My wife loves relationships movies. She’s not looking for action scenes, spy plots, or superheros bringing everybody to heel. She loves stories that explore how people relate.
I think that’s how Jesus heard the Bible. Academics can focus on the form and structure of the text or making theology systematic, but for him it was all about relationships.
Matthew 22 gives example after example where his interpretation was relational:
- God’s people live because I AM. Knowing Scripture means knowing God, his life-giving power (see on 22:29-32).
- Loving God and loving people — those relationships are the whole Bible (the Law and the Prophets) (see on 22:34-40).
- To understand a Psalm, explore the relationships between the people (22:43-45).
Now, I know this isn’t how we usually read Scripture. Jesus’ approach sounded just as foreign to the Pharisees as it does to us. Can we learn the relational hermeneutic Jesus used? In this post, we’ll take the third example (based on Psalm 110) as our tutorial.
Notice the question Jesus asks:
Continue reading “David’s Lord (Matthew 22:41-46)”