[To look at the first two passes at this Sunday's appointed Bible lessons, go here and here. The first pass will explain what these posts are about.]General Comments, continued:
12. For general comments on the book of Romans, go here.
13. Anglican Chris Haslam has this summary of our text from Romans:
Paul has told his readers that “We who are strong” (v. 1) are to help the “weak” to come to terms with their consciences; we are to endure, pleasantly, their “failings” – thus building up the Christian community. Jesus is our great example.Verse-by-Verse Comments: Matthew 3:1-12 1In those days John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea, proclaiming,
Now Paul tells us the value of the Old Testament for us, “written in former days” (v. 4). When Jesus’ suffering is seen as part of God’s plan (which began with Abraham and other patriarchs) “the scriptures” take on a greater meaning: towards the “hope” of eternal life. Vv. 5-6 are a prayer for harmony in the community, so that it may reflect God’s glory. In 14:1, Paul has written: “Welcome those who are weak in faith”. In v. 7 he combines this with Jesus’ command to “love one another as I have loved you”. Why? “For the glory of God”, the reason Jesus came to us. Jesus was a Jew and ministered to Jews (“a servant of the circumcised”, v. 8) in order to demonstrate that the “promises ... to the patriarchs” are reliable (“confirm”) and to open up God’s promises to other cultural communities (“Gentiles”, v. 9, Greek: ethne). Paul’s quotations in vv. 9-11 – from Psalms, Deuteronomy and Isaiah – all show that others besides Jews were envisioned in God’s plan. Paul ends by asking God, the one in whom all cultures centre their “hope” (v. 12), to fill his readers with “joy” (v. 13), “peace” and “hope” – the key concepts in his quotations.
(1) The word for "appeared" here is paraginomai in the Greek of the original text. It's an interesting word to me, because it's a compound. Ginomai, by itself, means the same thing: to appear. Para is a prefix familiar to us in English, found in such words as parallel, paradox, and parable. It carries the meaning of alongside. For example, parallel carries the meaning of two lines traveling alongside one another, whether in reference to the gymnast's parallel bars or the geographer's parallels of latitude. A parable, which might literally be translated as thrown alongside is a story which, parallel to it, has another story.
So, I wonder if it would be pressing things too much to say that a more specific way to speak of John's appearing in the wilderness is to say that he appeared alongside or in the midst of his Judean people. This would get at some of the nature of his ministry. He came alongside his fellow Judeans to prepare them for the appearing of the long-awaited King of kings.
(2) The place of John's ministry, the eremos, the desert or wilderness, is fitting. The second of the two Creation accounts, which begins at Genesis 2:4, happens in a wilderness or desert. It was from the dust of this wilderness that God breathed life into the first man.
The wilderness was also the place where the people of Israel wandered, taking forty years to make what should have been an eleven-day trip.
And, of course, Jesus was tempted in the wilderness.
The meaning is both literal and symbolic. The wilderness is a hard place to live, a place where death is at home. The devil too, found this a hospitable place, apparently.
John's ministry is a gauntlet thrown down against all the evil and death that bedevils the human race. He announces the prospect of God intervening to bring new life to the repentant. As Paul puts it:
If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! (2 Corinthians 5:17)2“Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”
(1) Repent, metanoia in the Greek of the New Testament, literally means change of mind. To repent means to undergo what I sometimes call a holy lobotomy. We change our way of thinking. Born enslaved to sin, repentance, in a way, is asking God to help us think about our life, about sin, and about God in God's ways. This is what Paul describes when he encouraged the Philippian church (and us) to "Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus..." (Philippians 2:5).
Hebrew, pictorial and earthy where Greek is cerebral, uses a word which carries the meaning of once having been walking away from God and then turning back.
(2) The phrase kingdom of heaven is the way Matthew translates words of Jesus that might be rendered as kingdom or kingdom of God in the other Gospels. All three versions convey the idea of God's reign entering our wilderness through Christ.
In fact, the word for kingdom, basileia in the Greek, is more accurately translated as reign. A kingdom is more about a confined piece of geography. But to speak of being under the reign of heaven or the reign of God is to speak of something that can happen anywhere people repent and believe in Jesus Christ. It has to do with submission to the lordship of a king rather than residence in a place. It has to do with a relationship with one's Lord.
(3) John says that the kingdom "has come near." He speaks of Jesus' entry into the world as an accomplished fact. And so it was. John was preparing others--and, it turns out, himself--to see the King Who has come near. At Christmas, we celebrate the miracle of grace involved in God coming near to us!
(4) Brian Sroffregen writes of this verse:
Only Matthew gives us a direct quote of John's preaching: "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near." These are exactly the same words Jesus speaks in 4:17, and quite similar to the words his disciples are to proclaim in 10:7.3This is the one of whom the prophet Isaiah spoke when he said, “The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.’”
(1) The words quoted are from Isaiah 40:3. They said that God was going to deliver His captive people. In Jesus, God sets those who are repentant and believe in Him from their captivity to sin and death.
(2) Preparing the way, making paths straight. This is the imagery of road construction. While the Gospel of Luke makes much more extensive use of this imagery from Isaiah, the idea is here as well. John's ministry of preparation entailed clearing a path by which people could see that Jesus is the King.
Repentance is a miracle of God's grace. God woos the sinner into repentance. Repentance is the experience of seeing reality as it is. When I repent, I understand that I'm a sinner and a mortal in need of an immortal, perfect God. Like trees, boulders, and obstacles in road
building, it clears a way, in this case so that people to see forgiveness beyond sin and hope beyond death. That's what they see in Jesus.
4Now John wore clothing of camel’s hair with a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey.
(1) John's crude attire would hardly get him on the cover of GQ. His diet won't ever be featured on the Food Network. He wears a coarse camel-hair coat. The prophet Elijah, whose prophetic ministry John's resembles, was a hairy man who wore a leather belt (2 Kings 1:8). According to Leviticus 11:22, locusts were kosher, acceptable food for a pious Jew. (But I doubt that many ate them.)
(2) John wasn't interested in all the things that denote status in the world. He understood that it's possible to gain the world and lose one's eternal life. He made seeking God's kingdom the first priority in his life.
5Then the people of Jerusalem and all Judea were going out to him, and all the region along the Jordan, 6and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.
(1) What accounted for the attraction that people felt to John and his message?
It had nothing to do with his attire or his diet.
It had nothing to do with the easiness of his message either.
Think about that.
[More tomorrow, I hope.]
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