Friday, March 4
Romans 14.1-13: Although there is no evidence that the Roman congregation experienced internal controversies about dietary and liturgical customs carried over from Judaism, Paul decided to treat here of a particular pastoral problem attendant on those points, namely, differences of conscientious sensitivity among believers.
This latter concern remains a matter of continued relevance. Whereas Christians long ago lost their lingering attachment to Jewish dietary customs and liturgical observances, they still sometimes find themselves divided, even today, on a variety of other subjects. These include, for instance, drinking alcoholic and using tobacco.
Paul’s fundamental principle seems clear enough: Christians are to show to one another that level of respect, kindness, and deference that will free each of them from harsh judgment or ridicule, carping or shock. The guiding virtues to be cultivated in this respect are faith (verses 22-23), charity (verse 15), and the imitation of Christ (verses 9,15; 15:3,7-8).
The prohibition against judging other members of the congregation is especially forceful in this chapter. The verb “to judge,” krinein, appears eight times. One recalls the Lord’s example of the Pharisee in Luke 18:11.
The “weak” in most congregations will often be the newer members, or even the conscientious inquirers, who are just beginning to find their way in the Christian life (verses 1-5). Particularly sensitive in conscience, frequently such individuals are shocked are disedified by the behavior of other Christians, whom they may perceive as less zealous or even lax. These “weak” Christians are exhorted not to pass judgment on others, and the others, in turn, are exhorted not to ridicule or shock the “weak.” On the contrary, they should receive support and encouragement in the difficult early stages of their journey. One recalls here the Lord’s warning to those who scandalize the “little ones,” those relatively inexperienced Christians who are new in the discernment of good and evil, right and wrong.
The important point is to serve the Lord, to whom we all belong (verses 6-8; 1 Corinthians 6:20; 7:23). The example held before us is Christ, who neither lived nor died for Himself, but for us (verse 9).
If our knees are bent in prayer and our voices raised in praise, we will be amply busy and occupied, with neither time nor psychic energy to judge, criticize, or ridicule fellow Christians (verse 12).
Saturday, March 5
Matthew 17.1-13: What appears in this story is the glory of God shining forth from Christ’s body. This is the revelation of which the Apostle Paul declares, “For in him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily (somatikos)” (Col 2.9; cf 1.19).
Where do we find God? In the body of Christ. In him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. Why look elsewhere? Why waste time and energy on religious theory? In Christ dwells all of the divinity in bodily shape. The body of Christ, seated at God’s right hand, is the locus of salvation. His flesh is the dwelling place of God. His body is the Temple: “Jesus answered and said to them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” Then the Jews said, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will You raise it up in three days?” But He was speaking of the temple of His body.
The role of the sacraments is to provide access to the body of Christ. These are the sacred rites that Jesus Himself left us and commanded us to do. The first of these is Baptism, of which St. Paul wrote, “by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body” (1 Cor 12:13). What is this body into which we are all baptized? It is the body of Christ, the physical source of our salvation. What else is the Church but the physical extension of the body of Christ?
This is why we insist that the Church founded by Christ is an organic and physical reality, not some shapeless figment of our religious imaginations. We join the Church by a physical act, which is called baptism. And why are we baptized? So that we may feed on the body of Christ and thus become members of it. “The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ? For we, though many, are one bread and one body; for we all partake of that one bread.”
This Holy Communion in the body of Christ is the means and instrument of our salvation: “I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread that I shall give is My flesh, which I shall give for the life of the world.”
The Holy Communion that we receive is the body of Christ transfigured in the eternal light. It is a mystic participation in the body that is seated at the right hand of God. From this body of Christ, in which we participate, the divine energies flow into our own flesh, filling us with the transforming grace of the Holy Spirit. “As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so he who feeds on Me will live because of Me.” Unless, therefore, we eat His flesh and drink His blood, we have no life in us.
First Sunday of Lent, March 6
Matthew 4.1-17: From the beginning, Christians believed that God’s Son “lessened” himself by becoming human. He “was made a little lower than the angels, for the suffering of death” (Hebrews 2:9). The act of becoming a human being necessarily imposed limits on his condition and experience. Paul described this “limitation”—consequent to the Word’s enfleshing—with a metaphor of wealth and poverty. Thus, he told the Corinthians: “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that you through his poverty might become rich: (2 Corinthians 8:9).
Servanthood and poverty are metaphors of limitation. They assert that God’s Son really did become “one of us.” This term, “one of us” (heis ex hemon), was favored by Cyril of Alexandria in the fifth century, who used this expression often in his sermons and commentaries on the Gospels, to speak of Jesus total solidarity with all human beings by reason of the Incarnation.
When we inquire what sorts of limitation God’s Son assumed in the Incarnation, it is clear to nearly all readers of the New Testament that certain physical limitations were included. That is to say, if Jesus did not grow tired, how was it he fell sound asleep in the boat? If he did not become thirsty and exhausted, what prompted him to sit down at a well and ask a Samaritan woman for a drink?
These limitations included a range of psychological discomforts. At the death of a beloved friend, for example, “Jesus wept” (John 11:35). Faced with the sustained and repeated infidelities of Jerusalem, “he saw the city and wept over it” (Luke 19:41). Some experiences left him with the feelings of utter exasperation: “O faithless generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I bear with you?” (Mark 9:19). At the worst experience of all, he cried out, “My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34)
If the eternal Word’s taking of our humanity made him vulnerable to emotion pain, it also rendered him susceptible to temptation. When, after fasting for forty days, he grew hungry, it is hardly surprising that an early first temptation was related to food (Matthew 4:3; Luke 4:3). Adequate attention to Jesus in the flesh can hardly omit those temptations to which the flesh is heir. Holy Scripture, at least, does not omit them.
This aspect of the Incarnation was nowhere more emphatically asserted than in the Epistle to the Hebrews, which says of Jesus: “Therefore, in all things he had to be made like his brothers, that he might be a merciful and faithful High Priest in the things of God, to make atonement for the sins of the people. For in that he himself has suffered, being tempted, he is able to aid those who are tempted (Hebrews 2:17-18 emphasis added).
For the earliest Christians, the temptations of Jesus were at once the expression of his full humanity and the encouraging evidence of his ability to sympathize with the trials faced by those who put their trust in him: “For we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses but was in everything tempted as we are, yet without sin (Hebrews 4:15 emphasis added).
Monday, March 7
Matthew 17.14-27: Whereas Matthew greatly simplifies and shortens Mark’s version of this story in the narrative parts, he actually amplifies the “saying” part of it in verse 20. He does this in two ways: (1) He inserts here the Lord’s reference to faith as a mustard seed, a dominical saying found in quite another context in Luke 17:6; (2) Jesus here speaks of the disciples’ “small faith” (oligopistia). We saw earlier that this New Testament expression, “small faith,” either as a noun (here only) or an adjective, is found almost exclusively in Matthew; cf. 6:6; 8:26; 14:31; 16:8 (otherwise only in Luke 12:28). Faith, according to Matthew, is understood as trust in the authority (exsousia) of Jesus (8:9-13; 9:2). Miracles are said to be worked by faith (9:20-22, 28f). In three scenes where Mark and Luke do not do so, Matthew portrays Jesus as saying, “as you have believed, so be it done to you” (8:13; 9:29; 15:8).
We may look at another feature of Matthew’s version of this event: When the man approaches Jesus (verse 14), he kneels down—gonypeton, literally “bending the knee”—before Jesus. That is to say, he assumes before Jesus the posture of prayer (contrast Mark 9:14-17). Like Solomon at the dedication of the Temple, he kneels before Jesus in prayer. This is the second time in two consecutive scenes in Matthew where kneeling is the proper posture in the presence of Jesus. In Matthew, then, the scene is one of worship and prayerful petition. And what does the man say to Jesus when he kneels down? Kyrie, eleison! — “Lord, have mercy!”
Like Solomon at the dedication of the Temple, then, the man kneels before Jesus in prayer. Here we have the second of two consecutive scenes in Matthew (the first being the Transfiguration in 17:6) that portray the believers before Jesus on bended knee.
This kneeling down, or prostration, in prayer is not simply a generic act of worship. It is specified by its Christological reference. Indeed, in the former scene, the Transfiguration, the disciples fall into this posture when they hear the voice of the Father identifying Jesus as His Son. Their posture is a theophanic response (cf. Revelation 1:16-17). Here in Matthew (verse 15) the man bends the knee Avton–“towards Him.”
And in kneeling down he addresses Jesus as “Lord”–Kyrios. We should contrast this with Mark’s account, which addresses Jesus here as “Teacher”–Didaskalos. Matthew, that is to say, uses the full confessional word of the Christian faith (cf. Philippians 2:11; 1 Corinthians 8:6; 12:3).
Tuesday, March 8
Romans 15:14-21: Paul now proceeds to introduce himself more completely to the congregation at Rome, a city that he plans to visit in the near future for the first time. In the present verses he says a bit about himself and his ministry, evidently feeling that such information is necessary, given the strong and authoritative tone that he has adopted in this epistle (verses 15-16).
Paul commences these remarks with a polite and positive sentiment about the congregation at Rome (verse 14), an approach that he employs elsewhere in his letters (2 Corinthians 8:7; 9:2-3; Philippians 4:15). In the present case such an approach is particularly appropriate, because is conscious of writing to a church that he had no hand in founding (1:5,13). Because of this latter circumstance, Paul does not enjoy the advantage of immediate paternity and familiarity that he enjoys in the churches of Syria, Asia, Macedonia, and Greece.
He feels compelled to write to the Romans, however, because he senses a responsibility that he has toward all the Gentile Christians (verse 16 [Note the Trinitarian structure]; 1:5; 12:3; 1 Corinthians 4:6; Galatians 2:7-8).
Like Jesus preaching in Galilee (Mark 6:6), Paul has maintained a preaching “circuit” (kyklo, the Greek root of “cycle”—verse 19), first centered in Antioch and later in Ephesus. (Observe that the churches of Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, Laodicea, and Colossae form a sort of semi-hub around Ephesus.)
We note here that the bishops of these large metropolitan areas in due course became known as archbishops and metropolitans. This was a natural development, since the outlying cities had been evangelized by missionaries from the larger ones. This historical circumstance is what accounts for the immense authority of the bishops of Ephesus, Antioch, Alexandria, and Rome in early church history.
Up to this point in his ministry, the extreme limits of Paul’s evangelizing have been Jerusalem in the southeast and Illyricum, or Dalmatia (Albania, Montenegro, Kosovo), in the northwest. It has ever been Paul’s goal to preach Christ where He has not been hitherto preached (verse 20; 2 Corinthians 10:15-16; 1 Corinthians 3:6).
Miracles and wonders have frequently attended Paul’s preaching (Acts 12:22; 2 Corinthians 12:12; Hebrews 2:4).
Paul describes his ministry with a liturgical and sacerdotal term, hierogounta to Evangelion tou Theou, “serving the Gospel of God as a priest,” or even “priesting the Gospel of God” (cf. Isaiah 66:20). This is one of our first instances of a specifically priestly term used to describe the ordained Christian ministry.
Wednesday, March 9
Psalms 19 (Greek & Latin 18): The Christian faith recognizes two ways in which God has made His revelation to us: through nature and through grace. “Through Creation and through Holy Scripture” is another way of saying the same thing. These are the two means that God has given us through which to know Him.
Starting with the inspired Scriptures, sometimes Christians have reached back, as it were, to speak of nature itself as a sort of book, a sacred scroll in which God is revealed. Nature itself provides a “text,” analogous to Holy Writ. For example, a twelfth-century Englishman, Alexander Neckam, said that “the world is inscribed with the pen of God; for anyone who understands it, it is a work of literature,” while a contemporary, the Parisian master Richard of St. Victor, said that “the whole of this sensible world is like a book written by the finger of God.” Similarly, Garnier of Rochefort, in the same century, said that God speaks to us through two books, nature and the Law (Torah).
Such writers found this idea of a double revelation in the Bible itself. It is the theme, for instance, of Psalm 19, which begins with the testimony to God’s truth in the work of creation and then goes on to speak of the further testimony to that same truth in God’s law. These two revelations are the topics of the two halves of this psalm.
First, nature, given us by God that we may know Him. “The heavens declare the glory of God,” our psalm begins, “and the firmament proclaims the work of His hands. Day speaks the word unto day, and night unto night proclaims the knowledge. There is neither speech, nor words, nor can their voices be heard; yet their sound has gone forth to all the earth, and their message to the corners of the world.” That is to say, there is a message for us from God, inscribed in the structure of creation.
Second, the law, also given us by God that we may know Him: “The law of the Lord is pure, converting souls. The testimony of the Lord is sure, giving wisdom to little ones. The judgments of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart. The commandment of the Lord is bright, enlightening the eyes. The fear of the Lord is holy, enduring for ever and ever.” Such is the reciprocity between the Creation account in Genesis and the Sinai event in Exodus. What God reveals in nature, He also reveals in His law. Thus, whether he turns to God’s Word in nature or to God’s Word in the Torah, man finds order and truth and justice and wisdom and holiness.
It should not surprise us, then, that the Apostle Paul should see in God’s revelation in nature a foreshadowing of His revelation in the Gospel, for the universality of God’s witness in the works of creation is to be matched in the universal character of the Gospel’s proclamation. Speaking of the missionaries who proclaim God’s Word to the ends of the earth, Paul compares their witness to that same wisdom in which “day speaks the word unto day, and night unto night proclaims the knowledge.” He comments in Romans: “So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. But I say, have they not heard? Yes indeed: ‘Their sound has gone out to all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world’” (10:18). Paul is saying that the Gospel is as cosmic as the cosmos.
Just as the Gospel is God’s fulfillment of the Torah, so it is God’s answer to the hope that lies at the heart of nature. Each morning we behold how God “set His tent in the sun, and he goes forth as a bridegroom from his wedding chamber; he rejoices as a giant to run his race. His going forth is from the furthest heaven, and his setting is at the other extreme, nor can anything be hidden from his heat.”
Such is the daily promise proclaimed from the blue vault that arches over us, that firmament of which our psalm says that “the firmament proclaims the work of His hands.” It is heaven’s daily exhortation to hope. The rising of the sun, which the high poetry of the Bible regards as an exultant bridegroom and a racing giant, is itself a law and a Gospel, announcing the godly order of the one and the godly promise of the other. From the beginning of His Word to us, when His hands spread out the heavens above us, until that end when He will roll them up as a scroll, God’s message is a unified poetic text of order, promise, and hope.
Thursday, March 10
Romans 16.1-16: As the rising sun moves up toward the eastern horizon each morning, one by one the myriad stars of heaven start to disappear. They do not depart the sky, of course, but the stars do become invisible by reason of the sun’s larger and more garish light, and we upon the earth may no longer gain our bearings by observing them.
Not so the saints who shine on high. The true Sun or Righteousness does not, at His rising, eclipse those lesser lights by which the Church on earth is guided. On the contrary, He Himself illumines the saints, who have no light apart from Him. The reign of Christ does not dethrone the saints, who have no reign apart from His.
The saints, because they are so many and their serried ranks so closely stand together, are described as a “cloud” (Hebrews 12:1). Yet, on closer inspection we perceive that not one of the saints loses those personal and particular traits by which each friend of Christ may be distinguished from the others. The Good Shepherd calls them each by name.
The individual and particular names of the saints are inscribed in the Book of Life, and the names of many of them are written likewise in the Bible. It is the singular merit of Romans 16 that it contains the New Testament’s largest collection of names of individual Christians. They belong to the “church,” a word that now appears in Romans for the first time (verses 1, 4, 5, 16, 23).
In verses 1-16, here under consideration, these are all names of Christians at Rome, with the exception of Phoebe, the “deaconess” of Cenchrea (the eastern port of Corinth), who will carry this epistle to the church at Rome.
Since Paul himself had never been to Rome, how are we to explain the obvious fact that he knows so many of these Christians personally?
I suggest the following explanation. When the Emperor Claudius expelled the Jews from Rome in A. D. 49 (Acts 18:2), that expulsion also included many Christians. Many of these came east and settled in cities that Paul evangelized. This is how they came to be the friends of Paul and even his co-workers. However, with the death of Claudius in the year 54, about three and a half years before the composition of Romans (January to March of 58), some of these Christians naturally returned to Rome, where they owned homes and other property.
Paul’s greetings here, then, are directed to those who had returned to Rome over the previous forty-two months. This suggestion, I believe, reasonably explains how Paul came to know twenty-eight Christians at Rome personally.
This suggestion is especially clear in the case of the first two whom Paul greets, Prisca and Aquila (verses 3-4), whom he had first met as exiles from Rome in Greece in the year 49 (Acts 18:2).
It is significant that the next one named, Epenaetus, who is also from Greece (verse 5). Moreover, it is reasonable to think that Phoebe herself, who is described as a “patroness” of Paul (verse 2), is another of these exiled Romans returning home.
The “Rufus” who lived at Rome with his mother (verse 13) was known to Paul from Jerusalem itself. They were the son and wife of Simon of Cyrene. Eight years later, writing in Rome during the persecution that followed Nero’s fire (July of 65), Mark mentioned him and his brother Alexander, who had also arrived in Rome by this time (Mark 15:21).
Friday, March 11
Matthew 19.1-12: Matthew introduces this part of his narrative by mentioning the end (etelesen–verse 1) of Jesus’ previous discourse—namely, the preceding chapter on life in the Church. Each of Jesus’ five large discourses in ended in the same way (cf. 7:28; 11:1; 13:53; 26:1).
Jesus, moving south, goes somewhat eastward across the Jordan, avoiding a trip through Samaria. He is followed by “large” crowds (contrast with Mark 10:1), “to follow” being the normal word for discipleship.
The treatment of marriage and divorce comes in response to the question that the Pharisees put to Jesus, which question Matthew (alone) says was meant to “try” Him (peirazontes–verse 3). The context of the teaching, that is to say, was one of controversy. It is well known that the various rabbinical schools were distinguished from one another by what restrictions they placed on divorce—some stricter, some not so strict. Jesus was being invited to enter that controversy.
Instead, He went straight to the creation account in Genesis, using it to forbid all divorce (cf. also 5:32). Jesus mentions no exceptions. Even the expression “not including fornication” (me epi porneia), which is often taken as a reason for divorce, is no exception to the rule. It simply means, “I am not talking about fornication.” That is to say, the prohibition against divorce applies only to a true marriage, not cases where a man and woman are living together in sin.
What is most striking about Jesus’ prohibition is that our Lord thereby abrogates the application of Deuteronomy 24:1, which did provide for divorce. Jesus would have none of it. Divorce for the purpose of remarriage with someone else is adultery.
It is unfortunate that many readers find in this text only another species of legalism with respect to marriage. In fact, this biblical passage has as much to say of Christology as of marriage. However, when this page is “consulted,” some question about marriage is usually the reason for the consultation, so the important Christological weight of the text is simply overlooked. Inspected more carefully, however, the Christological significance of the passage could hardly be weightier. Jesus, boldly abrogating a concession given in the Mosaic Law, laid claim to immense authority—truly, “all authority”–pasa exsousia, as He will say at the end of Matthew (28:18). This authority is nothing less than divine, and it is in recognition of this total authority that we find so many people in Matthew’s stories falling prostrate before Jesus.
It is curious that those who objected to Jesus’ prohibition against divorce were not his enemies, but his disciples. They wondered, if divorce was not permitted, whether remaining celibate might not be a more attractive option (verse 10). (We wonder why the prospect of a happy marriage did not cross their minds!)
Perhaps to their surprise, Jesus agreed with them, not because of the indissolubility of marriage, but because celibacy is a superior expression of the Kingdom of Heaven (verse 12). Nonetheless, Jesus declared, celibacy is a gift from God, a grace not accorded to all men (verse 11).
Most Christians recognize that in this passage the reference to self-castration is a metaphor of irony, akin to the amputation of a hand or the gouging out of an eye mentioned in the previous chapter.