Friday, February 23

Matthew 13:16-23: The first group in this parable, symbolized in the seed sown by the wayside (verse 19), fails in the matter of the “heart” (a detail missing in Mark 4:15). These do not love God with their whole heart, a condition that renders them vulnerable to attack from the Evil One. Their hearts, which have grown dull, have no understanding (verses 14-15).

The second group, symbolized in the rocky ground, is shallow, so the Word cannot take root (verse 20). These will fall away at the first sign of trouble (verse 21). Matthew had already witnessed such trials in his own lifetime (10:18,21-23). Those who thus falter have failed to love God with their whole soul.

The third group, symbolized by the sowing among the thorns, permits the care for wealth and worldly concern to strangle the life from the Gospel (verse 22). They have failed to love God with all their might.

The fourth group, symbolized in the good ground that receives the seed, has the grace of “understanding,” because of which they bring forth fruit (verse 23). They have fruitful lives. They are later symbolized in the two productive servants in the Parable of the Talents (25:16-17).

Romans 8:12-17: Mortality was the essence of Adam’s legacy to us, the very embodiment of his sin. Salvation is not complete, therefore, until the resurrection of our bodies. Several years earlier Paul had argued that thesis in 1 Corinthians 15. He returns to it several times, as we have seen, in Romans, and he deals with it again in the present passage. The final object of the Christian hope, for Paul, is not even the soul’s departure to be with God in heaven. It is, rather, “the redemption of our body” (verse 23), this very body laid low by death, but from which the Holy Spirit refuses to depart (verse 11).

It is by the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of adoption, or sonship (huiothesia—Galatians 4:5; Ephesians 1:5), that we are made the children of God (verses 14-17). It is for this reason that the Lord’s Prayer, the “Our Father,” is supremely the prayer of the Holy Spirit. Indeed, we can only pray it in the Holy Spirit. It is only the Holy Spirit who gives us to say, “Abba, Father,” just as it is only the Holy Spirit who gives us to say, “Jesus is Lord.” Only in the Holy Spirit do we know the identity of the Father and the Son.

The Holy Spirit both makes us the children of God and alters our consciousness so that we know ourselves to be the children of God (verse 16). The Holy Spirit, then, is the new, internal principle by which we are untied to the Father and the Son in knowledge and in love.

Saturday, February 24

Matthew 13:24-30: The six parables that follow the Parable of the Sower should be regarded as commentaries on the latter. The first of these, the Parable of the Wheat and the Weeds, addresses a problem perceived in the seed sown by the wayside (verse 4). That seed, we recall, was snatched away by the Evil One (verse 19). This Evil One reappears in the present parable, where he is identified as the “enemy” and the “Devil” (verses 25,28,39). Those whose hearts are dull (verse 15) are especially under the influence of this “enemy,” even though they live side-by-side with the saints. The difference between the two will be settled at the end of time.

The difficulty of distinguishing the weeds from the wheat is that, in their early stages, they look very much alike. So, the Lord commands that both be allowed to grow to maturity, because only in their maturity are they easily distinguished. Thus, the point of the parable is that finality in judgment should be delayed until “all the facts are in.” (Indeed, by delaying the explanation of this parable until verses 36-43, Matthew is illustrating its point.)

The temporary co-existence of the wheat and the weeds will appear later in the co-existence of the good and bad fish (verses 47-50), the wise and foolish maidens (25:1-13), and the sheep and the goats (25:31-46). In all of these parables the separation does not come until the end, the time of the judgment and harvest.

Romans 8:18-30: The sufferings of the Last Times pertain to the very birth pangs of Creation, which awaits the revelation of God’s glory in the resurrection of our bodies (verses 18-23). Just as the sin of Adam left the mark of death on all of Creation (Genesis 3:17), Christ’s final victory over death is the object of Creation’s hope and longing. Creation itself will be delivered from its “bondage of corruption” (verse 21). This physical corruption, this decay, was not part of God’s original plan. It is the mark of the reign of death, and it will be removed forever when Christ, at the end of time, returns to claim the bodies of the redeemed (1 Corinthians 15:23-28).

This final salvation of all Creation, which Paul speaks of here in Romans 8, will become a major theme, the recapitulation of all things in Christ, in his letters to the Colossians and Ephesians, written during the two years that he will soon spend in prison in Caesarea (Acts 24:27).

Verse 24 is one of the few places in Romans where “saved” is in the past tense. Significantly it is qualified by “in hope.”

From his own experience as a man of prayer (2 Corinthians 12:7-10; cf. James 4:3), Paul knew that “we do not know what to pray for as we ought” (verse 26). The reference to the Spirit’s “intercession” is literally hyperentygchanei, a verb which originally meant “to interrupt,” “to assume control of.” That is to say, the Holy Spirit interrupts, He breaks into our prayer. He takes “over” (hyper) and guides our prayer. He becomes the divine “voice-over.” We do not hear Him, but God does.

Sunday, February 25

Matthew 13:31-35: These two parables correspond to the second part of the Parable of the Sower; to wit, the seed that falls on rocky ground (verses 5-6). That rocky ground, we recall, symbolized shallow folk unable to love God with the whole soul. The seed that fell there, unable to bring forth fruit, is now contrasted with the growth of the mustard seed and the leaven.

When the very tiny mustard seed grows, its bush becomes a veritable tree, where birds may live. These birds, in turn, represent those who take shelter in the Church through the apostolic preaching. In his own day Matthew saw this happening.

The theme of growth is sustained in our fourth parable, that of the Leaven (verse 33). This leaven is said to be “concealed,” somewhat as the mustard seed is concealed in the earth. In both parables, there is an emphasis on something rather little becoming something rather large.

The Parable of the Leaven is followed by an explanation of why Jesus speaks in this symbolic language (verses 34-35). Matthew finds this explanation in the “fulfillment” (hopos plerothe) of a line of the Psalter (Psalms 77 [78]:2). Such speech is “hidden” (kekrymmena), rather like the leaven was “hidden” (enekrypsen) in the dough.

Romans 8:31-39: If God has already given us His beloved Son, He will certainly give us everything else we need (verse 32; 1 Corinthians 3:22-23; Philippians 3:21). Paul has heard accusations brought against his Gentile converts, because the latter did not observe the works of the Mosaic Law. Paul will tolerate none of this criticism. These Christians have been justified through the grace of God received in faith, he says. Who dares to bring an accusation against them? (verses 33-34) And Paul’s defiance here includes Satan, that ancient accuser of the brethren.

Even less, then, will believers be accused by Christ Himself, whose blood purchased our redemption from the slavery of sin and death. Here Paul briefly mentions the Lord’s exaltation to the heavenly sanctuary, where He abides as our mediator and intercessor forever (verse 34; Hebrews 7:25; 9:24; 1 John 2:1; Revelation 5).

Likewise, those sufferings that Christians must sustain in the maintenance of their faith (verse 36) will not separate them from the love of Christ. Paul’s tone here is exhortatory as well as declaratory. That is to say, he declares that God will never be unfaithful to us, and he gently exhorts that we be never unfaithful to God.

Monday, February 26

Matthew 13:36-43: Like the parable that it explains, this explanation is proper to Matthew. As in the case of the Parable of the Sower (verse 10), the explanation of the Wheat and the Weeds is given to the disciples in private—“in the house,” eis ten oikian. As an interpretation of history, it pertains to the divine mysteries; therefore, it is not shared outside the household of God. It is strictly “in house.”

This distinctive feature of “the mysteries of the Kingdom of heaven” (verse 11) points to an important distinction of Christian theology, a distinction readily detected in the New Testament. Certain aspects of the Gospel are shared with the world at large, because they pertain to the kerygma, the message of God to the world, in order to bring the world to faith. These include the Lordship of Jesus, repentance from sin, justification by faith, Baptism and the rites pertinent to it, the return of Christ at the end of history, and the final judgment.

Romans 9:1-13: Paul now commences the third part of this epistle, chapters 9-11, in which he applies the principle of the divine predestination to an actual theological problem addressed by the early Church: How can it be that the greater part of the Jewish people, whom over many centuries God had prepared with such persistent care for the coming of His Messiah, failed to recognize the Messiah when He came?

Several sources in the New Testament address this thorny question in some form. In most of these sources the New Testament writers recognized that Israel’s failure, its “falling away,” had itself been prophesied in the Old Testament, chiefly Isaiah. This approach to the problem is clearest in John (12:37-41), but we find it in other authors as well (Matthew 13:10-15; Mark 4:10-12; Luke 8: 10; Acts 28:23-28).

Paul goes further. Israel’s failure, he says, was not only prophesied but also providential. God, foreknowing Israel’s defection, made use of that defection; He prepared ahead of time to make it serve as the occasion and the impulse for the justification and salvation of the Gentiles. He did this by His mysterious, unfathomable, providential guidance of history. Such is the argument of Romans 9-11.

What does Holy Scripture mean when it asserts that God “predestines”? The verb itself, proorizo, means “to arrange ahead of time.” In the biblical context, where this verb appears with “foreknow” (proginosko, “to know ahead of time”), the verb signifies the providential arrangements by which He brings people to the grace of the Gospel. That is to say, predestination embraces the mysterious influences that God brings to bear on history, so that all things work together for the good of those who love God.

This is very clear in the story of Joseph in the Old Testament. God made use of the sins of Joseph’s brothers to predestine the deliverance of Joseph’s family: “And God sent me before you to preserve a posterity for you in the earth, and to save your lives by a great deliverance. So now it was not you who sent me here, but God. . . . But as for you, you meant evil against me; but God meant it for good, in order to bring it about as it is this day, to save many people alive” (Genesis 45:7-8; 50:20).

Predestination as understood in the Bible (where, in fact, the noun never appears) has no reference to any alleged divine decree whereby some people are consigned to heavenly life and others to everlasting damnation. On the contrary, God wills all human beings to be saved. Indeed, in the Bible, predestination does not refer to any divine decree at all. It is a description, rather, of God’s providential activity in history, working to bring good out of evil.

Tuesday, February 27

Romans 8:14-26: God’s election frees no man from his moral obligations. God’s ability to bring good out of evil does not warrant anyone to do evil. Nor should it lessen any man’s efforts to do good. “Now if men in their choices choose what is best,” said John Chrysostom, “much more does God. Moreover, the fact of their being chosen is both a sign of the loving kindness of God and of their own moral goodness. . . . God Himself has rendered us holy, but we must continue to be holy. A holy man is someone who partakes of the faith; a blameless man is someone who leads an irreproachable life” (Homilies on Ephesians 1).

The man whom God rejects, therefore, has no just case against God. God causes no man’s failure. Even though the Scriptures speak of God’s hardening of Pharaoh’s heart (verses 17-18; Exodus 4:21; 7:3; 9:12), this is a metaphor describing God’s providential use of Pharaoh’s hardened heart. Pharaoh himself is the only one responsible for his hard heart (Exodus 7:14,22; 8:5,19,32). Pharaoh’s sin cannot be ascribed to God, as though God had decreed that sin. God foreknew that sin and determined ahead of time—predestined—how to employ that sin to bring about His own deliverance of Israel from Egypt. There is no unrighteousness in God (verse 14).

Like Esau, Pharaoh’s role or place in salvation history is negative. It represents a resistance to grace that God employs to show even more grace. The resistance to grace, on the part of Esau and Pharaoh, is providentially subsumed into God’s plan of deliverance, being used as the contrary force (the “push backwards”) in a process of historical dialectic, much as a man steps on a rock, the friction and resistance from which enable him to go forward. This is what Paul sees happening among the greater part of the Jewish people of his own day. Their resistance to God’s mercy has served only to enhance and extend that mercy, for God does nothing except in mercy.

It is fallacious, therefore, to argue that God’s ability to bring good out of evil should oblige Him not to blame those who do evil (verse 19). Paul had earlier refuted that line of argument (6:1,15).

To someone who would argue this way, Paul responds, “So who put you in charge of history?” God takes into His hands the raw material of history, “the same lump” (verse 21), and shapes it as He wills. He forces no one to be evil; He compels no man to be a vessel of wrath and dishonor, but God does have His uses for vessels of wrath and dishonor.

On this image of God as a ceramic potter, cf. Isaiah 14:9; 29:16; 45:9; 64:8; Wisdom 15:7; Sirach 38:39-40; Theophilus of Antioch, Ad Autolycum 2:26. God is fashioning His purpose from the common clay of human history. The prophet Jeremiah, far from regarding this image as an excuse for human failure, employs it as a summons to repentance: “Behold, I am fashioning a disaster and devising a plan against you. Return now every one from his evil ways, and make your ways and your doings good” (18:11).

“Prepared for destruction” (verse 22) means “ready for the dump.” Some vessels, after all, are not worth keeping. After they have served their purpose, they are no longer part of the process of salvation history. Such were Esau and Pharaoh, who serve no other purpose in Holy Scripture than as examples of men who resisted God. Doing evil, they thus served their purpose in God’s redemptive interventions of grace, and now they have been tossed out on the ash bin. This lot they brought upon themselves, as is clear in the biblical accounts of them.

The vessels of honor, on the other hand, the “vessels of mercy, which He had prepared beforehand for glory” (verse 23), share in the everlasting exaltation that marks God’s work of deliverance. These are taken from among Jews and Gentiles (verse 24).

Wednesday, February 28

Matthew 13:53-58: Nazareth’s negative response to Jesus indicates a new level of resistance among the Jews with respect to the Gospel. We will see this resistance intensify through chapters 14-16.

This section begins with the normal formula that ends each of the five dominical discourses in Matthew (verse 53; cf. 7:28; 11:1; 19:1; 26:1): “When Jesus had ended these sayings . .”

The reaction of the Nazarenes is expressed by their wonder at Jesus’ unexpected authority. At the end of the Sermon on the Mount the wonder of the people expressed a positive tone (7:28-29), but now it becomes an expression of skepticism (verse 56), scandal (verse 57), and unbelief (verse 58). They do not even refer to Jesus by name but speak contemptuously of “this man” (verses 54,56).

Romans 9:27-33: Paul here lays the biblical foundations that support the themes he has in mind to develop; both the defection of the Jews and the calling of the Gentiles, he argues, had already been prophesied eight hundred years earlier. The prophecy of Israel’s remnant he finds in the Book of Isaiah (verses 27-29), and the prophecy of the calling of the Gentiles in the Book of Hosea (verses 25-26).

Both of these prophets, delivering their oracles in the context of the downfall of Samaria to the Assyrians, faced a situation analogous to that addressed by Paul. That is to say, the crisis in Samaria, culminating in the tragic events of 722 B.C., brought to pass two things. First, the emergence of a faithful remnant, who resisted the apostasy of the Northern Kingdom. Second, a transferal of the heritage of the Northern traditions (Elijah, Elisha, Hosea) to the South, which then experienced a new spiritual vitality under Hezekiah.

In both of these particulars, that earlier situation, as interpreted by Hosea and Isaiah, found its parallel in Paul’s own time, when a remnant of the Jews remained faithful, and the former glories of the Hebrew people (9:4) would be preserved in the Christian Church.

In verses 30-33 Paul commences the case that he will pursue in chapter ten, namely, that Israel’s falling away was not caused by God but by Israel’s stubborn resolve to be justified by the works of the Law. We recall once more that Paul had experienced Israel’s crisis in his own life and vocation. Pursuing a righteousness according to the Law, Paul had been seduced by the sin that abode in his own heart, even in his own “members.” Driven by his zeal for the righteousness of the Law, Paul had hardened his heart against the beckoning Christ. In the dramatic circumstances of his conversion, he was made aware that the sin abiding within him had made use of the Law so that sin became exceedingly sinful (7:13). This was his own experience of the reign of death: “For sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me, and by it killed me” (7:11). Endeavoring to be justified by the works of the Law, he found himself persecuting the Son of God (Acts 9:5).

Thursday, March 1

Romans 13:1-13: Like chapter nine, the present chapter begins with an expression of Paul’s sorrow over the contemporary falling away of Israel. These present verses indicate that that defection was not inevitable. In His merciful providence, God dealt with it, but He in no way caused it. On the contrary, God made easy the path to faith (verse 9).

Israel’s defection was not caused by God; it was caused by Israel. Paul still prays for the salvation of the Jews, nonetheless (verse 1; cf. 9:1-3). As Paul knows from his own experience (Galatians 1:13-14; Philippians 3:9), they are zealous for God (verse 2). Their failure has not been in zeal, but in knowledge, epignosis, for they have been “ignorant of God’s righteousness” (verse 3). Thus, they resist the Gospel, as Paul himself had done.

“Christ is the end of the Law” (verse 4) in two senses. First, as the historical moment in which the Law lost its obligatory nature (Galatians 3:23; Ephesians 2:15; John 1:17). The new dispensation in Christ accomplishes what the Law could not. In this sense the era of the Law is over.

Second, “Christ is the end of the Law” in the sense of being its theological goal, its telos. The Law was given on Mount Sinai, only with a view to the coming of Christ, in whom it is fulfilled (3:31; 8:4; Matthew 5:17).

Whereas the Law is concerned with what man does, the Gospel is concerned with what God does. Faith is concerned, not with the Law, but with the Incarnation of God’s Son (“to bring Christ down”) and His Resurrection (“to bring Christ up from the dead”). These are the things that God does. Faith is concerned, then, not with what we can do for God, but with what God has done, and promises to do, for us. In the Incarnation and Resurrection of Christ (and, of course, everything in-between), God has reconciled the heights and the depths. Man is required only to believe and to confess what God has done in Christ (verse 9).

In this confession of faith, we observe the primacy of the Resurrection, by which Christ put death to death (4:25). Putting there our trust, says Paul, we will be saved (verses 9,10,13—We note again the future tense for salvation). This salvation will be complete when our own bodies are raised from the dead at Christ’s return: “For if we have been united together in the likeness of His death, certainly we also shall be in the likeness of His resurrection” (6:5).

Friday, March 2

Matthew 14:13-21: The great significance of the multiplication of the loaves among the early Christians may be discerned from the fact that: (1) outside of the events of Holy Week, it is one of the very few scenes recorded in all four gospels; (2) aspects of it are depicted numerous times in the earliest Christian iconography; (3) normally recorded in language identical to, or at least reminiscent of, that of the Last Supper, it is clearly one of the events of Jesus’ life perceived to be weighted with the greatest theological significance. This is clearest in John, where it is accompanied by the lengthy and elaborate Bread of Life discourse.

This miraculous event brought to the minds of those present the expectation that the coming Messiah would renew the events of the Exodus, including the feeding of the people with miraculous bread in the wilderness. This sense of expectation and fulfillment accounts for the considerable emphasis on Messianic themes in early Eucharistic texts of the Christian Church.

Even as Matthew begins this story, we observe a significant way in which he alters the narrative in Mark. Whereas Mark (6:34), describes Jesus as “teaching” the people in the wilderness, Matthew says that Jesus “healed” them (verse 14). This change of perspective is consonant with Matthew’s other indications that Jesus had begun to withdraw from teaching the Jews in public and to concentrate, instead, on the immediate band of His disciples. Nonetheless, Jesus still expresses His messianic compassion through healing and feeding them.

Romans 10:14-21: The proclamation of the Gospel is the ministry of preaching, and this involves the authority of the preacher who is “sent” (verses 14-15; Acts 13:1-4). This “sending” has to do with “apostolicity,” a word derived from the Greek verb, apostello, “to send.” The sending forth to preach is the commission of the Church, a commission that the Apostles received from Christ (Matthew 10:5-15; 28:16-20; John 20:21). The transmission of this authority is known to Christian history as the “apostolic succession,” which means “the succession of those who have been sent.” It is the succession itself that transmits that authority, the singular identity of the apostolic ministry from one age to the next. The authoritative proclamation of the Gospel is derived from that historical succession, which is an essential component of the Church. All legitimate mission, therefore, is rooted in a proper succession. The Gospel authority is transmitted through the Spirit-guided handing-on of the being of the Church