Friday, February 18
Romans 7.13-25: Although the “I” in these verses represents the human experience generally considered, it would be wrong to assume that Paul is not speaking from personal experience. Very wrong. Paul knew on his own pulses what it was to offend God. He had offended God grievously. He had experienced the dilemma described in these verses. He was well aware what it meant to be a great sinner, even while meticulously observing the smallest parts of the Mosaic Law (Philippians 3:6; Galatians 1:13-14).
Indeed, it was Paul’s own strict adherence to the Law that had led him to the most serious sin of his life, the only personal sin on which he ever comments — the persecution of Christians. In Paul’s conversion he was made aware, in a way that he would never forget, that his endeavor to achieve righteousness by the observance of the Law had led him into his worst sin: “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute Me?”
It was in that experience of his conversion that he discerned “another law in my members, working against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members” (verse 23).
That is to say, it was his very zeal for the Law of God that had occasioned his worst sin against heaven. He had not been doing what he had intended to do (verse 15). Sin had taken over his life. He had been acting as a slave of sin. Thus, in his conversion Paul learned the experience common to all the children of Adam—the radical inability to find justification before God without the reconciling grace of Christ.
No, this dilemma was not the fault of the Law. It was, rather, the manifestation of the power of sin in man’s very flesh, this flesh burdened with death. Sin is not in the Law; sin is in man’s very flesh, working through death (verses 13-15). Inherited sin is internal to man, which is why grace must become internal to man.
With his mind, then, man contemplates the Law, but it remains external to him. There is another “law” internal to man, the law of sin and death, the law that man really obeys (verse 19).
The dilemma that Paul describes here is well know to anyone who has “tried to be good,” and moralists have often commented on it (Epictetus 1.26.4; Horace, Letters 1.8.11; Ovid, Metamorphosis 7.20-21; Dante, Purgatorio 21.105).
A man forced to do what he really doesn’t want to do is properly called a slave (verses 16,23; 6:13,19), and a man without Christ is certainly a slave to sin. This is the reign of death. It abides in man’s very flesh, which Paul calls “this body of death” (verse 24; 6:6; Philippians 3:21). As we have had occasion to remark more than once, “sins reigns in death.” Death is the legacy left us by Adam. It reigns in our very bodies. It was to free us from death that Christ rose from the dead.
Verses 17 and 20 have occasionally been interpreted as excusing man from the responsibility for his sins. If this were the case, of course, man would not need a Savior. The whole of the Bible, however, and Paul especially, contends that the children of Adam are destined for eternal damnation except for the mercy of God poured out in the reconciling blood of Christ. Sin is never excused. Sin is paid for.
Saturday, February 19
Matthew 13:18-23: The Parable of the Sower follows the outline of the Shema. Accordingly, the parable’s interpretation begins with the command, “Hear!” (verse 18) In the Greek wording, in fact, this command carries an emphatic pronoun, unusual with an imperative verb: “You!” This pronoun serves to emphasize the distinction between Jesus’ followers and the “others.”
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).
In Matthew’s version of this parable-interpretation, we note his special emphasis on “understanding” in verses 19 and 23. According to Matthew, a special type of understanding is characteristic of true discipleship. Thus, Matthew omits both references to a failure of understanding on the part of the disciples in Mark 4:10, 13.
And at the end of the parables, in Matthew 13:51, the disciples admit that they do understand what the Lord has been saying. For more evidence of Matthew’s emphasis on understanding as a characteristic of discipleship, one may compare Mark 9:9-13 with Matthew 17:9-13; and Mark 9:30-32 with Matthew 17:22-23.
Sunday, February 20
Matthew 13:24-35: Matthew replaces the parable in Mark 4:21-25 with this parable of the Wheat and the Weeds, which is proper to his own gospel. It is joined to the parables that follow by the common image of growth. So much is this the case that Matthew postpones the explanation of the Wheat and the Weeds until after the parables of the Mustard Seed and the Leaven.
As we shall see in that delayed explanation, the first of these parables is about judgment, and in cases of judgment there is usually the danger of misjudging. 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 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. (If Matthew intends the Weeds to represent the Jews–a view certainly consonant with this section of his gospel–then his view of salvation history is far less complex than that of Paul–cf. Romans 11:11-36).
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.
These latter images do convey the sense of delay and the passage of time, exactly as in the Lord’s Final Discourse (24:48; 25:5,19).
Our third parable, that of the Mustard Seed (verses 31-32) is also about growth. Unlike the previous parable, it is found in the other Synoptics (Mark 4:30-32; Luke 13:18-19).
This parable and the one that follows it—the Leaven in verse 33—address 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 those 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.
Monday, February 21
Romans 8.26-39: Paul brings to a close, and to something of a climax, the second part of the Epistle to the Romans (chapters 5-8), on the theme of the Christian existence of those who have been justified in Christ.
The foreknowledge and predestination of God is Paul’s way of describing the priority of divine grace in redemption and justification. The initiative is God’s, not ours. We foreknew nothing; we prearranged nothing. God has done it all. He knows and He determines, ahead of time, what form His work in history (including the history of each of us) will take.
Those who truly experience His grace are aware of themselves as known by God (1 Corinthians 8:3; 13:12), loved by God (1 John 4:19), chosen by God. When he speaks of predestination, Paul is describing the experience of life in the Christian Church.
Christians, then, are “predestined to be conformed (symmorphous) to the image (eikon or icon) of His Son.” That is to say, believers are summoned to share in Christ’s own relationship to the Father, so that Christ “might be the firstborn among many brethren.” By divine grace, the infinite favor of God, they participate in the Son’s knowledge and love of the Father (Matthew 11:27), who regards them as His children, the younger brothers and sisters of Jesus Christ (John 2:17).
It is because these justified Christians have become, by virtue of their justification, “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4) that they can, in utter truth, look into the face of God and say, “Our Father.” They partake, already, of the divine glory (verse 30).
The purpose of these reflections, Paul says, is to bring hope and reassurance into our hearts. God will never back away from His grace and His call. For this reason, there is no force in heaven or on earth or under the earth that can separate us from the love of God in Christ (verses 31-39). God is permanently on our side. He will never betray us.
Moreover, 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.
The situation of the justified Christian may be likened to that of a man in a poker game, who has been dealt the royal flush. He did nothing to gain the royal flush. He did not work for it. He received it on the deal. He holds it in his hand. As long as he holds on to those cards, he cannot possibly lose, for no hand is greater than the royal flush. The one thing he must never do is to discard. All he must do is sit tight and keep a firm grip on those cards. No one, in heaven, on earth, or under the earth, can take them away from him.
Tuesday, February 22
Matthew 13:44-52: This remaining section of the Parables of the Kingdom is completely proper to Matthew. It contains three parables: the Hidden Treasure (verse 44), the Pearl (verses 45-46), and the Dragnet (verses 47-50). These are followed by a brief exchange between Jesus and the disciples with respect to their understanding of the parables (verses 51-52).
The parables of the Hidden Treasure and the Pearl pertain to the third seed sown in the Parable of the Sower—the seed sown among thorns (verse 7). That seed, we recall, was strangled by “the cares of this world and the deceitfulness of riches” (verse 22). This preoccupation with wealth is addressed in the parables of the Hidden Treasure and the Pearl; in each case the man who finds the treasure or pearl gives up all that he has in order to obtain the desired prize. Following the outline of the Shema, such a one loves God with all his strength.
These two parables, concerned with the cost of discipleship, are a corrective against any notion that, because grace is absolutely free and undeserved, grace makes no demands on us. The divine irony is that what is free may, in fact, cost us everything. In both cases, in fact, the discoverer sacrifices “whatever he has,” or “all that he has”; this is the cost of discipleship (cf. 18:21,27).
The discovered treasure (verse 44), like the leaven and the seed, is described as “hidden” (keykrymmeno). The discoverer then “hides” (ekrypsen) the treasure again. Clearly these parables appreciate the hidden quality of what is worth having! This metaphor of the treasure, like the pearl, is found all through Israel’s Wisdom literature (Psalms, Proverbs, Job, Baruch, The Wisdom of Solomon) with reference to the Torah, Wisdom, and the Word of God.
Because of this hidden quality of the Kingdom of Heaven, not everyone recognizes its worth. Those that do, however, must be prepared to sacrifice everything else in order to attain it. They will not allow the “the cares of this world and the deceitfulness of riches,” like thorns, to choke off the growth of the sown seed. They will love God with all their strength.
The seventh and last parable, the Dragnet (verse 47-50), is the story of the Last Judgment. It occupies in this dominical discourse the same place occupied by the Parable of the Sheep and Goats in the Lord’s final discourse (25:31-46). Here in verse 49, as in 24:31 and 25:31, the ministers of the final judgment are the angels.
As long as the net is concealed under the water, the bad and good fish are mixed together, like the wheat and the weeds, and the sheep and the goats. The day of judgment comes, however, when the net is dragged up onto the shore, and its contents are made perfectly clear.
These parables are followed by one final parable, having to do with the “understanding” of those scribes who have been “disciplized” (13:52 — the same verb as in the Great Commission in 28:29). These are the authorized preachers of the Gospel, whose authority comes through those men who received it from the Lord in that scene described at the end of Matthew. On the transmission of this authority, see 2 Timothy 2:2.
Wednesday, February 23
Psalms 29 (Greek & Latin 28): According to Holy Scripture, the lot of the true Israel in this world involves a great deal of grief from those distressed by the very thought of God and offended at the occasional recollection of His claims. Often enough, persecution ensues: “Yes, and all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution” (2 Tim. 3:12).
This psalm speaks of the history of this persecution and the Lord’s constant deliverance of His people in the face of it: “‘Many times have they warred against me from my youth,’ let Israel now say, ‘many times have they warred against me from my youth, but they could not prevail against me.’ The sinful contrived behind my back, perpetual in iniquity; but the righteous Lord broke the necks of the sinful.”
This persecution is described as a warfare—“they warred against me.” The Greek verb here is epolemesan, a close inspection of which will remind one of the cognate word, “polemics.” Ours being a fallen world, life in the service of God provokes any amount of such polemics. As we have had occasion to reflect many times in these pages, the Book of Psalms is a prayer book for warriors.
And when began this persecution of—this polemic against—God’s people? “From my youth” would seem to place the beginnings of the experience pretty far back in Israel’s memory. Perhaps one might think of the early oppressions by the Egyptians (Ex. 1:14), or the Moabites (Judg. 3:14), or the Canaanites (4:3), or the Midianites (6:6), or the Ammonites (10:9; 1 Sam. 11:2), and so on. The polemic against the righteous, however, goes back further still. “From my youth” would seem to include even the murder of righteous Abel (Gen. 4:8), who, we are told, “offered to God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, through which he obtained witness that he was righteous” (Heb. 11:4). Indeed, Christ our Lord apparently took “from my youth” to begin at that exact point, for He spoke of “all the righteous blood shed on the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, son of Berechiah” (Matt. 23:35). And in this same context the Lord further prophesied that this persecution, this relentless polemic, will continue yet: “I send you prophets, wise men, and scribes: some of them you will kill and crucify, and some of them you will scourge in your synagogues and persecute from city to city” (23:34).
For all that, says our psalm, “they could not prevail against me.” Indeed, they cannot prevail, whether by “persecutions, afflictions, which happened to me at Antioch, at Iconium, at Lystra—what persecutions I endured. And out of them all the Lord delivered me” (2 Tim. 3:11). Therefore, we take heart from this repeated experience of God’s deliverance: “We are hard pressed on every side, yet not crushed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed” (2 Cor. 4:8, 9).
Our psalm ends with a threefold imprecation against the persecutors, which is perhaps one of the most ironic pieces of poetry in the whole Book of Psalms. It compares the sinful to the dried-up grass on a mud roof, but instead of simple passing mention of this metaphor, our psalm pauses to let us meditate more deeply on its implications. Such dried-out grass, we reflect, never becomes part of the harvest. No reaper will gather it; it will never be bundled nor baled, and for that reason it will never be the occasion for the customary blessing mutually extended by the laborers at the time of harvest (cf. Ruth 2:4).
This is a truly remarkable section of poetry, dwelling on various benedictions that are never to be. Such is the everlasting loss of the sinful that waged war on Israel from his youth. The imprecations are entirely negative; the hatred of holy Zion leads to the loss of a blessing that need not have been lost. The shallow roots wither; there is no harvest for it; the voice of blessing will never again be heard: “Let them be ashamed and confounded, all those who hate Zion. Let them become like the grass on the rooftops, all dried out before the plucking. The harvester took it not in hand, nor did the bundler take it to his bosom. Neither did the passersby say, ‘The Lord’s blessing be upon you; we bless you in the name of the Lord.”
Thursday, February 24
The Death of John the Baptist: Although the father of John the Baptist declared that the mission of his son was t o give knowledge of salvation to God’s people and to guide our feet into the way of peace, the Holy Scriptures equally testify that a certain “violence” attended his entire ministry. Jesus spoke of this, saying that John’s appearance in this world introduced the days in which “the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent take it by force. For all the prophets and the law prophesied until John. And if you are willing to receive it, he is Elijah who is to come” (11:12–14).
Violence was especially evident in his apocalyptic preaching about “the wrath to come,” with axes laid to the roots of trees and the burning of chaff with unquenchable fire (3:7–12).
This sense of violence introduces the first thing we want say about John: He was possessed of an uncompromising moral sense. H never learned to temper his language when he addressed the enemies of God. He treated them as . . . . , well, enemies. In the New Testament triangle of the anemic Antipas, the hateful Herodias, and the relentless John, we have a striking parallel to the Old Testament triangle of the anemic Ahab, the hateful Jezebel, and, of course, the unrelenting Elijah. John’s uncompromising moral vision is what finally brought about his martyrdom.
This story of John’s death stands as a foreshadowing, of sorts, of the trial and death of Jesus. Indeed, in both stories the tragedy comes about through evil forces working on the weakness of certain political figures.
Thus, Herod orders the beheading of John the Baptist, much against his preference, when his hand is forced by the thoroughly corrupt Herodias. And Pilate, also against his preference, orders the crucifixion of Jesus, when his hand is forced by the corrupt Jewish leaders.
In both stories, that is to say, we witness the inability of cowardly political leadership to guarantee the most fundamental political rights: to life and a fair trial. Both stories are indictments of moral weakness; both Herod and Pilate are cowards, unable to resist injustice, even though they bear the responsibility of maintaining justice. Each case—the beheading of John the Baptist and the crucifixion of Jesus—demonstrates the inability of human power to render even the most basic justice.
This lesson was particularly significant for Mark’s original readers: the Christians suffering persecution and death at the hands of the weak political leader Nero, who diverted to them the wrath of the Roman people for the burning of Rome.
This lesson is essential to believers in ever age, who might otherwise be disposed to put their trust in princes and to seek their security from a political order no stronger than the weak men appointed to maintain it.
The consideration of the personal strength of John the Baptist brings us to the third thing we want to say of him today: He was a man of character. We observe that John was never shaky about who he was. The lines of his identity were firmly in place; he had what the Greeks called “character”: internal shape.
John was severely tried over the course of his life, but he seems never to have had an identity crisis. He appears in the Gospels as a man of unusual self-confidence—enough self-confidence to call his whole generation to repentance! He was not afraid of the religious authorities in Judaism, and he was not the least intimidated by the political authorities that would eventually take his life.
He held his identity as a matter of memory, memory earlier than his ability to recall critically. This memory, for John, was primitive, more aboriginal than mere recollection. The man that finally placed his neck on the block for his beheading is the same person as the child that was awakened by the voice of the Virgin Mary as he nestled in his mother’s womb. Through all the vicissitudes of his life, there was a personal continuity in John the Baptist.
Friday, February 25
Romans 10:14-21: Israel, says Paul, is without excuse. It was to Israel that the Gospel was first addressed, but they did not believe.
This assessment refers, not only to the preaching of Jesus and the first apostles, but also to Paul’s own experience. As the Acts of the Apostles describes it, Paul’s custom, on first arriving at any new city, was to take the Gospel first to the local synagogue (Acts 13:5,14; 14:1; 17:1-2,10,17; 18:4,19,26; 19:8). In majority of the recorded instances, however, the message was rejected by most of the Jews who heard it. By and large, Paul discovered, his more receptive audiences tended to be made up of Gentile seekers who had attached themselves, in varying degrees, to the synagogue. These, together with small remnants of Jews in each city, became the first members of the Christian Churches of Cyprus, Asia Minor, Macedonia, Greece, and so on.
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.
Paul indicates the social and ecclesiastical nature of faith by insisting that “faith comes by hearing” (verse 17). Even Paul himself, to whom Jesus had spoken directly, was obliged to go to the Church in order to submit himself to her authority and be instructed by Her Tradition: “Arise and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do” (Acts 9:6).
What the Church preaches is “the word of Christ” This expression seems to have a twofold meaning. First, it signifies the word received from Jesus through the Tradition preached in the Church (and in due course transmitted into Holy Scripture in the form of Gospels and Epistles). Second, it means that word of which Christ is the very content. These two meanings appear to be but aspects of one reality.
Small wonder if the Jews rejected Christ, says Paul; they had already rejected Isaiah (verse 16). Indeed, they had already rejected Moses (verse 19; John 5:46).
In verse 18 Paul saying that the Gospel is as cosmic as the cosmos. He sees 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.
The citation from Deuteronomy in verse 19 introduces the motif that will dominate the end of the next chapter, Israel’s providential “jealousy.”