Timothy & Countering The Culture (part 22)

In verse twelve of chapter four Paul writes “Let no one look down on you because you are young” (1 Timothy 4:12a).  Honor came to someone (at least partially) in conjunction with age.  Though a person would not be looked upon as being honorable simply because of age, those things that conveyed honor would only be recognized as being truly honorable when attached to someone of appropriate age.  The church of Christ, unconcerned with the conveyance of honor according to the world’s standards, recognizes an entirely different set of honor standards, in accordance with “speech, conduct, love, faithfulness, and purity” (4:12b).  There is no age-discrimination here, and all can participate equally.  Accordingly, these things can be demonstrated through “the public reading of Scripture… exhortation… teaching” (4:13), and it is these things that should absorb attention and be marks of progress (4:15). 

In the fifth chapter of this letter, Paul addresses an issue that is near to the heart of the Creator God, which is that of widows.  The Hebrew Scriptures---the words that reveal the character of that God, and which must be viewed through the event of the incarnation and the cross---are filled with words that speak to the covenant God’s concern for widows.  Widows, along with orphans, were among the most vulnerable members of society, and the mark of the people of the Creator God was their proper care of widows (and orphans, though this study will ultimately be limited to widows for the sake of the treatment of Timothy). 

Indeed, it could be said that a driving force behind the judgments of the Creator God that rained down upon His people through the instrumentation of Assyria and Babylon, was Israel’s treatment of the groups of people to whom their God had directed them to offer special concern and consideration.  This group included widows.  Therefore, one should not be surprised to find the issue of widows treated in the New Testament, as the church of the Christ sought to find its way in a culture that was quite dismissive of widows as those that had no place in the honor system---who were relegated to the margins of society, and whose existence, by and large, was going to be meager at best. 

The Creator God’s passionate concern for widows, as revealed in the narrative tradition that was foundational for the covenant faith of Israel, is best summed up by James, as in the context of the early church’s grappling with the continuation of that narrative tradition and the re-shaping of that covenant faith around Jesus as Lord, he writes “Pure and undefiled religion before God the Father is this: to care for orphans and widows in their misfortune” (1:27a).  This has an added benefit of making it possible “to keep oneself unstained by the world” (1:27b). 

There is a tendency to see this as a statement with a double directive, with the first directive concerning achieving a pure and undefiled religion being caring for orphans and widows, while the second directive is keeping oneself unstained by the world.  Perhaps this is a false division?  Perhaps it is time that Christians saw this as directive and consequence---action and reaction?  Perhaps this statement by James follows hard on the directives and examples of the Hebrew Scriptures?  Israel failed to care for the orphans and the widows, and therefore they became stained by the world around them.  Had they cared for the orphans and the widows, and kept that at the center of their covenant-keeping, such staining would not have taken place.    

Love On John's Terms (part 12)

To this point, the observation of “miraculous signs” has been limited to the plural.  However, its usage in the singular must not be overlooked.  It cannot be said that the singular phrase is limited to the Gospel of John alone, as a singular use is also to be found in Luke’s Gospel.  However, as it is a single instance, it does not appear to play a role in the overall structure and movement of Luke, but this most certainly cannot be said of its role in the Gospel of John. 

Adding the uses of the singular “miraculous sign” to that of the plural, one finds an additional five instances of its role in the Gospel, thus bringing the total number of “miraculous sign” language to fourteen instances.  Clearly, it is a key component of what is being communicated by this author.  This makes sense, especially when reflecting on the fact that the pre-supposition of this Gospel is a very high Christology, operating on the premise that Jesus is the incarnation of Israel’s covenant God.  The hearers then, especially with this presupposition at play in their own community, are not going to be surprised that miraculous signs follow Him. 

“Miraculous sign” makes its first appearance in the fourth chapter, following the healing of the son of a royal official.  This is recorded as “His second miraculous sign when He returned from Judea to Galilee” (4:54).  It makes two of its five appearances in the sixth chapter, which is heavy with “sign” language.  All told, between the singular and the plural, the listener and the reader encounter this language four times in this chapter.  Considering the fact that the chapter contains the feeding of the five thousand, Jesus making His walk on the water, and His discourse related to bread (which ultimately springs from the feeding), this is unsurprising.  Does love play a role in any of this?  In this chapter that is filled with miraculous signs, and references to the same, is it possible to make any additions to an understanding of what “love” means on John’s terms?  As is almost always the case, the qualifying answer is “perhaps.” 

In the fourteenth verse the author writes “Now when the people saw the miraculous sign that Jesus performed, they began to say to one another, ‘This is certainly the Prophet who is to come into the world.’”  This is an allusion to a statement from the book of Deuteronomy---a key component of the Hebrew Scriptures that weighed heavily on Jewish self-understanding in the second Temple period.  In the eighteenth chapter of Deuteronomy, as Moses continues to address Israel, he can be heard saying that “The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you---from your fellow Israelites; you must listen to him” (18:15). 

Because Moses, of course, was understood as the man that the Creator God had raised up to lead Israel out from under Egyptian oppression, these words, as reported by John, must be seen and heard in that light and context.  The people were affirming Jesus as the new Moses.  Therefore, He must also be the one that is going to lead them out from under Roman oppression and occupation.  For the crowds, this Moses-like leadership is confirmed by the fact that Jesus has miraculously provided bread to a multitude of people there on the mountainside, just as Moses (though it was Israel’s God at work---one can say the same for Jesus from the perspective on offer by John) miraculously provided bread to the nation of Israel in the wilderness following their exodus.

This is not simply conjecture, because it is rather obvious that this is the way these things are meant to be understood.  To this point, later on in the sixth chapter Jesus is heard to say “I tell you the solemn truth, it is not Moses who has given you the bread from heaven, but My Father is giving you true bread from heaven” (6:32).  This explicit mention of Moses (in the wake of the implicit mention of Moses in the fourteenth verse) in the midst of a section of the Gospel full of references to miraculous signs, calls attention to the single use of the plural “miraculous signs” that is to be found in the Hebrew Scriptures.  That use is in the one hundred fifth Psalm.  There, within a context of the Psalmist speaking about Moses and Aaron and the display of divine power that precipitated the Creator God’s delivery of Israel from Egypt, the Psalmist writes “they executed His miraculous signs among them” (105:27a).  Thus, one can surmise that John’s “miraculous sign” structure, especially here in the sixth chapter, plays on the exile and exodus motif (perishing and eternal life) that was established in the third chapter during the conversation with Nicodemus. 

Psalm Of The King (part 5 of 5)

As it is related to the first part of verse five, the deliverance that would bring the king honor can be readily understood as the deliverance from exile that the Creator God would work through His people’s messiah-king, as that which would bring that king great honor.  Indeed, in making it so all nations would submit to Israel’s king, whether it would be in the subservient way envisioned and expected by many in Israel, in which all nations would be subjected to the authority of national Israel, or in the Creator God’s kingdom plans in which Israel’s king would be a king for all peoples with the barriers between Jew and Gentile (as well as all other social barriers) torn down, His God would “give him majestic splendor” (Psalm 21:5b).   

Verse six pulls the reader back into the framework of covenant and blessings, as it reads, “For You grant him lasting blessings; You give him great joy by allowing him into your presence” (21:6).  Once again, the use of “blessings” should put the reader in mind of the Abrahamic and Deuteronomic covenants and blessings.  By being the embodiment of the covenant God’s purposes for Israel---being a light for the world for the purpose of the Creator God’s glory (which is what the New Testament insists that Jesus is through believers when they are in union with Him)---Jesus looks to the promise of being brought into His God’s presence.  This points towards the Resurrection, as when He was brought forth from the grave, Jesus inaugurates the kingdom of heaven that the Creator God had long intended to establish on earth, doing so by means of that very Resurrection, which also serves as the evidence of the overlapping of heaven and earth that now takes place whenever the Gospel (Jesus is Lord) is spoken and believed. 

Because it will then be through acknowledgment of Jesus as King and Lord of all peoples (the Gospel), and of all creation as well, that the Creator God creates a renewed Israel (covenant people), the covenant blessing is extended to all people, through the Lordship of Jesus, as He comes to be recognized as the incarnation and embodiment of the Creator.  Jesus becomes the person and place in which the covenant God brings about one of His promised blessings, having told His covenant people “I will walk among you, and I will be your God and you will be My people” (Leviticus 26:12).  All that are in union with Jesus are said to be kings and priests to God, and in this promise of being with His people, so they are made to be in their God’s presence. 

Finally, it can be seen that the faithfulness of Jesus, which has its rooting in what He understood to be the faithfulness of His God, is the key to His hope.  As Jesus has possibly taken this Psalm to heart, He would have read, “For the king trusts in the Lord, and because of the Sovereign One’s faithfulness he is not upended” (21:7).  As He journeyed through His ministry, towards the encounters and confrontations that would ultimately lead to the death that He knew He must undergo on behalf of His people, Jesus would trust in the faithful covenant God to perform a resurrection.  Relying on His knowledge of Israel’s history, Jesus could trust that He would not be upended, and that He would not be permanently laid down, but that in His Resurrection, and in the proclamation of His Gospel, that the world itself would be upended---turned upside down as can be read in Acts, and that because of His faithfulness, a new age would dawn.  Truly, this is a Psalm of the King.