literally coming from all over to see Jesus. There are so many people Jesus is being crowded and pushed around. From this large crowd, Jesus picks out 12 to be his inner circle, his disciples, who will follow his every move and learn from him. Jesus has a large following, which shows his authority. Even his family is starting to pay closer attention to him.
A majority of Mark chapter 4 is Jesus speaking in parables. Once again, this shows the authority of Jesus in His teaching. It takes great wisdom to teach a parable with perfect meaning; only a smart teacher could do this. Jesus demonstrates he knows what he is teaching by teaching with various stories. But the big sign of strength comes at the conclusion of the chapter, with the famous story of Jesus calming the story. In addition to power, strength and authority over sickness, injury, demon possession and sin, we can add nature to the list. Chapter 5 adds another key element to the list. After another demon exorcism is performed, Jesus brings the daughter of Jairus, the synagogue leader, back to life. Now Jesus has strength and power over sickness, injury, sin, demons and death! Chapter 6 continues to show Christ’s power over nature by walking on water and splitting up food to feed over 5,000 men, not including women and children! But maybe more intriguing is that when Jesus sends out his 12 disciples, they have the same power and authority Jesus has. A Roman reader might be attracted by this: following Jesus gives you power!
This will repeat from chapter 7 to chapter 10, with more miracles showing the power of Jesus, speficially with blindness, deafness and muteness. This is no coincidence that there is so many miracles in the book of Mark. If Mark is trying to show great strength and power, there is no greater strength and power than a miracle, and Mark shows that Jesus just doesn’t do a few miracles, but many miracles. If there is something I would point out with the miracles in this section, as well as the miracles in the first seven chapters. If you read through it, you might see the word “immediately” a lot. The book of Mark uses the word “immediately” more than any other book of the Bible. “Immediately” is one of the most repeated words in the book of Mark. Mark is saying something here. It’s not like Jesus laid hands on the sick and they eventually got better or progressively got better. Immediately, instantly, Jesus brought full healing. Now that’s power!
Now remember I encouraged you to read through this book as a Roman reader. So far, what’s your response to Jesus as a Roman reader after reading the first 10 chapters of Mark? What are you thinking? What are you feeling? A Roman reader, you’d probably be thinking, “Wow, this Jesus guy is so strong and so powerful! He has power over physical nature as well as the spiritual realm. This man would be the perfect leader. He fed people numbering over 5,000 and over 4,000, so he could solve world hunger. He healed the sick, the blind, the deaf, the mute, and the lepers. He’s better than any doctor, so we’d never need a doctor again. He can even heal us spiritually of our sin. No one opposing him can stand up to him. No one is stronger or more powerful than he is!” Now if I asked the Roman reader, “How do you think the last 6 chapters will end the story?” After a little bit of pondering, the Roman might have a few predictions. Perhaps Jesus, with his following, will kick the Romans out of Judah and reclaim Jerusalem for the Jews. Maybe Jesus will also kick the Romans out Galilee, Samaria and Idumea as well to reunite Israel as one. Or maybe even march up to Rome and claim himself the next Roman emperor! It wouldn’t be too far-fetched in the Roman mind. After all, that’s what all the Roman emperors did. Once they proved their strength and power, and once they got a large following, they would march up to Rome with their followers and claim the throne for themselves. Well, let’s see how it turns out (and remember, this is the only Gospel narrative that the 1st century Roman has).
Chapter 11 is looking good for the uprising. Jesus enters Jerusalem like a king, with a parade and people cheering. The shouts of the people crying, “Blessing is the coming of the kingdom of our father David’ even has the Jewish people thinking the same as the Roman Christian: here comes the new kingdom and the reign of a new king. But what’s got the Roman reader excited is when Jesus clears out the temple. It shows Jesus moving to action in order to do what is right. Jesus is using his strength and power to also show authority. Even the cursing of the fig tree demonstrates the authority of Jesus. Jesus won’t put up crap with anyone or anything that disagrees with him. At the end of chapter 11, his authority is brought into full question. While the chief priests, teachers of the law and elders fail to recognize it, Jesus hints that his power is greater than any earthly power. His power is from above. So far, so good for uprising.
But then comes chapter 14, and it all goes downhill from there. Starting in verse 32, we see a tired, troubled, distressed, depressed Jesus minding his own business and then comes trouble. In 14:43, Judas leads a mob of people with swords and clubs. They have not come to peacefully ask Jesus questions. They have come to arrest him. Once again, remember your imagining yourself as the Roman reader. You, as a Roman, are probably thinking along the same lines of Simon the Zealot. You’re thinking, “Now’s your chance, Jesus! Tell all your disciples to get their swords and clubs and fight! Use your divine power to call down nature, angels or demons to attack your foes! We’ll first take down the Jewish leaders that oppose you, then we’ll take down the Roman leaders that oppose and you’ll be the next king of the Jews!” But that’s not what Jesus does. In fact, when a disciple (other Gospel accounts credit it to Peter) does attempt to fight back with violence, Jesus rebukes both sides for even entertaining the thought.
In Literature terms, we call this point the climax. In Literature, the climax is when the dramatic tension is at the highest and the story dramatically changes from this point out. Clearly Mark 14:43-51 is the climax of the book of Mark. The building tension in the first 13 chapters of Mark show that as Jesus builds his authority by displaying his strength and power, opposition tries to flex its power and authority to lower the power and authority of Jesus. The more Jesus rises up, the more the religious leaders are trying to push Jesus down. This all happens with the first 13 chapters, and by chapter 14, someone has got to come out on time. Like I said, in the Roman mindset, the Roman reader is expecting Jesus the one to come out on top. After all, Jesus has clearly demonstrated He is the more powerful one. But the story changes as Jesus no longer is the more powerful one. His enemies are, and to make matters worse, it looks like Jesus is the weakest.
How does Jesus look like the weakest? It gets worse from here. Jesus is brought before the Sanhedrin, and even though Jesus is right, he is declared guilty and beaten. He is handed over to Pilate. Pilate questions Jesus, but Jesus remains silent. Since Jesus does not defend himself, he is flogged then sentenced to death. Soldiers then mock him and torture him. Then he is crucified. Chapter 15 ends with Jesus, clearly dead, buried in a tomb. The Roman reader sits there, eyes wide, jaw dropped, in utter shock. No, it’s not over the way Jesus was treated. Those methods were common methods that Romans used on foreign criminals. Any Roman was use to that. The Roman reader is shocked because after seeing Jesus display his strength, his power and his authority, he doesn’t use any of it. In fact, it makes Jesus look the opposite: weak and powerless. Jesus submits to the mocking, the false accusations, the spitting, the beatings, the flogging and all the other kinds of torturing. Finally, the ultimate submission is when Jesus gives up his life on one of the most painful execution devices in the history of man. If I was a Roman reader, I might want to close this book (or scroll, I guess) in disgust after reading chapter 15. I don’t want to even glance at Mark chapter 16 (besides the fact that the second half of chapter 16 might have been written a couple centuries later). I’m guessing that Mark 16 is some kind of epilogue that concludes the book by saying the Roman leaders then executed the 12 disciples, thus ending the Christianity movement. As a Roman, I’m starting to believe this book is just Roman propaganda to show that not even a religious terrorist can thwart the Roman Empire. Well, let’s play along and pretend this is the case. After reading those 15 chapters of Mark, I slam the book shut, mad at how it ended, and walk away.
But I just can’t get my mind of this book. As a Roman, it baffles me why someone with so much strength and so much power would willingly not use it and get pushed. If he wanted to, he could have called his disciples and followers to defend him, and they would have defended him to the death. If he wanted to, he could have called down legions of angels to counter attack. Or even by his own strength, he could have taken them on single handedly. Yet he didn’t choose any of those options. Why didn’t he? This is puzzling your Roman mind so much that you can’t concentrate and you’re scatterbrained. The Jesus in chapters 14 and 15 does not seem like the same Jesus the 13 chapters before…or does it?
Now you’re Roman mind is thinking back to those first 13 chapters. You’re thinking not about the miracles themselves, but why Jesus performed the miracles. Did He do it to show how strong He was? No. Did He do it to display his power? No. Jesus seems very humble over the experiences. Did Jesus do it to exercise his authority over people? No. The more you think about it, while Jesus gave a general calling to follow him and receive the gospel message, people came to him on their own. So why did he perform his miracles? He was serving the people. He did it for the people in need, not himself. At the most, you could say he did it to win people over to his cause, the kingdom of God, but really that’s for the people’s benefit as much as his own. Every time Jesus healed, he healed to serve the people. And when you think about it, Jesus technically submitted his power to the people to serve them. Think about it. Think about Jesus feeding the 5,000 in Mark 6. In Mark 6:30-32, Jesus and his disciples are trying to run away from the crowd to get some rest. But when Jesus sees how lost they are and how desperate they are for him, he denies himself the rest to serve the people in teaching them. In Mark 5, Jesus is on his way to heal the daughter of Jairus, the synagogue ruler. When another comes along who needs healing just as much as the little girl, Jesus stops to minister to her. Yet Jesus keeps his promise to Jairus, even it takes raising her from death. Both times Jesus submits. Time after time in the Mark Gospel, Jesus is pulled out of his way to heal someone, but Jesus never complains. Every time, he submits. His strength is not meant to be used to gain power for himself for selfish reasons. His strength is suppose to be used to help others.
And it all finally hits you when you remember two important passages: Mark 10:42-45 and Mark 8:34-38. Good old Roman you quickly skimmed over those parts because it seemed like boring teaching and you wanted to get back to action. Yet Christ’s words recorded in Mark 10:42-45 and Mark 8:34-38 linger in your head over and over. Let’s take a careful look over these 2 passages specifically. We’ll go in that order, even though it’s not in chronological order.
Mark 10:42-45-
42 Jesus called them together and said, “You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. 43 Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, 44 and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all. 45 For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
We’re starting out with these verse because most scholars acknowledge theses verses (more specifically, verse 45) as the theme verse of the book. It would make sense, considering it’s so explicit to the point. It is almost like Jesus is talking directly to the Roman reader. If I may paraphrase, it’s like he’s saying, “I know how your Gentile (or Roman) culture works. You think that being high and powerful means you’re the greatest. But that’s not the way to go, especially if you’re Christians. Rather, if you want to be lord and master, be the servant and the slave. If you want to be strong, be weak. If you want to be powerful, be powerless.” Why? Because Jesus did. As verse 45 clearly states, Jesus did not come to rule in authority, but to be a servant and a slave to the people. The reader can see how Jesus was a servant and a slave to the people up to this point, and as (s)he finishes reading, it is still evident Jesus is being a servant and slave.
See, when it comes to the 4 Gospel books of the Bible, with every book, the reader has to ask the question, “How is Jesus being portrayed in this book?” In Matthew, Jesus is portrayed as the Messiah. In Luke, Jesus is portrayed as the Perfect [Son of] Man. In John, Jesus is portrayed about as the Son of God. So what about Mark? How is Mark portraying Jesus? In the book of Mark, Jesus is portrayed as the suffering servant. How did we get suffering servant? Mark chapters 1 to 13 show the servant part, as Jesus serves the people in need. Mark chapters 14 and 15 show the suffering part, as Jesus is willing to go through whatever pain it takes to pay the ransom of sin. The follow-up question everyone must ask is, “So what does that mean in light of the audience?” because that will reveal the purpose. So why does Mark need to show Romans that Jesus is a suffering servant? I thought we’d want to Jesus as a strong, powerful, authoritative leader, like they want. Well, the book does do that. Jesus does have that. But Jesus is also setting an example, and the example is that even if we have those powers, they are not to be used for selfish gain. Instead, they are to be used in servanthood towards others. So this leads us to our second passage, the application passage. But before we go on, let me conclude this first passage with an explicit, written out purpose for the book of Mark.
Mark wrote the book of Mark to persuade the Romans that Christians are not to seek after strength, power or authority, but are called to submit as suffering servants, just like Jesus did.
Mark 8:34-38-
34 Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. 35 For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it. 36 What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul? 37 Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul? 38 If anyone is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when he comes in his Father’s glory with the holy angels.”
Mark 10:45 might be the theme verse to cover all the book of Mark, but if I had to pick out a key verse for application of this book, it would be Mark 8:34-38. This drives it home to us. But first, let me connect back to Mark 10:45. Jesus never asked us to do anything he didn’t do on earth. While on earth, Jesus was a suffering servant. While on earth, Jesus gave up his life to pay the ransom for our sins. And now in Mark 8:34-38, Jesus directly calls us to do the same. Jesus did deny himself. It was never about himself while Jesus was on earth. It was about His Father first, then the people. Jesus literally took up the cross, giving up his life for us. Now we’re called to do the same. We are called to deny ourselves. To deny ourselves means to deny your dreams, your ambitions, your pride, your self-worth. It means it’s no longer about the self, but rather it’s all about God. Taking up your cross means to be willing to take up whatever suffering Jesus took, whether it be lighter or heavier. It could mean rejection from society, being mocked, being ridiculed. It could even mean real persecution and martyrdom. Finally, following him means giving up everything in your life and giving your life to God. This might seem extreme, but Jesus provides good reason. It’s the true way to save your soul. Trying to save your soul by your own strength, your own power or your own authority will just cause you to lose it. Even trying to save your soul through worldly strength, power and authority will cause you to lose it, too. Jesus calls us to give up all strength, all power and all authority and give it to him. And then we will truly find out being under his strength, power and authority is so much better.
And now if you’re still thinking you’re a Roman, and you’re still thinking like a Roman, you finally understand that Jesus was has power and authority, not in his strength over physical nature, the spiritual realm or over death and disease, but rather because he served His Father God and the people out of love. Jesus did stay true until the end. But wait, it’s not the end, is it? You forgot all about chapter 16! Maybe chapter 16 isn’t as bad as you think. You’re now ready to sit down and read it.
Interesting enough, Mark chapter 16 opens with women wondering who will be strong enough to roll away the heavy stone (there it is again, strength). But when they get there, they find the stone rolled away, and a really shiny man wearing really shiny white clothes. He reports that Jesus is not here, but has risen! They are given orders to tell Peter and the disciples to go to Galilee and meet Jesus there. Verse 8 concludes with the women running away, telling no one, out fear. Now this is where the debate enters. The earliest manuscripts we can find of Mark 16:9-20 do not appear until a couple centuries after Mark has written. Some scholars have questioned this, and have suggested the rest of Mark may have been added a couple centuries after first manuscript by summing up the other 3 Gospels. I can understand their argument, but I would disagree only because of the abrupt ending if Mark 16:8 was the true ending. If it is the true ending, Mark ends with the women running away scared, not mentioning a peep. If the story were to end this way, then the disciples never hear Jesus rose from the dead, and thus no one goes up to Galilee to see the resurrected Jesus. But we know different from the other Gospel accounts. I do believe Mark 16:9-20 is the original ending, despite not finding an older manuscript. It gives full closure to Mark’s story by giving other appearances of the risen Jesus. It is consistant with Mark’s writing as some of the accounts of the alive Jesus are quick, short summaries. But more importantly, we need Mark 16:9-20 to show the Roman reader the really grand conclusion to the book. Jesus tells the disciples to go continue the ministry He started, and if they do, the signs and miracles will accompany them. After that, Jesus raises into heaven, and he is seated at the right hand of the Father, which means Jesus is the one in charge, Jesus truly has authority and power. And sure enough, the disciples do go preach the simple gospel message of Jesus Christ, and they got the power Jesus has.
I hope you did read this whole thing, despite it being long. But this does show you that while some people would not suggest the Bible as a good storyteller, I would sharply disagree. Mark knew how to tell the true story of Jesus Christ in an exciting way that would grip his intended audience. But more importantly, I hope you got the moral of the story that Mark was trying to preach. I hope you too are persuaded to be a suffering servant, just like Jesus was.
Thursday, November 24, 2011
A Thanksgiving Devotional
Wow, I realized I have not posting anything on here for a year. So I wanted to post something before the year ended. So with this being Thanksgiving, let me share a Thanksgiving devotional I wrote for the Conestoga Youth Group a couple years ago. It's a good one to share.
In my senior of high school, for Faith Walk class, my teacher assigned us to write 100 Blessings we were thankful for in our devotionals. One of my classmates said to him, "What?! 100 Blessings?! Are you crazy?!" My teacher replied, "You're right...110 Blessings." My classmate was shocked even more. "You want us to think up and write down 110 blessings?! That's insane!" My teacher responded, "Yeah, I guess you're right...make that 120 blessing." My classmate was about to object a third time, but the rest of his classmates quickly shut him up before it became 130. Truthfully, I was as shocked as everyone else was. I wasn't sure I could write up 120 Blessings I was thankful either. But sure enough, my teacher knew it was possible, and I did record on paper 120 blessings I was thankful for (click anywhere where it says "120 blessings to read it!). Yeah, sometimes it felt like I was nitpicking, but it really got me thinking about specific things (or people) I was thankful for, and why I was so thankful for these blessings. And it's a good thing. After all, the Bible calls for us to be thankful for all our blessings.
While there are many verses that use the term "thanks," "give thanks" or "thanksgiving," if I had to pick a theme verse for Thanksgiving, I would pick Ephesians 5:20- "always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ." Now, I'm a student of Greek, and to be a student of Greek, you have to be able to notice the grammatical structure of the sentence, like the subject, the direct object, the indirect object, the verb, and the prepositional, and so on. So let's break down this verse in the same way. What is the subject of the verse, or who is perfoming the action? We, as Christians, are. What is the verb, or what are we doing? Giving thanks. What is the direct object, or what are we giving our thanks for? All things. What is the indirect object, or to whom are we giving our thanks for all things? God the Father. What's the adverb, which tells us when are we to give thanks? Always. And what's the prepositional phrase, which says why we are to give thanks? Because of Jesus Christ.
I once heard somebody paraphrase this verse like this: “Every Christian must give thanks to God for everything in every circumstance in all times”? And I think it's a good paraphrase and a good interpretation. A more literal translation of Colossians 3:17 and 1 Thessalonians 5:18 would agree with it. Colossians 3:17 says,"And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him." 1 Thessalonians 5:18 tells us, "Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus." When we think of commandments, we usually think of the Old Testament, like the 10 Commandments. But there are commandments in the New Testament, and giving thanks is one of them. God has truly given us so much, in light of our condition. What condition is that? We're fallen sinners, living lives rebellious towards God. Our lives should be living hells. Yet every now and then, we get bits of heaven. Nobody would ever give things to someone who purposely annoying them or pissing them off. Yet God does, out of his preverant grace. So would it hurt to give thanks every now and then for these little things?
I know sometimes it's easy to give thanks, and sometimes it's hard to give thanks. It's easy to give thanks when we've gone so long without something, and then, all of a sudden, we get it. But sometimes it's hard to be thankful when we see what others have and then see we don't have it. Instead of being thankful, we replace a thankful attitude with a jealous one. We watched "reality shows" of celebrities, and we wish we were wearing the latest fashions like they were, wearing the shinest jewelry like they were, and driving the coolest cars as they were. Shouldn't we be thankful for the clothese on our back and the car that gets us from Point A to Point B safely? I know these kinds of things use to make me jealous instead of thankful, too, but then I read some shocking statistics that changed my attitude. I hope they do the same for you. Just consider the basic necessities you need for life...
FOOD: It is estimated that 800 million people in the world suffer from hunger of malnutrion. 15 million of these 800 million will die from their starvation. If you are well-fed, you are in the top third of the world population. You would be considered "upper class"
WATER: 20% of the world does not have safe drinking water
MONEY: 3 billion people in the world live on $2 a day. 1.3 billion people live on $1 a day, or less.
HOME: 100-200 million people in the world are homeless.
CAR: Only 8% of people in the world have a car. If you have car, you are in the top 8%
COMPUTER: Only 1% of people in the world have a computer. If you have a computer, you are in the top 1% of the world.
PHONE: Only 17% of people in the world have a phone, and only .1% have a cell phone.
This wasn't meant to guilt you. This wasn't meant to call you to live a simpler lifestyle (although if it does, more power to you). This was meant to show you how fortunate you are for owning any of these things and how it calls for being thankful for these things. So you can't eat out weekly or can't expensive seafood. At least you can eat, which 2/3 of the world can't. So you have to drink water out of the tap instead of buying water bottles. At least you can drink that water. So you work at minimum wage. In some places of the world, minimum wage is 25 cents an hour, not $7.25. Now minimum wage doesn't look so bad. So maybe you wish you had a bigger house, with bigger bedrooms or a bigger kitchen. But you're more fortunate than those living in tents or cardboard boxes. Give thanks for that. So your car is over 10 years old or has more than 100,000 miles on it. If it runs, you should be thankful, for many people don't have that option. Be thankful if you are the top 1% of the world that owns a computer, even if it's not a fast computer. Be thankful if you're the top .1% of the world that has a cell phone, even if your cell phone is not an iPhone or any other smart phone.
And this is where it gets personal. I am only working for $9 an hour. And when I pay tithes, taxes, rent, electricity, internet, car insurance, and gas, I only have $35 left for food...for the week. So needless to say I am use to ramen for lunch and mac and cheese for dinner...every day. My car is 10 years old and over 133,333 miles. I sometimes feel like I am the only one who still has a feature [cell] phone because everyone else has a smart [cell] phone. Some people might not complain about this. But when I realize some people can't afford to live on their own, can't afford to have electricity, can't afford a car (whether that be the payment, the insurance or the gas), or can't afford a cell phone, I give thanks to God that I do have these things. And more recently, I have become extremely thankful that my girlfriend and her grandmother have been gracious enough to feed me a more balance dinner with more variety.
And once Thanksgiving is done, we start preparing for Christmas, and things flip-flop. We go from being thankful to wanting. And it leads me to question, "How can we keep this attitude of thankfulness through a time where people want?" I pray that we can find the answer, and once we do, we immediately act upon it.
In my senior of high school, for Faith Walk class, my teacher assigned us to write 100 Blessings we were thankful for in our devotionals. One of my classmates said to him, "What?! 100 Blessings?! Are you crazy?!" My teacher replied, "You're right...110 Blessings." My classmate was shocked even more. "You want us to think up and write down 110 blessings?! That's insane!" My teacher responded, "Yeah, I guess you're right...make that 120 blessing." My classmate was about to object a third time, but the rest of his classmates quickly shut him up before it became 130. Truthfully, I was as shocked as everyone else was. I wasn't sure I could write up 120 Blessings I was thankful either. But sure enough, my teacher knew it was possible, and I did record on paper 120 blessings I was thankful for (click anywhere where it says "120 blessings to read it!). Yeah, sometimes it felt like I was nitpicking, but it really got me thinking about specific things (or people) I was thankful for, and why I was so thankful for these blessings. And it's a good thing. After all, the Bible calls for us to be thankful for all our blessings.
While there are many verses that use the term "thanks," "give thanks" or "thanksgiving," if I had to pick a theme verse for Thanksgiving, I would pick Ephesians 5:20- "always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ." Now, I'm a student of Greek, and to be a student of Greek, you have to be able to notice the grammatical structure of the sentence, like the subject, the direct object, the indirect object, the verb, and the prepositional, and so on. So let's break down this verse in the same way. What is the subject of the verse, or who is perfoming the action? We, as Christians, are. What is the verb, or what are we doing? Giving thanks. What is the direct object, or what are we giving our thanks for? All things. What is the indirect object, or to whom are we giving our thanks for all things? God the Father. What's the adverb, which tells us when are we to give thanks? Always. And what's the prepositional phrase, which says why we are to give thanks? Because of Jesus Christ.
I once heard somebody paraphrase this verse like this: “Every Christian must give thanks to God for everything in every circumstance in all times”? And I think it's a good paraphrase and a good interpretation. A more literal translation of Colossians 3:17 and 1 Thessalonians 5:18 would agree with it. Colossians 3:17 says,"And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him." 1 Thessalonians 5:18 tells us, "Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus." When we think of commandments, we usually think of the Old Testament, like the 10 Commandments. But there are commandments in the New Testament, and giving thanks is one of them. God has truly given us so much, in light of our condition. What condition is that? We're fallen sinners, living lives rebellious towards God. Our lives should be living hells. Yet every now and then, we get bits of heaven. Nobody would ever give things to someone who purposely annoying them or pissing them off. Yet God does, out of his preverant grace. So would it hurt to give thanks every now and then for these little things?
I know sometimes it's easy to give thanks, and sometimes it's hard to give thanks. It's easy to give thanks when we've gone so long without something, and then, all of a sudden, we get it. But sometimes it's hard to be thankful when we see what others have and then see we don't have it. Instead of being thankful, we replace a thankful attitude with a jealous one. We watched "reality shows" of celebrities, and we wish we were wearing the latest fashions like they were, wearing the shinest jewelry like they were, and driving the coolest cars as they were. Shouldn't we be thankful for the clothese on our back and the car that gets us from Point A to Point B safely? I know these kinds of things use to make me jealous instead of thankful, too, but then I read some shocking statistics that changed my attitude. I hope they do the same for you. Just consider the basic necessities you need for life...
FOOD: It is estimated that 800 million people in the world suffer from hunger of malnutrion. 15 million of these 800 million will die from their starvation. If you are well-fed, you are in the top third of the world population. You would be considered "upper class"
WATER: 20% of the world does not have safe drinking water
MONEY: 3 billion people in the world live on $2 a day. 1.3 billion people live on $1 a day, or less.
HOME: 100-200 million people in the world are homeless.
CAR: Only 8% of people in the world have a car. If you have car, you are in the top 8%
COMPUTER: Only 1% of people in the world have a computer. If you have a computer, you are in the top 1% of the world.
PHONE: Only 17% of people in the world have a phone, and only .1% have a cell phone.
This wasn't meant to guilt you. This wasn't meant to call you to live a simpler lifestyle (although if it does, more power to you). This was meant to show you how fortunate you are for owning any of these things and how it calls for being thankful for these things. So you can't eat out weekly or can't expensive seafood. At least you can eat, which 2/3 of the world can't. So you have to drink water out of the tap instead of buying water bottles. At least you can drink that water. So you work at minimum wage. In some places of the world, minimum wage is 25 cents an hour, not $7.25. Now minimum wage doesn't look so bad. So maybe you wish you had a bigger house, with bigger bedrooms or a bigger kitchen. But you're more fortunate than those living in tents or cardboard boxes. Give thanks for that. So your car is over 10 years old or has more than 100,000 miles on it. If it runs, you should be thankful, for many people don't have that option. Be thankful if you are the top 1% of the world that owns a computer, even if it's not a fast computer. Be thankful if you're the top .1% of the world that has a cell phone, even if your cell phone is not an iPhone or any other smart phone.
And this is where it gets personal. I am only working for $9 an hour. And when I pay tithes, taxes, rent, electricity, internet, car insurance, and gas, I only have $35 left for food...for the week. So needless to say I am use to ramen for lunch and mac and cheese for dinner...every day. My car is 10 years old and over 133,333 miles. I sometimes feel like I am the only one who still has a feature [cell] phone because everyone else has a smart [cell] phone. Some people might not complain about this. But when I realize some people can't afford to live on their own, can't afford to have electricity, can't afford a car (whether that be the payment, the insurance or the gas), or can't afford a cell phone, I give thanks to God that I do have these things. And more recently, I have become extremely thankful that my girlfriend and her grandmother have been gracious enough to feed me a more balance dinner with more variety.
And once Thanksgiving is done, we start preparing for Christmas, and things flip-flop. We go from being thankful to wanting. And it leads me to question, "How can we keep this attitude of thankfulness through a time where people want?" I pray that we can find the answer, and once we do, we immediately act upon it.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
1 Samuel 1: Not Striking Deals But Surrendering Desires
Introduction In those grade school English classes, whether English composition classes or public speaking classes, both taught me that a st...
