Text from the New Living Translation

25 One day an expert in religious law stood up to test Jesus by asking him this question: “Teacher, what should I do to inherit eternal life?”
26 Jesus replied, “What does the law of Moses say? How do you read it?”
27 The man answered, “‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your strength, and all your mind.’ And, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”
28 “Right!” Jesus told him. “Do this and you will live!”
29 The man wanted to justify his actions, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”
30 Jesus replied with a story: “A Jewish man was traveling on a trip from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he was attacked by bandits. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him up, and left him half dead beside the road.
31 “By chance a priest came along. But when he saw the man lying there, he crossed to the other side of the road and passed him by.
32 A Temple assistant walked over and looked at him lying there, but he also passed by on the other side.
33 “Then a despised Samaritan came along, and when he saw the man, he felt compassion for him.
34 Going over to him, the Samaritan soothed his wounds with olive oil and wine and bandaged them. Then he put the man on his own donkey and took him to an inn, where he took care of him.
35 The next day he handed the innkeeper two silver coins, telling him, ‘Take care of this man. If his bill runs higher than this, I’ll pay you the next time I’m here.’
36 “Now which of these three would you say was a neighbor to the man who was attacked by bandits?” Jesus asked.
37 The man replied, “The one who showed him mercy.” Then Jesus said, “Yes, now go and do the same.”

Why is this a favourite passage?
It’s quite a familiar passage, but what I want to draw out are two points.

The first is to note that Jesus doesn’t challenge the grammar of the request, rather he accepts it and builds on it. In other words, Jesus accepts that salvation is a doing (or, it necessarily involves a doing) and the notion of ‘belief’ isn’t raised. Jesus could have said, in response to the initial question, something like ‘believe in me as your personal Lord and Saviour’ – but he doesn’t, and I find that both significant and reassuring.

The second point to emphasise is that the story isn’t really about reaching beyond ethnic boundaries, it’s about abandoning religious boundaries. The Priest and the Temple Assistant are both following the regulations for their conduct, because if they were to help the wounded man then they would then be rendered unclean and unfit for their religious duties. Whereas the Samaritan – off the scale in terms of being religiously ‘unrighteous’ – is the one who actually does the Father’s will by showing mercy and compassion.

So: a key text for me.

More manifesto material:

26 You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus,
27 for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.
28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

Why is this a favourite passage?
Well, the theme of ‘children of God’ is a major one for me, and will be reflected here in due course, but the key to this passage for me comes in two things: first, the identity of a Christian is found through their faith and baptism (leaving aside the link between those things for another day). Secondly, this identity supersedes all other identities; here, in particular, it is made explicit that this new identity overcomes previous divisions based upon gender, race and economic status. Christians are called to form a new community, based around our faith and baptism. To place a criterion of identity above that of baptism is, effectively, to excommunicate. This is just one of the reasons why I have great trouble with much of the homophobic criticism coming out of places like GAFCON – their entire activity is premised on a rejection of baptised brothers and sisters – they assume their conclusion before the intra-family dialogue can begin. Similarly, the rejection of mainstream baptismal practices by a small minority of churches (eg in favour of some sort of mental-assent theory of faith) destroys the foundation of Christian unity. It is also where my acceptance of just-war theory has undergone the biggest modification since I started writing this blog – I’m not sure it is ever legitimate (in Christian terms) for one Christian to kill another. The ramifications of that I’m still exploring!

For those who have faith in Christ, who have been baptised into the Body, their sense of identity as Christians trumps all other claims. This is radically important.

A simple text today:

1 When the time drew near for David to die, he gave a charge to Solomon his son.
2 “I am about to go the way of all the earth,” he said. “So be strong, show yourself a man,
3 and observe what the LORD your God requires: Walk in his ways, and keep his decrees and commands, his laws and requirements, as written in the Law of Moses, so that you may prosper in all you do and wherever you go.”

Why is this a favourite passage?
Well, I think they count as ‘famous last words’, even though many people will be unfamiliar with them. It’s a story that grips my imagination, all the more since my own father died and there weren’t any ‘last words’! It maintains the theme of doing God’s will, and summarises the OT link between obedience and prosperity. It’s just a wonderful passage.

Continuing the theme of ‘doing’ from yesterday, a single verse from the Sermon on the Mount – which we will return to several times in this sequence!

“Not everyone who says to me ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter the Kingdom of Heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in Heaven.”

Why is this a favourite passage?

I love this verse because it stands over against the exclusivist emphasis that sometimes dominates Christian thinking, especially the ones which quote ‘there is no other name under heaven by which we can be saved’ – which might qualify as a least favourite verse! Jesus is explicit that the naming is not the essential thing; it is the doing which is essential. I believe that it is possible to do the will of God using all sorts of different religious languages – the different forms of Christian language, but also Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist etc. To say otherwise is, to my mind, to recklessly restrict God’s gracious activity and borders on saying that there is a realm of creation from which God is absent. Which is bonkers.

Of course, if you want to know precisely what doing the will of the Father entails, please see the previous passage in this sequence!!

This should have been posted on Saturday – I’m behind already! – which means you might get another one this afternoon. Click ‘full post’ for text.

6 With what shall I come before the LORD and bow down before the exalted God? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old?
7 Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousand rivers of oil? Shall I offer my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?
8 He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.

Why is this a favourite passage?
I see this short passage as summarising the prophetic critique in the Old Testament. Roughly speaking (very roughly!) there is an ongoing dialogue in the OT between the voices of the established temple cult and the prophets who criticise the cult. There are some analogies with the arguments of the Reformation era, I see the prophets as being people who God raises up to say to the religious establishment ‘You’ve missed the point!’ This passage expresses the critique in a nutshell.
Verses 6 & 7a: simply remarking on what is laid down as requirements for a sin offering, setting the context for what follows.
Verse 7b: this is a text worth pondering (not least by those atheists who go on about the Abraham and Isaac story as evidence for God’s abominability (if that’s a usable word!)). The God revealed in the Old Testament is, so far as I can see, resolutely rejecting of child sacrifice – much more rejecting of it than the people themselves (eg Jephthah). All the present-day atheists are doing, here as so often elsewhere, is repeating, unacknowledged, the prophetic critique. I’ve often felt that the Bible is an anti-religious text; certainly Jesus is one of the most anti-religious characters ever known.
Verse 8: One of the best verses in Scripture: no complications, no distractions with doctrine – we have been shown the right way to live. That right way is active, it is about establishing a righteous environment (which always, in Scripture, means a bias to the poor, ensuring that the rich are not oppressive), later called ‘the Kingdom’ by Jesus. It also, necessarily, involves spiritual humility – we are called to cooperate in the process, not to try and achieve it in our own strength.

So here is another manifesto: don’t think that following the religious cult is what God is seeking; it can become an end in itself and distorting of God’s true intentions. What God is seeking is righteousness, and our principal spiritual task is to pursue it.

NB there is a good song using this text on this album.

15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.
16 For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him.
17 He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.
18 And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy.
19 For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him,
20 and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.

Why is this a favourite passage?
This is one of the most dense and theologically intense descriptions of Jesus. It dates from around AD 60, written by Paul, and as such it is a remarkably early statement of the significance that Jesus had for the early church. Often theological complexity is taken as being evidence of a more developed theology – and that more developed theology is taken as evidence of late composition (this often comes in discussions of John’s gospel). Yet here we have a passage that is the equal of the Johannine prologue, and it is written within a generation of the crucifixion. It is worth emphasising that, in a Hebrew context, this is rank idolatry, for it is asserting a union between Jesus and God.

Verse 15a: the word ‘image’ is the greek eikon, from which we get not just the word ‘icon’ but the entire theology of iconography. The claim of Christianity is that in Jesus we see God, he is the window through which we see the divine.
Verse 15b: this verse gave rise to all sorts of controversies in the early church, and was the sort of verse used by the Arians to assert that Jesus was a creature (ie ‘born’). The Nicene council went through all sorts of philosophical hoops to reconcile the verses here, both with each other and with other texts. Jesus is begotten of the Father but not a creature – in other words, this verse is interpreted in the light of the later verses, not vice versa.
Verse 16: I see this as an ‘unpacking’ of logos-theology – that Jesus is the purpose of creation, everything else has a derivative purpose which is only intelligible in the light of who Jesus is. I might write on another occasion about the principalities.
Verse 17: another aspect of logos-theology – it’s not just that all things were created for Jesus (ie leading towards him, what he embodies) but that Jesus is what gives integrity to the whole. In other words, Jesus isn’t just the blueprint, he is also the keystone and cornerstone of the structure itself.
Verse 18: which means the church, which is Christ’s body on earth (as well as his bride and several other metaphors!). He is the beginning in the sense that the new creation (resurrection) in which all will eventually share has begun already through Jesus. This gives Jesus the authority of the first-born, a customary attribute at the time the letter was written.
Verse 19: I have some qualms with this verse as there are interpretations of it that tend towards the docetic, ie that eclipse Jesus’ genuine humanity. It is something of a fine distinction, to distinguish between calling Jesus fully God and calling Jesus God in human form. My qualm is that Jesus becomes a superman figure, with the philosophical descriptions of omniscience and omnipotence and so on, and that this distorts his character, evacuating him of any shared humanity. I would read the ‘fullness of God’ as ascribing to Jesus not the philosophical attributes so much as the spiritual ones, most of all the overflowing sharing of love. In other words, if we see the foremost attribute of God as being one of eternal and creative love, then it makes sense to claim that this love dwelt fully in Jesus and was embodied through his life. I don’t think it makes sense to ascribe omnipotence and omniscience to Jesus as he lived on earth (which leads to a kenotic Christology of course).
Verse 20: the wonderful claim that ‘all things’ are reconciled to God through Jesus, specifically his death on the cross. This is atonement theory, and again the ghost of penal substitution hovers morbidly around the interpretation of the passage. What is important here is the global and cosmic nature of the atonement – it’s not just that specific individuals with their passwords have been ‘washed clean in the blood of the Lamb’ but that the whole of creation has been put right with God. This cosmic healing – and the way in which it is an essential part of Christianity – is a doctrine that needs to be made more prominent today.

So we have a wonderfully expressive claim about the nature of Jesus in this passage, one that is philosophically pregnant, and thus ambrosia for the systematically inclined, like me.