Friday, March 13
Romans 16:1-16: 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 the chapter 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 coworkers. 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” (prostates, or Latin patrona) 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).
Since the Epistle to the Romans and the other New Testament epistles were composed to be read at the Christians’ weekly Eucharistic gathering, and because Christians normally greeted one another with a kiss after the prayers that followed such readings (Justin Martyr, First Apology 65.2), the closing remarks of these epistles sometimes refer to that kiss (verse 16; 1 Thessalonians 5:26; 1 Corinthians 16:20; 2 Corinthians 13:12; 1 Peter 5:14).
Saturday, March 14
Matthew 19:10-12: 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.
This section on celibacy is proper to Matthew, but its content is consonant with the general New Testament thesis of the superiority of consecrated celibacy over marriage (cf. Luke 14:20; 18:29; 1 Corinthians 7:25-35).
Romans 16:17-27: Paul warns the Romans against schism, heresy, and dissension (verses 17-18). He knows there are trouble-makers abroad. Indeed, among the Jewish Christians who were returning to Rome during those years, he may have recognized some of the very individuals who had been sowing dissent among his own congregations in the East.
The tone of Paul’s warnings here differs greatly in style from the rest of the Epistle to the Romans. One would think that Paul, as thought on the friends in Rome that he had just named, had somewhat forgotten that he was writing to a church that he had not founded. He reverts to his more usual style, so that these few verses more closely resemble the other epistles. For example, one may compare verses 17-20 with Galatians 6:12-17.
Once again Paul commends the good reputation of the Roman Christians (verse 19; 1:8).
The crushing of Satan underfoot (verse 20), of course, fulfills the prophecy in Genesis 3:15.
Greetings are first sent from Timothy, who had recently arrived at Corinth and will soon be leaving to accompany the collection to Jerusalem (Acts 20:4).
In verse 22 we learn that Paul’s scribe, who has written this epistle at his dictation, is named Tertius, a Latin name signifying that he is the third son in his family. Tertius sends along greetings from his younger brother, Quartus (verse 23). Their older brother, Secundus, will be one of those carrying the collection to Jerusalem (Acts 20:4).
“Erastus, the treasurer of the city” (verse 23) has become a Christian. This municipal commissioner for public works is well known from archeology. Visitors to Corinth can still see his name on a Latin inscription on a marble pavement block.
Sunday, March 15
1 Corinthians 1:1-9: Through the ministry of Apollos at Corinth, new converts joined the original congregation founded by Paul. It appears that some of these converts came from a better-educated class. Given Luke’s description of Apollos (Acts 18:25), this is not surprising.
Some of the older members of the Corinthian church wanted nothing to do with Apollos and the newcomers. After all, Apollos had just been baptized right before he came to Corinth (Acts 18:24-28). He had studied his way into the Church, so he was open to the charge of having only a book-knowledge of the faith. Most of these Corinthians had been Christian longer than their new pastor! So what would he know? It would take this newcomer and his new converts many years before they would be able to assimilate what the old timers probably called “the Corinthian ethos.”
Finally, a third group was introduced into the congregation at Corinth by Simon Peter—“Kephas.” Thus, within five or so years of its founding, the Christian church at Corinth was already torn by strife, conflicts based solely on misguided personal loyalties. This is the source of what we should call the schismatic spirit, an adjective derived from the Greek verb schizo, meaning “to tear.”
In this respect, it is instructive to observe with what frequency Paul speaks of Christ, mentioning his name on every occasion, even when recourse to the pronoun—he or him—would be appropriate: “Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. I thank my God always concerning you for the grace of God which was given to you by Christ Jesus, that you were enriched in everything by Him in all utterance and all knowledge, even as the testimony of Christ was confirmed in you, so that you come short in no gift, eagerly waiting for the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will also confirm you to the end, that you may be blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.”
We observe here that Christ is named six times within seven verses. I believe this note is unique in Paul’s letters. This feature emphasizes that Christ is the only center of unity in the Church. The first three pastors of the church at Corinth each left his mark on that congregation, but none of those men drew attention to himself. We know enough about these three men to say this with assurance. Paul himself declared that Apollos was embarrassed by the situation at Corinth. And as for Peter, whose very name means, “rock,” this man insisted that only Christ is the rock of the Church.
We may speculate how these Christians at Corinth finally worked out their schismatic dispositions. We know, even near the end of the first century, that they were still fighting. By way of stern reprimand the Corinthians received another admonishing epistle, this one from Clement, the third Bishop of Rome.
Monday, March 16
Matthew 19:13-22: From a discussion about marriage Jesus passes to the subject of children (verses 13-15), in which He repeats the injunction indicated in 18:1-4.
The subject arises when children are brought to Jesus to receive His blessing (verse 13), a scene found in all the Synoptics (Mark 10:13-16; Luke 18:15-17). All of them likewise include the objection of the disciples against what they evidently regarded as an unwarranted intrusion on the Lord’s time and attention.
It has been suggested that the early (pre-Scriptural) Church preserved the memory of this scene because it answered a practical pastoral question about infant baptism. Read in this way, Jesus is affirming the practice of infant baptism: “Let the little children come to Me.” Indeed, the verb that Matthew uses here, koluein, “forbid them not,” is identical with the expression used with respect to the baptisms of the Ethiopian eunuch and the friends of Cornelius (Acts 8:36; 10:37; 11:17).
I do not think this interpretation of the passage to be likely, because there is simply no evidence in the New Testament that infant baptism was a problem. On the contrary, the reader should presume that baptism, as the Christian replacement for circumcision, was available to infants, just as circumcision was. In each case it was admission to the covenant. It would be strange indeed, if Jewish children could belong to the Mosaic covenant, while Christian children could not partake of the Christian covenant.
Moreover, the baptism of entire households in the New Testament (Acts 11:14; 16:15,31-33) indicates that it was normal to baptize infants in Christian families. Although the pastoral practice of the Christian Church varied in this matter, the “validity” of infant baptisms was not challenged for well over a thousand years. Consequently, to see a reference to a “controversy” about infant baptism in these lines of Matthew seems to me an unlikely interpretation.
The third subject in this chapter—money—is introduced by a man that comes to our Lord, seeking counsel on how to attain eternal life (verse 16). This scene is paralleled in Mark 10:17-22 and Luke 18:18-23.
If we are to look for another link between this section and the preceding theme of children, perhaps we find it in the fact that the question is asked by a “young person” (neaniskos). Indeed, this feature is unique to Matthew. Both Mark and Luke suggest, in fact, that the man may not be young, because he claims to have kept all the commandments “from my youth,” an expression that Matthew’s account does not contain.
In authentic Deuteronomic style the man is told to “keep the commandments” (less explicit in Mark and Luke) if he wishes to enter into life (verse 17; Deuteronomy 4:10; 30:6). This hypothetical clause is proper to Matthew, as is the next hypothesis, “if you would be perfect” (verse 21).
Tuesday, March 17
Matthew 19:23-30: As for the man who declined the Lord’s invitation to be “perfect,” he left himself vulnerable, nonetheless, to a great deal of sadness (verse 22). His failure to accept the Lord’s challenge now leads to a series of teachings on the dangers of wealth (verses 23-29).
Let alone attaining perfection, says Jesus, it is only with great difficulty that a rich man can even enter the Kingdom of Heaven (verse 23). Thus begins this section of Matthew (verses 23-30), paralleled in Mark 10:23-31 and Luke 18:24-30.
Matthew omits the initial wonderment of the disciples mentioned by Mark (10:24), but he does include the Lord’s elaboration of the theme in the hyperbole of the camel and the eye of the needle.
As an image of “great difficulty,” this seems an unlikely hyperbole. It strikes the reader, rather, as a simple metaphor for impossibility. Indeed, there is a clear parallel to it in rabbinical literature, which speaks of the impossibility of passing an elephant through the eye of a needle (Babylonian Talmud, Berakoth 55b). Does Jesus mean, then, “very difficult” or “utterly inconceivable”?
Since there appear to be no circumstances in which it is humanly possible for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, various fanciful interpretations have been advanced to explain away the toughness of the text. One of these, manifestly invented by someone who had no idea what he was talking about, refers to a small gate in the wall of Jerusalem. There is not the faintest evidence of such a gate.
On the other hand, since the Lord’s hyperbole contains a bit of metaphor-mixing, others have tried their hand at “correcting” Him. After all, why would anyone try to pass a camel, to say nothing of an elephant, through the eye of a needle? What purpose would it serve? You can’t sew with an elephant. It was apparently to address this difficulty that a tenth century copyist devised a very slight textual change in Luke’s version of the parable. He altered kamelos (camel) to kamilos (rope). A rope, after all, has an obvious affinity to a thread, whereas camel clearly does not.
This reading of “rope” for “camel,” first found in a manuscript penned in A.D. 949 and copied into a few other manuscripts, is rather clever, even ingenious, but it is also too late in history to be taken seriously. One should be very cautious about biblical interpretations, much less biblical readings, that don’t appear at all in the first thousand years of Christian history!
What, then, about the impossibility implied in the Lord’s saying? The subsequent verse, in fact, confirms it. Yes, says Jesus, the salvation of the rich man is humanly impossible. This does not mean, however, that there is an impossibility on God’s side. God can pass a camel through the eye of the needle (verse 26). Let the rich man take care, however. Let him reflect that he is asking God for a miracle.
This metaphor of the camel and the needle, therefore, is something of a parallel with the moving of mountains. Both parables have to do with the power of faith in the God. Salvation is ever a gift of God, not a human achievement.
Wednesday, March 18
Psalms 42 and 43: Showing a unified theme and sharing a common refrain, these seem originally to have been a single psalm. This conjecture would explain also why Psalm 43 has no title.
If such was the case, however, the two parts became divided very early (no later than the third century bc), because they stand as two different psalms in both the Hebrew and the Greek Bibles. This is also true of the liturgical traditions of the Church; moreover, in the Latin West these two psalms, never recited in sequence, were even assigned to two different days of the week. For all such reasons, they will be treated here as two psalms.
Psalm 42 (Greek & Latin 41) is one of those psalms taking their rise from the grace-filled experience of the material creation. The poet is gazing at a formidable scene of rugged rock formations, with thundering cataracts of cold, clear water cascading down from pristine mountain springs and melting snow. He stands on the stony ascent of the Golan Heights, at the sources of the Jordan River, from which he looks up and sees nearby Mount Hermon, the loftiest peak of the region. No sound is heard but the loud pounding and roar of the rushing stream. Some deer come to drink from an eddying pool of the fresh water.
This stark, yet glorious scene before him becomes a sort of picture of the poet’s very soul, simultaneously yearning and tumultuous, full of both dereliction and desire: “As the deer longs for the water brooks, so longs my soul for You, O God. My soul thirsts for God, the living God. When shall I come and appear before God? . . . O my God, my soul is cast down within me. Therefore, I think of You from the land of Jordan and Hermon. From this low summit, deep calls out to deep at the voice of Your waterfalls. All Your waves and Your billows have overwhelmed me.”
God’s roaring waterfalls, His overwhelming waves and billows, describe the infinite, frightful abyss of the longing that He evokes from the human spirit, the very depths of God calling out to the depths of the soul. The forlorn poet prays: “Why are you cast down, my soul? And so disquieted within me? Hope in God, for I shall yet praise Him, for my God is the salvation of my being.”
From the depths of his dereliction in the belly of the whale Jonah prayed to God: “All Your billows and Your waves passed over me. / Then I said, ‘I have been cast out of Your sight; / Yet I will look again toward Your holy temple.’ / . . . When my soul fainted within me, / I remembered the Lord; / And my prayer went up to You, / Into Your holy temple” (Jonah 2:3, 4, 7).
Likewise here in Psalm 42 our struggling poet, longing for God and deeply experiencing His apparent absence, recalls the joy of worshipping in His temple: “I remembered these things and poured out my soul within me—how I walked in the place of the marvelous tabernacle, even to the house of the Lord, with the voice of rejoicing and praise, the echo of festivity.”
Though the soul longs for their return, the music of those happy days is for now but a distant memory. There sounds instead the incessant mockery of the unbelieving world that takes such longing as an illusion. The voice of a scornful and skeptical world taunts the God-afflicted soul: “My tears have become my bread day and night, while day by day they say to me: ‘Where is your God?’ . . . Within me is my prayer to the God of my life. I will say to God, ‘You are my helper. Why are You hidden from me? Why do I go about in grief, while the enemy afflicts me?’”
What this psalm describes is a fairly common experience of the life in Christ. Our memory testifies to a sense of spiritual heights earlier attained, but now evidently lost to us. We recall “how things used to be” and sadly contrast them with our current trek through the lowlands. We find ourselves saying such things as, “I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago . . . was caught up to the third heaven” (2 Cor. 12:2). Fourteen years ago, yes, but no third heaven for us now.
The message of this psalm is one of encouragement, an inner exhortation to trust the memory of earlier grace and to hope for its abundant return. Even if, like Jonah, our loss of the earlier heights is of our own fault and infidelity, God is yet merciful and can restore to us the joy of His salvation: “The Lord will command His mercy by day, and His song by night. . . . Hope in God, for I will yet praise Him, my God, the salvation of my being.”
Thursday, March 19
Matthew 21:23-27: As we have seen, Jesus, upon entering Jerusalem, immediately began to behave as though the place belonged to Him. Right after His triumphal entry into the city with the acclamations of the crowd, He proceeded to purge the Temple and then curse the fig tree. All of this was an exercise of “authority” (exsousia).
His enemies, who have already shown themselves nervous about these events, now approach Him in the Temple to challenge this “authority” implicitly claimed in what has happened. The reader already knows, of course, the source of Jesus’ authority, so the Gospel writers do not tell this story in order to inform the reader on this point. The story is told to show, rather, the Lord’s complete control of the situation, especially His deft discomfiting of these hypocritical enemies. We earlier considered the Lord’s reference to this hypocrisy with respect to their relations to both Himself and John the Baptist (11:16-19).
The question, then, has to do with Jesus’ “authority” (exsousia), a word that appears four times in this story, twice in the first verse. This is an important idea in Matthew’s Christology; it appears among the last words of Jesus in this Gospel (28:18). The presence of this term in the parallel accounts of Mark and Luke, however, indicate that this was a word commonly used of the ministry and person of Jesus.
The purpose of the hostile question makes it what is sometimes called “a lawyer’s question,” indicating a question asked for the purpose of making the respondent say too much, a question asked in order to find something recriminating to be used later in a courtroom.
Knowing this, of course, Jesus is not disposed to answer the question. He responds, rather, with a question of His own, along with a pledge to answer the first question if His opponents will answer the second (verse 24). This recourse to the counter-question is common in rabbinic style, and Jesus seems often to have used it.
The priests and elders immediately perceive their dilemma (verses 25-26). They are unwilling to express themselves honestly about the baptism of John, which is a symbol of John’s entire ministry. They are being asked, with respect to John, exactly the question they had posed with respect to Jesus. They had never been obliged to deal with that problem before, because Herod had taken care of it for them. Now they are put on the spot.
Caught thus on the horns of a dilemma, they plead ignorance, and the Lord responds by declining to answer the question they had put to Him. They are thus effectively foiled in the presence of those gathered to hear Jesus in the Temple.
There is an important matter of theology contained in this story. All through the Gospel Jesus has presented men with a choice, a decision, a yes-or-no, but His enemies have everywhere resorted to evasion and hostility. They have never inquired with sincerity, and the time for them has now run out. There is no more place of discourse, and certainly no more place for lawyers’ questions. These men are not seekers of the truth; their hearts are hard. They have already ascribed to Satan those generous, benevolent deeds by which Jesus showered His blessings on the blind, the lame, the suffering. Never have they responded positively to so many manifestations of the power of God in the ministry of Jesus. They have made no effort to humble their minds to understanding.
And now they meet complete silence on the part of Jesus: “Neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things.” Why bother? They will not hear Him. They do not genuinely want to know. He will not answer them. They have never bothered truly to attend to Him. Now He will trouble them no more. This is a picture of the final retribution. There comes a point in the career of the unrepentant sinner when God says, “Forget about it. I have said enough. You will not hear from Me again,” and there ensues the vast silence of the God who is weary of speaking to deaf ears and hard hearts.
Friday, March 20
Matthew 21:28-32: The first son in the story “talks a good game.” He assents to the father’s instruction, but he fails to comply. The second son resists and rebels, but he obeys after thinking the matter over more carefully. The answer about which is the obedient son is not lost on Jesus’ listeners (verse 31).
Jesus goes on to apply this lesson to His current situation. These Jewish leaders have already shown their hand by their unwillingness to commit themselves with respect to John the Baptist. Now Jesus brings John the Baptist back into the picture. Sinners—those who have declared that they will not obey—have repented at the preaching of John, whereas the Law-observing Jewish leaders, who proclaimed themselves obedient, have failed to repent (verse 32; Luke 7:29-30). Which group is truly obedient to the Father? This parable was a powerful accusation against the Lord’s enemies, the men currently plotting to murder Him.
The two classes represented in the second son—the tax collectors and the whores—were closely associated with the Romans, whose army occupied the Holy Land at that time. The taxes were collected for the Roman government, and the whores sold their services to the Roman soldiers. Both groups, because they repented at the preaching of John the Baptist, were preferable to the Lord’s enemies, who were plotting His murder.
1 Corinthians 3:1-15: “You are God’s building,” Paul says to the Church. He is talking about an historical institution, not some abstract, invisible reality. The Church that Paul is talking about is a real body, a religious organization, in the sense of a living organism. This church is composed of actual people who live and worship together in a common faith. Specifically, it is the Church at Corinth. This church at Corinth is composed of real people. Paul would not countenance for one minute the idea that the real Church is something distinguishable from the Church at Corinth.
Paul did not write his epistles for some invisible, trans-historical reality. He wrote for specific groups of people who were joined together is organic, institutional ways. Later on in this epistle he refers to the joints and ligaments that hold the body together. These are the organizations of communion, without which there is no such thing as Church. We are not free to define what the Church is: the Church is identified in the Bible, where it is always identified and described as a specific social institution.
The visible, organized Church is the only Church recognized in the New Testament. Like any other historical institution, it has an invisible life and being, but that invisible life and being cannot be separated from the visible, social institution itself.
Like any other visible, organized group of people, the Church has its problems, and it was to address these problems that Paul wrote this epistle. Paul specifically addresses problems associated with strife and bickering among the Corinthian Christians. This is significant, because there is no strife or bickering in an invisible, trans-historical reality. One must not attempt to escape from the concrete problems of the visible church by joining some imaginary invisible church. That is simply an exercise in religious fantasy. It is imperative that we believers stay in the communion of the visible, social, institutional Church founded by Jesus Christ.